Denise Winfrey is winner of Joliet Chamber’s ATHENA Award

Denise Winfrey, Will County board commissioner for District 6 in Joliet, never expected to hear that she was the 2023 recipient of the ATHENA Award when Silver Cross Hospital President and CEO Ruth Colby called Winfrey to her office.

Winfrey, who also is a member of the Silver Cross board of directors, said Colby asked her whether she could talk after the board meeting. Winfrey headed to Colby’s office thinking that Colby had a project for her.

Several people were in the office with Colby when Winfrey arrived, including Jen Howard, president of the Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

“Then they told me I’m the winner,” Winfrey said. “I was totally caught off guard. I was just over the moon and just amazed.”

The Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry and its Council for Working Women will honor Winfrey at the 35th anniversary luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Sept. 13 in the Jacob Henry Mansion Estate’s Victorian Ballroom.

ATHENA International President and CEO Traci Costa also is planning to attend the celebration.

The ATHENA Leadership Award is presented to those who have “achieved the highest level of professional excellence; contributes time and energy to improve the quality of life for others in the community; and actively assists others, particularly women, in realizing their full leadership potential,” according to the ATHENA International website.

Howard said that Winfrey embodied those qualities during her years as an internal consultant for Commonwealth Edison – Winfrey retired in 2000 – and her subsequent work for Will County.

“She gives time and energy to improve the quality of life for others in Will County,” Howard said. “You look around, and Denise is involved everywhere. It just comes naturally to her, and she does it for all the right reasons: just to do good in the community.”

Public servant and role model

Winfrey has served as Will County board commissioner for District 6, D-Joliet, since 2009. She served as the immediate past president of the National Association of Counties.

She was the first female Will County executive – an interim position – and Will County Board chairwoman, according to the Joliet Chamber. She also is a former Joliet Township collector.

Winfrey is a board member and former board president at the Will Grundy Medical Clinic. She has served as a member and legislative chair for the National Hookup of Black Women and board member and board president for the Will-Grundy Center for Independent Living, which is now the Disability Resource Center.

“I believe in equal access for everybody,” Winfrey said. “It’s the same reason why I came on the CASA board for a while. It’s about supporting those who don’t have a voice.”

CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates. CASA of River Valley recruits and trains volunteers to be the voice of children who have experienced abuse and neglect.

CASA volunteers “provide needed information to the court and work toward a more restorative juvenile court process,” according to CASA of River Valley.

Yet Winfrey said that when she thinks about people who qualify for the ATHENA Award, she doesn’t think about herself. She said she thinks about past winners, such as Colby, who won the award in 2021, and Caroline Portlock, director of the Workforce Investment Board of Will County, who won the award in 2022.

Colby said she’s known Winfrey for about 18 years and “just admired her from the very beginning.”

“Denise has been a role model for women in our community for a very long time,” Colby said. “She has been a dedicated public servant, and she has served on many, many organizations. She really takes her time to think about things, and I think she is a great mentor.

“I think the ATHENA award is well-deserved and that Denise possesses all the qualities that an ATHENA winner should have.”

Portlock praised Winfrey’s positive influence on Will County.

“When I saw she was the award recipient this year, it just made my heart sing,” Portlock said. “I think there are a lot of people who do much good for the community, [including those who] maybe because of their position it’s expected. But Denise has always just gone above and beyond. She’s the reason Will County is on the map, and that certainly helps us with funding and opening doors for partnerships.”

Winfrey, who is originally from southern Illinois, said she moved to Joliet with her family when she was quite young.

She attended the former McKinley Park School in Joliet as well as Eliza Kelly Elementary School, Washington Junior High School and Joliet Central High School. She also attended Joliet Junior College when it still was located inside Joliet Central, and then she studied business at Lewis University shortly after it became co-ed.

Winfrey also earned a Master of Science at American University in Washington, D.C., and conducted her post-graduate work at Gestalt Institute of Cleveland at Case Western Reserve.

Opening doors of opportunity

Winfrey said she was raised by parents “who believed in giving back.”

“They drove people to the polls,” Winfrey said. “My brothers and I would sit in the back seat of the car putting leaflets together so my dad could go door to door while my mother moved the car down the street.”

Winfrey’s father was a teacher and her mother was a highly active community volunteer. Her father taught people to read and write in their home, she said.

“So those were the lessons that we had growing up: that this is what you do,” Winfrey said.

Winfrey said she always knew that she would serve Will County after she retired, and she found herself in many of her roles to fill a need. When someone asked her to serve, Winfrey said she usually responded, “Yes, I can do that.”

In many cases, Winfrey often was the first woman or the first Black woman to fill those roles. She recalled her high school job at Sears when it was located in downtown Joliet, in what now is the Will County Government Office building.

“I worked on the floor, which was a new thing because Black people did not work on the floor at Sears,” Winfrey said. “They were janitorial staff or back in [the] catalogue [department] or back in the office, not on the floor talking to people. People were coming up to me so proud and happy to see me because this had not happened before.”

Through the years of Winfrey’s professional life, she was “very often the only woman in the room at my level,” she said.

“Somebody always has to be the first,” Winfrey said. “But it wasn’t an easy spot and not a favorite spot. I didn’t love it at all. But somebody has to do it. And if that meant opening that door, I opened that door. I just did the best with that. Once the door is open, then someone else can come in.”

And that, ultimately, is why Winfrey is so passionate about mentoring women.

“Women very often don’t have that place to go where they can talk with someone who has insight and are able to look at it in a different way,” Winfrey said.

At 73, Winfrey has no intention of retiring from community service anytime soon. And she’s humbled at receiving the ATHENA Award.

“It really means a lot to me,” Winfrey said.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: 2023 Athena Award luncheon

WHEN: 11:30 a.m. Sept. 13

WHERE: Jacob Henry Mansion Estate’s Victorian Ballroom, 15 Richards St.

TICKETS: Tickets are $40 each or $400 for a table of 10. Register by Sept. 11 by calling the chamber at 815-727-5371 or online at jolietchamber.com.

INFO: Visit athenainternational.org.