Welcome to our New Board Members

The Festival is pleased to welcome four new board members in 2025. Amber Carpenter, Shellane Quinn Mulcahy, Lauren Streicher and Ruth Williams will attend their first meeting of the Grant Park Orchestral Association on Monday, February 3rd .

The Association board has strategic and fiduciary oversight of the Grant Park Music Festival and is composed of a diverse group of leaders representing Chicago’s corporate, government, legal, nonprofit, and philanthropic communities.

They include: Phillip Acevedo, Amy Boonstra, Penny Brown, Robert J. Buford, Kate Donaldson, Nancy Dehmlow, Hon. Rhoda Sweeney Drucker, Michael S. Ferrell, Eileen Friestad, Adam
Grais (Board Chair), Jerry Goldstone (Treasurer), Freddi L. Greenberg, Tom Hanson, Clinée Hedspeth, Matthew Hinerfeld, Malcolm S. Kamin, Sandra Kamin, Jill Mueller, Julian Oettinger,
Thomas Orlando (Vice-Chair), Eligio Pimentel, Hedy M. Ratner, LaRue Robinson (Secretary), Sheli Z. Rosenberg, Lou Sandoval, Brian Sedlak, Stephen Smith, Ramon T. Stewart, Curtis Tarver II, Maureen Sullivan Taylor, Lisa Tesarik, Andria van der Merwe, David Whitney, Virginia Willcox, and Karen Zupko.

Adam Grais, board chair of the GPOA shared, “We look forward to drawing on the expertise of this group. These respected leaders join our existing board members who are committed to operating the Grant Park Music Festival with integrity and fiscal stability.”

Amber Carpenter

Amber Carpenter is the Senior Legal Counsel for Brand at Ferrara Candy Company, where she specializes in a range of legal areas, including intellectual property, marketing and advertising, and food law. Before joining Ferrara, Amber was an Associate Attorney at several law firms in Chicago, focusing on intellectual property litigation, trademark portfolio management, and patent and trademark prosecution. In January 2024, she was honored with Modern Counsel's 35 Under 35 award, recognizing her as a leading young in-house legal professional and a representative of the next generation of talented lawyers. Amber is active in the community, serving on the boards of the Greater Chicago Legal Clinic, the Black Women Lawyers’ Association Scholarship Board, and the Diverse Attorney Pipeline Program (DAPP). Additionally, she contributes as a Gardeneer for the Gardeneers Pollinator Network, a non-profit dedicated to providing students in food-insecure neighborhoods of Chicago with access to healthy food. A life-long music lover, Amber played French horn throughout elementary and high-school.

Shellane Quinn Mulcahy

Shellane Mulcahy is the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer for Readystate Asset Management, LP, a two-billion-dollar hedge fund based in Chicago, Illinois. She more recently spent 22 years at Citadel Enterprise Americas LLC in various capacities. Shellane and her husband live in the West Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago with her three middle school children.  Shellane’s greatest passion is music. She has played piano since she was 7 and played saxophone since she was 11. She has been singing for Paul French at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church ever since moving to Chicago in 2001. It is so important to Shellane that music be accessible to everyone and she is excited to be given the opportunity to offer up her talents and business connections to the Grant Park Music Festival.

Lauren Streicher, MD

Lauren is a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She is a senior research fellow of the Kinsey Institute of Indiana University and the Medical Director of Patient Education and Community Outreach for Midi Health. She is a bestselling author on women’s reproductive and sexual health and, as an expert on these topics, frequently appears on local and national news programs and in print media. Lauren is a life-long Chicagoan and began attending Grant Park Music Festival concerts with her family as a child. She has even authored an article about her experiences attending concerts as a young person for AARP magazine.

Ruth Williams, MD

Dr. Ruth Williams is a glaucoma consultant and partner at the Wheaton Eye Clinic. As president and chief executive officer for 9 years, she led the clinic through an accelerated growth phase that positioned the clinic as one of the largest and most well-respected ophthalmology groups in the Midwest. This practice provides superb subspecialty eye care through its 6 full-service locations and an ambulatory surgery center, and the expertise of 36 ophthalmologists and 14 optometrists. Dr. Williams served as president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). She is the Chief Medical Editor of EyeNet Magazine and each month writes pithy and widely-read columns about issues important to physicians. Holding leadership positions on multiple professional boards over the years, she is currently the Vice-Chair of Glaucoma Research Foundation. She led the Ophthalmology Section Council of the American Medical Association for nearly a decade and chaired its Surgical and Specialty Section. An Alpha Omega Alpha Honors graduate of Rush Medical College, Dr. Williams completed an ophthalmology residency at California Pacific Medical Center, followed by fellowship training in glaucoma at University of San Francisco, California.  Dr. Williams has three young adult children. She loves to ski, hike, read, and listen to music.