“Every person counts. Disabilities are not definitional of personhood,” said Mary Milano, J.D. ’78, who serves as the executive director of the Illinois Guardianship and Advocacy Commission (GAC).
While these words may seem obvious to many, too often our society comes up short in practice. In her role, Milano works tirelessly to help provide legal representation, investigate complaints of rights violations and provide state guardianship for Illinois’ population with disabilities.
“The commission has given voice to those who have previously gone unheard,” she said. “Much of what I do is what any executive director of any agency would do. I plan, oversee, evaluate and try to be nimble enough to manage change.”
Created in 1979, the Illinois GAC protects the rights and promotes the welfare of persons with disabilities. A board of eleven commissioners serve without compensation and govern the agency. Although most people know the commission for its Office of the State Guardian, which is the largest public guardianship agency of its kind in the United States, serving nearly 5,300 adult disabled wards, it also represents people in mental health and special education proceedings and works for alternative mental health treatment models.
Milano says that GAC involves community members across the state in examining and resolving cases of violation of human rights by providers of services, with a view toward both individual resolution and systemic change. The commission is also active in developing and promoting legislation in the disability rights area, most recently getting the concept of supported decision-making signed into Illinois law for the first time, providing an alternative to guardianship for many individuals.
“The people we serve, largely those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, those with mental illness, and, in some cases, other incapacitating or debilitating conditions, are highly vulnerable and often invisible to the rest of society,” Milano said. “In the past, they have often been cut off and dehumanized, not infrequently by the laws that supposedly protect them. I see our mission as being one which empowers to the greatest extent possible, supports wherever needed, and advances the recognition of the gifts and purposefulness of every person as integral to our society through our work.”
Milano’s path to becoming an attorney and working in advocacy was never a straight line. Growing up, she lived on the northwest side of Chicago, in a neighborhood with Italian-American families like her own. She attended Mundelein College, which later was absorbed by Loyola University, as a theology major and ended up taking Hebrew courses at Sports College of Judaica, where she was able to spend a couple of summers in Jerusalem.
“I had a great scholarship, which allowed me to take any courses I wanted, just no pre-requisites,” she said. “Because I read fanatically, my advisors did not think I would be imbalanced by taking a load of theology and philosophy. I did Advanced Hebrew in Jerusalem and also at McCormick Theological Seminary, where I also studied New Testament Greek.”
Milano took enough classes for a minor at Columbia College and managed to finish her bachelor’s in three years, earning a Danforth Fellowship, which, at the time, was a highly competitive four-year ride to a promising future university faculty.
“I decided to go to McCormick to continue mixing ministry and theology,” she said. “In those days, McCormick was known as the seminary to go to if you wanted to do Old Testament languages and exegesis at the same time as social justice. A year in that combination, and I was hooked on adding law, thinking about how to interpret and move in both the church and the world toward the kind of just society that the prophets proclaimed.”
In the 1970s, NIU’s law school was brand-new and the only place Milano could find that supported her pursuit of a double degree—a juris doctorate and a master’s in divinity—from two different institutions at the same time. After earning her J.D., Milano’s first legal job was in the corporate and securities practice of Baker & McKenzie, where she became a specialist in foreign investment in U.S. real estate.
“This was not exactly what I had imagined in terms of becoming a social justice warrior,” she said with a laugh. “As it turned out, however, the rigor of the practice and its standards and the exposure to culture and norms in so many countries with such a diverse and demanding client base provided a foundation for thought and approach that was unbeatable.”
While there, Milano ended up becoming involved in a number of causes that revolved around displacement of communities of color, housing justice and similar issues, as well as a variety of American Bar Association activities, teaching and writing for Continued Legal Education.
Because Milano always planned on teaching, she then took a position in the graduate program in pastoral theology at Saint Mary of the Woods College, where she finished her doctorate, became a full professor and chair and started the ordination process in the Episcopal Church. She became the first Episcopal clergy person formally called to the churchwide offices of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. There, she served as the director for hunger education in the World Hunger program before moving to the then-administration of the State of Illinois, spending a brief amount of time at the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority and overseeing federal grants.
Today, in her role, Milano fully brings her two vocations—being a lawyer and being a priest—together in ways she never imagined. Looking back at her long career and continued education, the lessons learned at NIU have remained with her.
“(NIU) is a particular kind of incubator that I think is very unique,” she said. “Its students and faculty have always been marked by commitment to their dreams and visions for themselves and for society and for the profession. Many came from and still come from less traditional backgrounds. They work harder, and I think dream bigger and, most importantly, dream together. And so NIU inspires for so many reasons. It inspires us to become more. And, in turn, to help those who follow to become more.”
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