28th Annual H. Woods Bowman Public Service Lecture

DePaul University's School of Public Service welcomes you to join us for our 28th Annual H. Woods Bowman Public Service Lecture featuring Debra Shore, Regional Administrator for U.S. EPA Region 5. This annual lecture serves to honor the memory of SPS Professor H. Woods Bowman (1941 – 2015) and to allow the DePaul community to hear from someone who has made a significant impact on public service. Past keynote speakers have included former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, former Presidential Chief of Staff Bill Daley, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

Light refreshments will be served. Attend the lecture either in person at DePaul's Loop campus or virtually via Zoom.

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Debra Shore is the regional administrator for U.S. EPA Region 5. Her responsibilities include overseeing environmental protection efforts in the Great Lakes states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin, as well as 35 federally recognized tribal nations. One of her roles is manager of EPA’s Great Lakes National Program, in which she leads restoration and protection of the largest freshwater system in the world.

Prior to joining EPA, Shore was an elected member of the Board of Commissioners of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, a $1 billion agency responsible for wastewater treatment and stormwater management for more than five million people. She is a strong advocate for cleaning up the Chicago waterways and for resource recovery, including the reuse of treated water and the generation of renewable energy. Shore is a past chair and board member of the Great Lakes Protection Fund and served as board member and chair of the LGBTQ Victory Institute.

An award-winning author, Shore founded Chicago Wilderness magazine, was a leader in the regional conservation consortium Chicago Wilderness and founded Friends of the Forest Preserves. Shore has been an active habitat restoration volunteer in oak woods and savannas, prairies and wetlands of local forest preserves for more than 25 years.

Shore was born in Chicago. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Goucher College in Baltimore with a degree in philosophy and visual arts. She earned master’s degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Columbia College (Chicago). Shore lives with her spouse, Kathleen Gillespie, in Evanston, Illinois. She has climbed 42 of the 58 mountains in Colorado more than 14,000’ high. Her son, Ben, is an architect in Seattle.

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In a professional career that spanned parts of six decades, Henry Woods Bowman (1941 – 2015) was a professor with DePaul University’s School of Public Service, a former state representative, and Cook County’s chief financial officer. He joined DePaul in 1995 and taught until his retirement in 2012. During his time at DePaul, Bowman drafted the first mission statement of the Management of Public Service program, which would become the School of Public Service in 2008. The School of Public Service named its annual lecture in honor of H. Woods Bowman in 2015.