14 CHICAGO | SEPTEMBER 2019
PHOTOGRAPHY: (JACKSON) BRIAN SORG; (SMITH) COURTESY OF BRYAN SMITH; (GREEN RIVER) EMILY JOHNSON; (BONET) HEATHER BAIGELMANFROM THE EDITOR INSIDE PEEK
FOR HIS IN-DEPTH STORY ON UCHICAGO
Medicine’s historic twin triple trans-
plants (page 78), Chicago senior writer
Bryan Smith sat in on a heart surgery
there. “There were three big circular
white lights shining down, and there
w a sn’t a ny t h i n g w it h i n 10 or 15 fee t of t he
operating table. It was really like being
in a spotlight,” he says. “But it struck me
just how calmly and undramatically the
surgeon and his team dealt with things.
It wasn’t like on TV.”Chicago Med
To create the image
that opens our
Green River tribute
(page 86), photog-
rapher Jason Little
attached a tube to a
bike pump and dep-
uty design director
Emily Johnson shot
the soda through an
open-bottom bottle.
“It hit the ceiling,”
Johnson says.Though Clarissa
Bonet had never
done a magazine
fashion shoot (page
102), it wasn’t “too
far of a jump,” she
says. The fine art
photographer often
positions models
around carefully
scouted locations
to achieve her pre-
cise vision.L
AST FALL, I HEARD FROM A FRIEND ON THE WEST COAST I
hadn’t seen in a few years. Sarah Zapp runs an organization
called Beyond Board that aims to increase diversity — and the
number of women — in leadership capacities. She wanted meto attend a networking event she was setting up in Chicago.
When I arrived, I found myself seated at the same table as Janice
Jackson, the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, who had been in her posi-
tion for less than a year at that point. We got to talking about the issues
surrounding her job, from the teachers’ union’s demands to the ongoing
debate over the role of charter schools. I found her to be open, engaging,
and smart.
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked what a new mayor might
mean for her; only a few weeks earlier, Rahm Emanuel had announced he
wouldn’t seek another term. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said firmly;
she had a lot more work to do.
As the months passed and it became clear our next mayor would be
Lori Lightfoot, who had publicly criticized Jackson for what she saw as
CPS’s inadequate response to a sexual misconduct scandal, I wondered if
Jackson would ever get the chance to execute her ambitious plan to make
over the city’s public schools.
A s you’l l see in Ma rcia F roel ke Cobu r n’s profi le ( pa ge 9 0), Jack son ma n-
aged to win Lightfoot’s confidence and now has an opportunity to see her
vision through. I think by putting us in the same room, my friend Sarah
accomplished a small part of what she had set out to do, too.
Susanna Homan
Editor in Chief and PublisherWoman on the Verge
Janice Jackson