dRIVERWOODS, IL –  Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods welcomes Vladimir Kulenovic as Director of Music and Wellness. Kulenovic has served as Music Director of the Lake Forest Symphony and his previous accolades include “Conductor of the Year” by The Illinois Council of Orchestras, “Chicagoan of the Year in Classical Music” by The Chicago Tribune, and winner of The Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award.

Kulenovic will lead the Brushwood Center’s new Music and Nature initiative, opening the power of music as an artistic outlet, a means of connecting to the natural world, and a pathway to healing amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.
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“The source of music is to be found in nature, and therefore all of our work as musicians is an inseparable extension of nature. To work at Brushwood is to work closest to this source, and to share a purposeful journey with admirable colleagues who inspire creativity and joy! Together, we bring music and nature together to those who need it most,” expressed Kulenovic.
 
Kulenovic was featured in a special virtual musical performance with Multi Grammy Award nominee and violinist Philippe Quint at Brushwood Center’s culminating Smith Nature Symposium Awards Ceremony on October 9th. These two artists performed a rendition of Jules Massenet’s soulful “Méditation” from the opera Thaïs, a beautifully passionate piece in which a solo violin takes the main stage. It was performed directly from Brushwood Center at the heart of Ryerson Woods as a calming tribute to nature in the midst of COVID-19.
 
“Vladimir is an internationally-renowned musician and conductor, and we are beyond thrilled that he will be leading Brushwood’s music and nature initiative. It is a gift to work in concert with such extraordinary talent, and together, we can merge the restorative experiences of music and nature for the public,” said Catherine Game, Executive Director of Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods.
 
Kulenovic, a Serbian native who came to the U.S. when he was 12 years old, has developed into one the finest and most imaginative conductors of his generation. In his fifth season as the Music Director of the Lake Forest Symphony (LFS), Kulenovic energized unprecedented growth in the symphony’s 60-year history, earning the orchestra a Grammy Nomination for their first-ever commercial CD recording “Liquid Melancholy” (2018 Cedille Records). Before his highly successful leadership at the LFS, Kulenovic was the Associate Conductor of the Utah Symphony at the Utah Opera and Assistant Conductor of the Chicago Lyric Opera. Kulenovic has been featured as a guest conductor across the United States and for dozens of symphonies in Europe and Asia. Notably, he served as principal conductor of the Kyoto International Music Festival in Japan. Kulenovic earned his graduate diploma in conducting from both The Juilliard School and the Peabody Institute.
 
Kawai Pianos and Family Pianos Co. are Brushwood Center’s featured sponsors for the new music and nature program, and they have generously underwritten the Center’s new pianos, which will be housed at Brushwood and used for live-streamed music programs like the Smith Nature Symposium. Brushwood Center is thrilled to be partnering with such charitable sponsors that share the center’s enthusiasm for bringing music to the community. 

​RIVERWOODS, IL -- Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods welcomed speakers Bill Sturm, Maria Smithburg, and moderator Dr. Martha Twaddle to Healing Spaces at The Smith Nature Symposium.
This conversation examined how we can improve human wellbeing through natural design in our personal and shared spaces. Nature should not solely exist in our forest preserves and parks, but in our homes, businesses, and communities, as natural elements create conditions for good physical and mental health. These health and design leaders came together to share why and how we should incorporate healing natural features into our daily lives and society at large.
“People have always needed nature to grow and to heal, but natural design is even more vital in this new era of Covid-19 where people are suffering from illness, isolation, and economic and emotional hardship. We greatly appreciated these leaders’ insights into how we can use natural elements to improve our wellbeing,” said Catherine Game, Executive Director of Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods.
Dr. Martha Twaddle is a national leader in the care of the seriously ill and their families and has been a major contributor to the study and implementation of end-of-life care for more than 30 years. She believes that despite all its advances, modern medicine misses the key objective in caring for patients by curing instead of healing. Modern Medicine too often cures ailments by prescribing remedies to one affected area of the body, instead of treating the body, psyche, and soul as a whole and guiding people towards a healing that brings peace in any stage of illness or recovery. From her own experience and research, Dr. Twaddle has come to believe that gardens are powerful tools in furthering healing that are not employed to their greatest capacity. Gardens are particularly effective healing tools because they respond to the fundamental human need for beauty, serenity, community, physical movement, sensory stimulation, and the opportunity for reflection.
This intersection of life that gardens represent helps us to make sense of suffering and come to peace with the cycles of life we experience.  Pain, depression, and the agitation of dementia have been shown to lessen with horticulture therapy and images of nature in hospitals can decrease anxiety and improve the ability to cope with pain. While promoting these healing benefits of gardens, Dr. Twaddle advances academic work, including developing curriculum, guidelines, and models of care for healthcare professionals to provide care for the seriously ill in all settings. She also works with others at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine exploring how technology and prescriptive nature can improve health outcomes, as well as collaborating nationally in the development of patient and family-centered quality metrics. In 2013, she was named one of the 30 most influential visionaries in Hospice and Palliative Medicine by nomination of her peers via the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
Gardens are beneficial for all people, not only the sick and suffering. Designing gardens and incorporating them into our physical environment in a way that invites all people and flows with built surroundings is the job of architects and landscape designers. Bill Sturm, cofounder of Serena Sturm Architects, Ltd., is a recognized leader in environmentally sustainable and resource-efficient architectural design and land planning. His practice helped pioneer ecological design in Chicagoland and his firm has managed numerous award-winning projects.
Over Sturm’s 40-year career, he has established a reputation for delivering buildings that meld functionality with beauty and connect the outdoors to the indoors. Sturm has lectured extensively on sustainable design, juried multiple professional awards, and has been featured on the radio, TV, and in print.  He is a member of The American Institute of Architect’s (AIA) National Energy Leadership Group and served as the 2014 Chairman of AIA’s National Committee on the Environment Advisory Group. In this position, he advanced the profession’s practice of project performance analysis and strengthened adoption of the AIA 2030 Commitment, which challenges the global architecture and building community to make all buildings carbon-neutral by 2030.
While Sturm primarily uses his architectural expertise to design green buildings for people to live and work in, Maria Smithburg (landscape architect and owner of her own practice, Artemisia), focuses on creating inspirational outdoor spaces by using plants as a living medium.
Smithburg’s interest in art and her architectural background allow her to better understand the relationship between buildings and open space within an artistic context. This artistic side gives her an intuitive ability to unify the garden style to that of the built environment. Smithburg’s enchanting outdoor spaces invite a sense of tranquility that makes it easy for visitors to be present in the moment. Part of the magic of Smithburg’s highly admired residential, commercial, and public gardens is that she uses plants as an ever-evolving tool that shape the landscape and change it over time. Her gardens go through transitions with the seasons and years – just as humans do – and she must visualize these transformations years in advance.
Smithburg has been running Artemisia since 1992 and works on gardens in the Chicago area, as well as in Harbor County, Michigan. Her academic pursuits involve previously teaching landscape design theory at the University of Illinois in Chicago and garden design courses at the Chicago Botanic Garden. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Buenos Aires and her Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. She currently serves on The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Stewardship Council where she extends her passion for connecting people to natural places.
All funds raised from the Symposium directly support Thrive Together, Brushwood Center’s COVID-19 crisis response for a more just and sustainable future. All presentations were available in English and Spanish.
To learn more about the series visit  www.smithnaturesymposium.org.

​RIVERWOODS, IL -- Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods welcomed speakers Celeste Flores and Dulce Ortiz to Environmental Justice in Lake County at the Smith Nature Symposium.
This conversation, part of a seven-part live-streamed series on critical environmental issues, examined environmental injustices in Lake County that disproportionally affect people of color and immigrant families and offered a vision of how to secure environmental, economic, and racial justice for these communities.
Flores and Ortiz are Co-Chairs of Clean Power Lake County, a community-driven coalition that organizes within frontline environmental justice communities to shift the county to healthy, sustainable, and renewable energy. This assembly of partners includes faith-based, environmental, and public health organizations working to achieve self-determination for vulnerable and underserved people. As leaders spearheading this local movement, Flores and Ortiz offered perspective on the current state of environmental justice in Lake County and shared their understanding of the progress that has yet to be made.
“The fact is that pollution does not affect all people equally in the United States, and certainly not in Lake County. Communities comprised largely of people of color, immigrants, and low-income households are more likely to be closely located to pollution sources, such as ethylene oxide and coal-fired power plants, than other portions of the population. Historically, these community members have been excluded from decision making and policymaking, and that is something that must change,” said Flores, Co-Chair of Clean Power Lake County.  She is also the Lake County Outreach Director for Faith in Place, an organization that empowers people of all faiths to care for the Earth.
Flores, the daughter of immigrant parents, was born and raised in Lake County, Illinois. She first became involved in environmental justice as a student at Bellarmine University in Kentucky, where she saw the devastation of mountaintop removal, a highly destructive mining practice. After graduation, she spent a year as an AmeriCorps volunteer in Appalachia. She then returned to Lake County where she learned about local environmental justice efforts of Clean Power Lake County to ensure the city of Waukegan a just transition away from its decades-old coal-fired plant. Flores has been a lifelong member of the Most Blessed Trinity Parish, and in 2017, she was awarded The Gaudium et Spes Award by The Consejo Hispano Arquidiócesis de Chicago (Archdiocese of Chicago) at the Noche de Gala, an annual dinner recognizing leaders in Hispanic ministry. Flores’s leadership has been recognized nationally, and she was Senator Tammy Duckworth’s guest for the State of the Union in 2020.
Securing a just and sustainable energy transition for all is already challenging, but it will be even more difficult because climate change is due to disproportionally impact environmental justice communities. Climate change is a threat multiplier, meaning it aggravates existing stressors, including pollution, health risks, flooding, droughts, poor infrastructure, and political instability, which unequally affect underserved communities. With the looming threat of climate change, transitioning Lake County to renewables does not necessarily ensure all people benefit equally. Careful government planning and community involvement at the local level is key to remedying current disparities and insuring they do not persist. Clean Power Lake County believes grassroots involvement from environmental justice groups is essential in this process and that government must actively seek these communities’ input. When the Waukegan coal plant is ultimately retired, for example, the plan should include a fair transition for plant workers and the community, so people’s livelihoods do not suffer and residents are not left to clean up residual pollution.
Though the task of creating a just future for all is daunting, it’s important to start with small steps at the community level that ripple into greater impacts and empower people to live healthy, happy lives. Dulce Ortiz (originally from Mexico City, Mexico) helps immigrant families be fully informed and participating members of the community as Co-Chair of Clean Power Lake County and Executive Director of Mano a Mano. Mano a Mano is an agency that serves the growing Lake County immigrant community through health resources and services, educational classes, and immigration legal services. Often, immigrant families struggle to integrate and advocate for themselves because they lack the necessary language skills, information, and connections to navigate the American job market, schools, and complex health system. Ortiz leads the Mano a Mano team in planning and programming community engagement that builds human dignity and teaches people the skills they need to advance their well-being despite prevailing inequalities. She also plays a key role in the development of strategic community partnerships and leads the Mano a Mano’s policy-advocacy agenda. Ortiz is an advocate with a deep understanding of community needs, and she uses her expertise to help immigrant families better integrate into American life. 
All funds raised from the Symposium directly supported Thrive Together, Brushwood Center’s COVID-19 crisis response for a more just and sustainable future. All presentations were available in English and Spanish.
To learn more about the series visit  www.smithnaturesymposium.org.

Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods welcomed speakers Craig Sieben, Kelly Shelton, Jen Walling, and moderator John Wasik to Renewable Energy Surges, the fourth panel in this year’s Smith Nature Symposium.
This roundtable, part of a seven-part live-streamed series on critical environmental issues, explored the future of renewable energy in Illinois and the positive impact a clean energy transition would have on climate change and existing environmental inequities linked to fossil fuel pollution. These top energy consultants, policy leaders, and government officials shared their perspectives on the state of the private and public energy sector, current incentives to transition to renewables, and policy needs as we aim to build a cleaner future for our communities and the planet.

“We are excited about the current enthusiasm and political will behind a renewable energy transition in Illinois. It’s crucial to improve the health of our environment, maintain a robust economy, and ensure all people’s well-being,” expressed Catherine Game, Executive Director of Brushwood Center.

Over his 35-year career in energy efficiency, Craig Sieben has witnessed a significant transformation of the industry to one that increasingly values clean power. Since founding Sieben Energy Associates in 1990, Sieben has guided individuals and organizations in energy resource optimization and now uses his expertise to direct energy strategies at AECOM during this continued period of rapid industry change.

Kelly Shelton, President of Shelton Solutions, Inc., also witnessed this important shift in the sector over her more than 25-year-long career providing energy consulting services to Chicagoland. Shelton Solutions currently provides energy audits and energy modeling on behalf of the State of Illinois, and Shelton’s previous clients include the City of Chicago, Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago Public Schools, and Cook Country. In guiding one of the largest cities, public school networks, and counties in the United States to greater energy efficiency, Shelton demonstrated that simple restructuring of energy portfolios provides a significant return on investment in energy and cost savings for even the most complex of organizations.

Consultants’ work is key to restructuring the energy portfolios of organizations, governments, and businesses from within, but applying external pressure to government is also necessary to push society towards a future powered by renewables. This is precisely what Jen Walling, Executive Director for The Illinois Environmental Council, does as she lobbies government decision makers on environmental issues. Jen has directed The Illinois Environmental Council since 2011 and drafted, negotiated, lobbied, and passed hundreds of bills in Springfield while working to build the power, expertise and relationships of the region’s entire environmental community. Recently, as a steering committee member of the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition, Walling pushed hard for Illinois to ratify the Clean Energy Jobs Act, which aims to put Illinois on a path to 100% renewable energy by 2050, lower energy costs for consumers, and create new job opportunities. This would improve people’s livelihoods across the state and would be particularly positive for communities of color that are often more closely located to coal-fired electricity plants than other portions of the population.

Moderator John Wasik, Commissioner of the Lake County Board, also has a direct role in local government and uses his position as a public servant to advocate for a smaller county carbon footprint and the careful stewardship of community resources. Wasik pushes for greater energy efficiency as Chair of the Forest Preserve’s Planning Committee and Vice Chair of the Lake County Energy and Environment Committee. For Wasik, greening Lake County means preserving it for future generations by protecting the environment, creating good-paying jobs, and lowering government operating expenses. He has authored 18 books, spoken all across North America and contributed to The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and other national publications.

This year’s Smith Nature Symposium is virtual for the first time, which presents an exciting opportunity for Brushwood Center to reach as many people as possible with these timely discussions. Ticket prices are “give what you can” with a free option available for students and those who are unable to donate. The series began on August 13th and culminates in the Smith Nature Symposium Awards Ceremony on Friday, October 9th, with honorees Bill McKibben and Sue Halpern and Masters of Ceremonies Bill Kurtis and Donna La Pietra.
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All funds raised from the Symposium directly supported Thrive Together, Brushwood Center’s COVID-19 crisis response for a more just and sustainable future. All presentations were available in English and Spanish.
To learn more about the series visit  www.smithnaturesymposium.org.

Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods welcomed speakers Elena Grossman, Vidya Venkataramanan, Aaron Feggestad, and moderator Ted Haffner to It’s Raining, It’s Pouring during the Smith Nature Symposium.
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This roundtable, part of a seven-part live-streamed series on critical environmental issues, examined the local implications of climate change in the form of altered ecosystems, more frequent and intense floods, and increased public health threats. These researchers, designers, and strategic planners shared their perspectives and solutions for this defining crisis of our time.

The coronavirus pandemic exposed how economies, health, and futures are inextricably intertwined. The climate crisis – also an all-encompassing, but less tangible threat – will likewise worsen human and environmental health and deepen existing inequalities.
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“This year’s Smith Nature Symposium is all about exploring a more just and sustainable future amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis, two of the greatest global challenges facing our world. These speakers illuminated why nature, health, climate change, and racial equity are all critical parts of the solution,” expressed Catherine Game, Executive Director of Brushwood Center.

Panelist Elena Grossman is the Program Director for BRACE-Illinois (Building Resilience Against Climate Effects), a partnership between the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and the Illinois Department of Public Health. This program, which Grossman develops and designs, is formulated to prepare Illinois for the health effects of climate change. In leading this program, Grossman researches the relationships between climate change and health, creates education and training tools, and facilitates the strategic process for local health departments to address climate change. She also collaborates in developing and writing state reports to share possible solutions to these problems and increase awareness that climate change will disproportionally affect disadvantaged communities.

While Grossman focuses on designing strategic processes that mitigate the effects of climate change on public health, Vidya Venkataramanan (a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Northwestern University) is interested in understanding the flipside of the equation: how communities perceive these interventions and value environmental sustainability programs. Venkataramanan’s research is specifically focused on water sanitation and hygiene programs, and she uses her findings on community engagement and participation to understand how to set sustainability initiatives up for success. She uses qualitative and quantitative methods, particularly drawing on tools from policy and implementation research. Her current research goals are two-fold: understanding community perceptions and impacts of green stormwater management interventions to prevent flooding in Chicago and understanding perceived value of urban green spaces to inform education and outreach for conservation programs.

Green spaces are crucial to mitigating the impacts of climate change, because they provide habitat for local flora and fauna and reduce surrounding temperatures for human and non-human residents in urban areas. Green spaces also provide a connection to nature that people need for good mental and physical health in a rapidly urbanizing world.

Aaron Feggestad, a restoration ecologist at the design and consulting firm, Stantec, has deep knowledge of how restoring natural areas mitigates the effects of change by creating a buffer for plant, wildlife, and human communities. Working from his base in Madison, Wisconsin, he uses his understanding of ecology and project management experience to restore the health of degraded ecosystems, making land hospitable to native flora and fauna and bringing beauty to communities. He sees projects through all phases from planning and design and on-the-ground implementation to natural resource assessments and monitoring. He works with clients to promote resiliency in natural systems and is currently managing several large restoration projects in the Great Lakes Region.

Moderator Ted Haffner, a Climate Fellow and Landscape Architect at Openlands, also approaches climate challenges from a land-based background. Prior to Openlands, Ted served as Senior Associate and Project Manager with Terry Guen Design Associates, a landscape architecture firm specializing in public and institutional landscape design. His deep technical knowledge and project leadership helps Openlands design spaces that are refuges for wildlife and people. When realizing urban green infrastructure projects, Ted takes existing community contexts into account and works innovatively to connect the natural world to the built. As climate change makes the future more uncertain, ecological restoration and landscape design are an increasingly important part of the solution in protecting the health of natural and human communities.

This year’s Smith Nature Symposium is virtual for the first time, which presents an exciting opportunity for Brushwood Center to reach as many people as possible with these timely discussions. Ticket prices are “give what you can” with a free option available for students and those who are unable to donate. The series began on August 13th and culminates in the Smith Nature Symposium Awards Ceremony on Friday, October 9th, with honorees Bill McKibben and Sue Halpern and Masters of Ceremonies Bill Kurtis and Donna La Pietra.
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To learn more about the series visit www.smithnaturesymposium.org.