The Change-Makers

Alumni Achievement Award

Joshua Deth

Founder, Revolution Brewing
College of Urban and Public Policy MUPP ‘05

For Josh Deth, the practices of brewing beer and urban planning intersect at building community.  

Before he founded Revolution Brewing, Deth earned a master’s degree in urban planning and policy at UIC. Craft brewing was always his passion, but he also had a strong interest in community activism and advocacy work, namely around more connected, less car-centered neighborhoods. He joined the Master of Urban Planning and Policy program and worked with the late Janet Smith, a professor of urban and public policy, to revive an old proposal to turn three miles of abandoned train tracks into a public space that connected Chicago neighborhoods. Smith stressed the importance of directly involving neighbors and community members in any urban planning project. 

“Janet was a great listener of direct constituents and what people want in their neighborhoods,” Deth says.   

For his thesis project, Deth co-founded the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail (FBT), a community-driven association that garnered neighborhood support for the new public greenway and grew to 1,000 members. The FBT held community meetings, centered residents’ voices during the design and development planning and organized clean-up days. Twenty years later, the 606 trail and parks network has become the backbone that connects the Logan Square, Humboldt Park and West Town communities, fostering recreation and connectivity on the northwest side.  

Deth continued brewing beer and dreaming up other ways to bring together Chicagoans. While at UIC, he opened up the Handlebar restaurant, which became a hub for cycling activists and a community staple in Wicker Park. Then, in 2010, he built Revolution Brewing, which helped kickstart the Chicago craft beer movement. 

“I used all my urban planning skills when opening that business,” Deth says. “And I was meeting a need because the community didn’t have enough choices with beer.”       

Revolution’s recently closed brewpub in Logan Square spurred community development along Milwaukee Avenue, and today Revolution is the largest independent craft brewery in Illinois. As an entrepreneur, Deth uses his platform to advocate for local community groups and organizations. He donates the brewery space to host fundraising events for causes such as housing for the homeless, ecological preservation and bike advocacy; mentors upcoming brewers and promotes community-building through home brewing; and helps new small businesses find their footing in the city.

“To create space for community, it’s very important to keep open the pathways in,” Deth says. “Especially if you believe in welcoming people.”

Alumni Achievement Award

Jennifer Rainin

CEO, Kenneth Rainin Foundation
College of Education PhD ’02

Storytelling is at the core of Jen Rainin’s work. For the UIC alumna, stories matter — and whose stories are told matters even more. The plot to her story as a teacher, philanthropist, filmmaker and LGBTQ+ activist is giving voice to those who are not represented in the dominant narrative.

“My personal mission is to build visibility…and positive representation,” She says. “I want to eliminate the shame and injustice that comes from not being able to access knowledge.”

Rainin’s early career as a special education teacher and literacy specialist shaped her passion for storytelling. But the struggles she saw with young children learning how to read led her to UIC’s College of Education. While pursuing her PhD, she worked with the Center for Literacy at UIC, which provides family literacy and adult education services to Chicago’s South and West Side communities. This experience greatly contributed to Rainin’s dissertation research — a better understanding of how to prepare teachers to be more effective early literacy instructors and how to center parents, caregivers and community members in that education.

In the next chapter of her story, the UIC alumna stepped in as the head of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation after her father passed away. With a focus on arts, health and education, the Bay Area-based foundation has launched programs to strengthen early literacy in Oakland, California, and to support early childhood teachers, especially minority educators — providing children with the stories and storytellers that matter to them.

A filmmaker and proponent of the arts, Rainin has also invested in initiatives to uplift artists’ voices. Through the Community Arts Stabilization Trust, the foundation works to secure affordable spaces for artists in the Bay Area, and with the Rainin Filmmaking Grants in partnership with SF Film, the foundation supports independent feature films that address social justice issues.

“I really do see a strong through-line from my work giving young children and their families the ability to read stories, and the foundation work that ensures that educators and artists are set up to tell those stories that need to be told…to give voice to underrepresented groups,” she says.

In her own work as a filmmaker, Rainin champions stories about lesbian, bisexual, queer and transgender culture, bringing LGBTQ+ voices, achievements and struggles into awareness. The Curve Foundation, which Rainin founded with her wife, supports journalists, produces dozens of intersectional and multi-generational events, and is the U.S. host for Lesbian Visibility Week, elevating and celebrating lesbian culture across the country each April.

At a time when LGBTQ+ rights are targeted and diversity, equity and inclusion is being rolled back, Rainin’s storytelling is critically important and demonstrates an embodiment of UIC’s mission to inspire social change. 

Rising Star Leadership Award

Cristina Turino

Chief Plan Officer, CountyCare Health Plan, Cook County Health
School of Public Health MPH/MBA ’16

Unsung heroes are everywhere in the field of health care. They are the under-the-radar individuals who orchestrate meaningful changes to the industry and tirelessly try to improve the system from within. They make sure health care not only works, but works for every person in every community in the best way possible. Cristina Turino is one of those difference makers.

In less than eight years, the UIC School of Public Health and Business Graduate School alumna has become a leader in community health care, rising from project analyst to chief plan officer for Cook County Health. During that time, she has significantly expanded health care access and health equity for the almost 415,000 people who are enrolled in CountyCare, the largest Medicaid health plan in Cook County owned by Cook County Health. She has led initiatives to collect more robust demographic data — race, ethnicity, gender identity, language, pronouns — so that the health plan can better understand and serve their Medicaid members.

“Without good data, you can’t address inequities,” Turino says. She helped develop the FoodCare program, which provides no-cost meals and nutrition information to tackle food insecurity. She also led CountyCare’s implementation to ensure that undocumented individuals have access to essential, quality health care services.

Turino’s passion for more inclusive health care was sparked by her grassroots work in health justice at a nonprofit organization early in her career. There she saw the need for systemic and structural change, which led her to UIC.

“I really wanted to work on the system-level issues to make our health care system better,” she says. “To listen to people and learn from them about what they need.” But systemic change to a system as complex and opaque as health care isn’t easy. It takes research, evidence, listening, problem-solving, teamwork and leadership to make significant changes.

Turino credits UIC with teaching her the skills to make such an impact. When CountyCare introduced a program to cover immigrant adults and seniors, one of the key decisions was whether to charge copayments and cost-sharing. Turino dug into the research on how revenue gains from cost-sharing are often offset by preventive care avoidance, causing an increased use of more expensive services, such as emergency room or inpatient care. Her research led to the decision to waive all out-of-pocket expenses, the only health plan in Illinois to do so.

“It was something I was really proud of,” she says. “And it was skills I gained from UIC — thinking through a complex idea, putting the evidence behind it, and coming to a decision that aligns with our mission for health equity.”

Accomplishments like these represent a huge shift toward more accessible and inclusive health care as well as a hope for a better future — and that is sure not to go unnoticed.

Humanitarian Award

Dr. George Zehak

Dental Director, Heal Elgin
College of Dentistry DDS ’77

Dr. George Zehak knows how important oral health is for overall health. He knows tooth decay is the number one chronic disease for children in the U.S., and one of the most common diseases in our country as a whole. And he knows what a difference a healthy mouth can make in someone’s life. However, Zehak also recognizes that many people do not have access to proper dental care. The reasons are many — money, distance, time — but the reality is there. So, for more than forty years as a practicing dentist, leader and educator, the UIC alum has set out to change that fact.

Zehak’s call to help those in need crystallized while he was a dental student in UIC College of Dentistry. He was a member of the first graduating class to have access to what was, in 1973, a brand-new building with state-of-the-art facilities. Zehak recalls a program introduced in his third year that encouraged students to provide free dental care in underserved neighborhoods around Chicago.

“I don’t think many schools were doing that back in 1976,” he says. “And it was so rewarding. Helping people and making their lives better…that’s really what life is all about.”

After graduating from UIC, Zehak continued that deep-seated desire to care with his own private practice as well as in his leadership roles with the Chicago Dental Society, the Illinois State Dental Society and the American Dental Association. Every day he advocated for more dentists and more dental clinics at local, state and national levels. As chair of the Chicago Dental Society Foundation, the UIC alumnus reviewed and approved grants for more community access to quality oral health care. He recalls feeling proud that the foundation helped triple the capacity for a pediatric dental clinic on Chicago’s West Side. The clinic could now provide services to 10,000 children a year.

“We just threw a piece of sand into Lake Michigan, because there’s really like 40,000 children in need in that location,” he admits. “The need is so great here in the U.S. and we have to inspire people to help.”

Zehak addresses that pressing need through his volunteer work with Heal Elgin. The pop-up clinic provides free dental care to disadvantaged communities, and Zehak notes that patients have driven more than six hours to access the care. He recruits dental students to volunteer at the clinic and regularly returns to UIC to share his experiences and inspire students to live a humanitarian life.

“All we can do is help each other and give back, and I definitely try to instill that in the next generation,” he says.