Staff Biographies

JANE M. SAKS, Executive Director
Jane M. Saks is the Founding Executive Director of the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago. The mission of the Institute is to deepen the understanding of and appreciation for how issues related to women, gender, creativity and community shape social policy, culture, history and critical theory through the arts and media. Within this framework, the Institute addresses ideas of access, representation, equity, and participation, as well as race and class, using the arts and media as a means of research, engagement, public education, and advocacy.
 
As a feminist activist, arts administrator, writer and educator Jane’s work has focused on arts and culture, women, gender, race, LGBTQ issues, and political, human rights and social justice movements. She has developed numerous programs, public and private collaborations, and interdisciplinary projects during her career seeing the arts as a tool for social change and an essential human gesture. She has worked with many individual artists, scholars and activists and national and international nonprofit, philanthropic, civic, cultural and community based organizations, NGOs and private and public sector entities. She credits her parents and their civic involvement and deep commitment to social change as a fundamental influence on her life and work. Since childhood she has participated with her family in many political campaigns and civic social justice initiatives. She has served on Advisory Boards and Committees including: Illinois NARAL, Randolph Street Gallery, Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Horizons Community Services, and the City of Chicago Mayor's Design Initiative. She was selected as a 2003/2004 Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow and was a participant in Project 2000 Human Relations Foundation. Currently she serves on Advisory Boards and Committees including: Chicago Foundation for Women (CFW), Radio Diaries of National Public Radio, OUT at Chicago History Museum, Friends of South Africa’s Constitutional Court Architecture and Artworks Programme Committee, African Women’s Development Fund USA Chicago Committee, Human Rights Watch Chicago Committee, Experimental Station and as Co-Chair of the Lesbian Leadership Council at CFW. She has published poetry in literary magazines and as a writer has collaborated with artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle and Jim Hodges. As a visiting lecturer and critic, she has been invited to leading local, national and international educational, arts and cultural institutions. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in New York and studied at the University of Rome focusing on architecture and art history.


SARA SLAWNIK, Program Director
Ms. Slawnik joined the Institute staff in February 2007 as Program Director, bringing five years experience as a development officer for various arts organizations and museums, as well as a considerable interest in visual arts and media that relate to issues of gender and community. Ms. Slawnik was a key member of development teams at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, The Drawing Center in New York, and the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. She also has a background as an Associate Editor at Bedford/St. Martin's publishing house, working in the the Communications and Media textbook division. Ms. Slawnik holds a Bachelor's Degree in the History of Art from the University of Michigan and is an independent artist and writer in her spare time.