Infant Welfare Society welcomes new executive director
John McIlwain said he has wanted to help people since he was young.
"I decided at the age of 12 that I was going to become a minister. The minister at my church put his hand on my head, and he said, 'I won't be surprised if this kid preaches someday,'" McIlwain said.
And he did. But the job behind the pulpit led McIlwain through a circuitous route in his career that serendipitously led him to the Infant Welfare Society. The 59-year-old Oak Park resident started his job Sept. 3 as executive director of Oak Park River Forest Infant Welfare Society.
"John is a values-driven executive leader focused on and experienced in evolving organizations to adapt to changes in their environment" said Suzanna Schrader, president of the OPRF IWS Board of Directors.
McIlwain said commitment to social justice makes him the right person for the job.
"Many of us start with an upper hand, and some of us start in a deficit, and I know that the Infant Welfare Society is one of the social responses to that deficit," he said.
McIlwain said his ministerial skills as a listener will benefit him in this position.
"I think it's important for me to listen to hear what has been done, hear what has been successful, hear what the staff says needs to change," he said.
McIlwain said he has clear goals as executive director, including increasing the usage of the clinic, strengthening the brand and building a more sustainable business model.
"The infant Welfare Society has been one of the one of the not-for-profit organizations that embodies the persona of Oak Park — an incredibly caring, giving a community that in general has a higher level of disposable income in general population, and really does care about using those resources in a way to make society better," McIlwain said.
Growing up, McIlwain saw the church as a way to help people as well.
"What drove me to become ordained was the civil rights movement," McIlwain said. "I'm too young to have marched, but while I was developing into a more cognizant member of society, reading newspapers, and watching TV, I began to really believe that the world is unfair, and that there were certain segments of society that were just not given a fair shot."
He said he committed to trying to right those wrongs, and saw the church as an institution that had the ability to do that.
After growing up in Margate City, a small community just five miles from Atlantic City, McIlwain moved to Chicago in 1987, craving a big-city environment.
After 5 years in the city, McIlwain moved to Berwyn, where his wife grew up.
There, he became a pastor at the First Congregational Church of Berwyn.
"The first thing I did when I got to my church in Berwyn was build a community-wide movement that gave birth to a human rights ordinance for the city of Berwyn," he said. This was after the Campbell family, who were Black and Jamaican, were pushed out of Berwyn because of their race.
The church asked McIlwain how they can fight against racism in Berwyn, and from there, the human rights ordinance for Berwyn was born.
After serving many years as a minister, McIlwain said he needed more consistent hours and decided to get into commercial real estate. Then in 2007, the economy collapsed, and McIlwain had to start fresh.
"I was afforded the opportunity to figure out what I really want to do," he said.
He combined his career in social justice and philanthropy with his transactional experience in commercial real estate, and decided to try his hand at fundraising, becoming the head fundraiser for a Hillside nonprofit called Aspire.
There, McIlwain transformed Aspire to be what it is today.
"Aspire used to be called Proviso Association of Retarded Council. Not great. So that had to change. And before I got there, if you were to ask anybody on staff what Aspire does, they would have said, 'We take care of those poor people that can't take care of themselves.' The executive director and I both knew that that had to change, that that's not forward thinking," he said.
He helped move the organization toward a more progressive goal of creating a community where people of all abilities live, learn and grow together.
He then worked for Equal Hope, a health equity advocacy organization connected to Rush University. There, he worked on the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force, an entity that studied why Black women are more likely to die from breast cancer, and attempted to correct it.
Today, McIlwain is looking for his next challenge at IWS.
"I was looking for somewhere I can continue to learn, and continue to develop as a leader," he said.
