Thank you to all who attended the Distinctive Schools Gala!

If you were unable to attend, you can still make a donation to Distinctive Schools! Your support will help to close the opportunity gap and provide the students of Distinctive Schools access to innovative, engaging educational opportunities.

Thank you to our featured speaker,  Phyllis Lockett, CEO of Leap Innovations! 

​Phyllis has been a partner and advocate for Distinctive Schools. Her work has made a tremendous impact on the innovative, culture-focused energy for education in Chicago. 
The 2019 Distinctive Schools Gala took place on November 14, 2019, but there is still time to support! Make a donation!
Check out some photos from last year's Gala – we can't wait to share photos from this year's event! Coming soon!
​Through ongoing, meaningful collaboration at every level, we build and sustain a safe, rigorous, nurturing learning community with high expectations and impressive outcomes for children and adults alike. Distinctive Schools believes that communities can be transformed by the presence of an excellent school. The Distinctive Citizen Award was established to honor a role-modeling civic leader who exemplifies a high standard for the following criteria:
  • The betterment of an existing program or has created a new program, as well as activities, that have been made visible and have created positive results in our school and public communities.
  • Contributions to industries outside of education that have had a substantial impact on the vision and transformation of our school communities may be considered for this award.
  • Served as a role model within our communities, and exuding an overall positive and “Distinctive”​ approach.

DIANA RAUNER | 2019 Distinctive Citizen Honoree

Diana Mendley Rauner, Ph. D., learned early from her parents the importance of participating in the community. As a young adult, Diana spent time volunteering at a settlement house in New York to help teach ex-offenders to read. After witnessing
the education inequities in our country first-hand, she realized this was an issue she wanted to focus on long term. Today, Diana serves as President of the Ounce of Prevention Fund, based in Chicago, with impact across the country.
The Ounce is a public-private partnership that provides and advocates for the highest-quality care and education for children in poverty from birth to age five. With an operating budget of approximately $74 million, the Ounce develops direct center-based and home-based programs and services to children and families, provides professional development tools and trainings to scale best practices within the field, innovates new solutions for continuous quality improvement, and advocates for effective public policies and funding.
The Ounce is the parent organization of the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy and communications effort focused on Washington, DC. In partnership with the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, the Ounce has built the Educare Learning Network from one school on the south side of Chicago to a national network of 25 schools.
Diana joined the Ounce staff in 2007 and was appointed president in January 2011, having previously served as an Ounce board member. Prior to joining the Ounce, Diana was a Senior Research Associate at Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago and an associate at private equity firms in San Francisco and Chicago.
Diana holds a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Chicago, an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from Yale University. She and her husband, Bruce, are the proud parents of six children and grandparents of Ella, aged one.

RON HUBERMAN | 2019 Distinctive Citizen Committee Chair

​After nearly two decades of public service for the city of Chicago, including CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Ron Huberman joined the private sector in 2011 and co-founded TeacherMatch® — an Advanced Education Talent Management company in the K-12 education technology space that utilizes predictive analytics to assess and rank teacher candidates on the likelihood of their ability to deliver measurable student growth.  This revolutionary new hiring tool is now being used throughout the U.S. as well as in Canada and China.
While serving as CEO/Superintendent of the third largest school system in the country with over 675 schools and more than 400,000 students, Ron instituted sweeping reforms including online assessment of all students, innovative accountability measures, and a first-of-its-kind student safety plan. Additionally, he met regularly with educational experts to develop a set of strategic priorities — among them advancing teacher recruitment and retention, updating school security, cutting fat from the district’s nearly $6 billion budget, and transferring available resources to local schools. On January 13, 2011, the Chicago City Council approved a resolution honoring Huberman for his service — praising him as “a dynamic leader who has demonstrated a widely admired commitment to improving the city’s public school system,” and stating that his “hard work, sacrifice and dedication serve as an example to all.”
Ron received a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned a Master of Social Work and M.B.A. from the University of Chicago — where he was both a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and an Albert Schweitzer Fellow. In 2009, Huberman was honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award by the prestigious Booth Graduate School of Business/University of Chicago.