Joyce O'Keefe AM 1992

For O'Keefe, Public Life Preceded Public Policy Degree

As deputy director of the Chicago-based conservation group Openlands Project, Joyce O'Keefe, AM 1992, has been able to combine her love of policy and her concern for the environment.

"My interest in working at Openlands stemmed from my interest in land use," she said.

O'Keefe spent over twenty years in public life before pursuing her master's degree at the Harris School. She worked as a contract public policy writer and lobbyist; volunteered for the League of Women Voters, serving as criminal justice chair, local president, and state board member; and spent a decade on the city council in Highland Park, ending in 1994.

"It made sense to take what I had learned ad-hoc in policy and to be able to look at it in a more analytical and systematic way," she said of her decision to enroll at Harris.

O'Keefe's began as policy director for Openlands upon graduating Harris, added the title of associate director in 1994 and was promoted to deputy director this year. Her new role will emphasize finding synergies among Openlands' departments, which focus respectively on greenways and trails, urban greening and open space planning, legislative action and policy analysis, and land acquisition.

"I feel like there's a real opportunity here, having a policy background, to be able to see how the use of policy tools can add strength to the other programs. We've never done that in a truly systematic way," she said.

O'Keefe initially discovered Openlands in part through its work in protecting Fort Sheridan, an Army base near Highland Park that was selected for closure in 1988 and officially ceased operations on May 28, 1993. "When I ran for the [city] council the second time, I thought the most important issue facing the city was what happened to Fort Sheridan," she said.

Openlands had foreseen the conservation opportunity when the base closed and had spent time before the closure organizing local residents, "historic preservation interests, environmental interests, you name it. They really developed a vision for protecting Fort Sheridan. I was drawn to Openlands because they showed so much leadership on that issue."

Partly as a result of O'Keefe's work after she began at Openlands, of the 714 acres on the former base, 250 acres were transferred at no cost to the Lake County Forest Preserve District and 94 structures within the National Historic Landmark District were preserved.

O'Keefe has worked on many projects during her tenure at Openlands, including helping to pass state legislation that increases the incentives for property owners to place conservation easements on their properties, which protects the land and prevents future development and a joint study with Chicago's Metropolitan Planning Council of the relationship between development practices and water usage in the greater Chicago area. That will lead to recommendations for preserving the region's water resources.

"Although our focus is conservation, we've always been interested in and committed to how the preservation of natural resources improves the quality of life for people in the region," she said.

Ed Finkel