On May 9, Rape Victim Advocates will honor the leadership of Mary Morten and Sunny Fischer at its 2007 Visionary Awards Gala. The event will be held at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall, 78 E. Washington, 6-9 p.m.
Morten, a 1996 inductee of the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, was the first African-American president of the National Organization for Women’s Chicago chapter. Among her many other accomplishments are chairing the Chicago Abortion Fund, the city’s Advisory Council on Women and Chicago’s Office of Violence Prevention. She is associate director for the Chicago Foundation of Women and is a co-founder of the Coalition for Education on Sexual Orientation, which recently merged with Creating Safe Schools for Illinois to create the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.
Fischer has worked in the areas of philanthropy and domestic violence, starting as an early domestic violence activist in Evanston. She is the executive director of the Richard Driehaus Foundation; was a founding executive director of one of the first private women’s foundations in the country, the Sophia Fund; was the co-founder of the Chicago Foundation for Women; and heads the board of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.
Tickets are $80-$1,000. Contact Kim Mongoven at 312-443-9603, ext. 21, or development@rapevictimadvocates.org.