Ranney Family Fund: Dedicated to Public Interest
Alison P. Ranney, JD/MBA '96, recalls that during her first days at the Law School she seemed to be one of the first students called on by her professors. Given the Ranney family tradition at the University of Chicago, and in particular the Law School, that must not have come as a surprise.
Quite a tradition it is. Her father, George A. Ranney, Jr., graduated from the Law School in 1966, having served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Her grandfather, George A. Ranney, Sr., though not a graduate of the Law School, served several terms on the Visiting Committee and was a close friend of such fabled Law School figures as Edward Levi and Bernard Meltzer. Both George Ranneys served for many years as Trustees of the University.
Since the 1950s, there has not been a decade when a member of the Ranney family did not serve on the Law School's Visiting Committee. There also seems not to have been a moment in all those decades when a Ranney family member has not been working hard to improve the vital institutions of civic life in Chicago and beyond.
In furtherance of the family's heritage and values, George and his daughter Alison have established the Ranney Family Fund, which will be used for stipends, loan forgiveness, and other support for students and graduates who pursue careers or summer employment dedicated to the public interest. "The more that we can help some Law School graduates to put their superb educations to work in the public interest, the better off we all will be," noted George Ranney.
George currently heads Chicago Metropolis 2020, which works to ensure the region's long-term competitiveness in the global economy. He is also Senior Counsel at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, which he joined after law school and where he was a partner for many years. For much of his career he worked in senior executive capacities at Inland Steel Industries. Ranney and his family, including Alison, are founders of Prairie Crossing, the nationally acclaimed Conservation Community located outside Chicago.
Public service has been a driving force throughout Ranney's career. He has been appointed to vital state positions and commissions by four Illinois governors, including serving as the Deputy Director of the Bureau of the Budget for Governor Richard Oglivie. The twelve directorships and trusteeships Ranney has held include service to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Metropolitan Planning Council, Voices for Illinois Children, the Conservation Fund, and the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute. He has taught law and public policy at the Law School and the Harris School of Public Policy and has served on the Visiting Committee of both schools.
Growing up in her family's Hyde Park home, Alison Ranney came to know many Law School faculty members as family friends, even babysitting some of their children. Alison attended Brown University, from which she graduated magna cum laude in 1991, and taught school in Guatemala. For years, she had known she wanted to go to the University of Chicago for a joint law and business degree. "I felt Chicago was where I would find my ultimate intellectual challenge," she said. At the Law School, while also earning an MBA, she founded the still thriving Women's Mentoring Program that pairs women law students with women alumnae.
Today Alison is an executive search consultant at Russell Reynolds Associates in Chicago, after starting her career at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom followed by executive roles in business. Already the family's service tradition is showing: she serves on the Board of Directors of Chicago Public Radio and she just completed her first, but surely not her last, term on the Visiting Committee. Married to Erik G. Birkerts, MBA '96, she has two children, Ryerson and Dagny.