Cara A. Hendrickson

Executive Director

Cara Hendrickson became Impact for Equity’s Executive Director in 2020. She is a change maker, passionate about using law and policy to tackle systemic inequities. Cara’s role as Executive Director is her second at Impact for Equity; earlier in her career, she was a Skadden Fellow at Impact for Equity, with a focus on housing and education issues.

Prior to becoming Executive Director of Impact for Equity, Cara served as the Chief of the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Interest Division for more than five years.  In that capacity, she supervised a Division with over 60 attorneys and staff who enforce civil rights, disability rights, workplace rights, and antitrust laws, in addition to conducting investigations and cases involving the False Claims Act, consumer fraud, and energy issues. At the Attorney General’s Office, Cara led a team of lawyers and staff that litigated and negotiated a wide-ranging consent decree to reform the Chicago Police Department.

An experienced litigator, Cara’s law practice focused on constitutional and civil rights litigation for more than eight years at Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd. She has also practiced at Massey & Gail, LLP, and Kirkland & Ellis, LLP.

Cara has been a Commissioner on the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission, which promotes ethics in Illinois public service, and she served on the board of the Public Interest Law Initiative and on the advisory board of the American Constitution Society, Chicago Chapter. She was a fellow in the 2014 class of Leadership Greater Chicago.

Cara served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ann Claire Williams, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (Ret). She graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and received her B.A. from Northwestern University.

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