Chicago, IL – February 10, 2009 – The Chicago Christian Industrial League (CCIL) is announcing that Rick Roberts, a former Executive Director, has been engaged as Senior Director of Strategy and Communications effective immediately.

CCIL has provided support to individuals and families affected by poverty and homelessness for 100 years.  Through its comprehensive programs and services, CCIL empowers people to transform their lives and become successful members of the community.  CCIL’s unrivaled curriculum, with emphasis on employment readiness, allows clients to build life skills and financial security with a track record of successfully changing lives.

Rick Roberts has had broad experience with CCIL in the 1990s.  He brings added expertise for improving financial support for the organization and has a keen knowledge of engendering private-public partnerships in problem solving in the not-for-profit arena.  Roberts will also be concentrating on spearheading CCIL’s Centennial Celebration with the goal of increasing private funding and strengthening relationships with government agencies for financial support.  He will help expand the mission of the agency at this time of heightened need.

While Executive Director, Roberts was honored as a Chicago Sun-Times ‘Person of the Year’.  After leaving CCIL he opened a successful consulting business that focused on the not-for-profit sector and a separate Emmy award-winning video/film production component, operating both under the moniker Horizons Communications Group.  Roberts will suspend his consulting work while engaged at CCIL, but will still be involved on a limited basis with ongoing production projects.

CCIL Board President Bill Good said, “We are very pleased Rick has agreed to put much of his business on hold to assist us during these trying times.”

CCIL was founded in 1909 by Reverend George Kilbey, a Presbyterian minister, to help men who were down and out.  The mission and facilities have since evolved.  From a humble start in a rented warehouse with two bottomless chairs and a table, CCIL now resides in a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly facility located in Chicago’s North Lawndale community at 2750 W. Roosevelt Road.  CCIL has grown to a full-service organization providing the tools people need to achieve self-sufficiency and rebuild their lives through a healing curriculum and a strong commitment to restoring lives.

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