
Archbishop Blase J. Cupich, Pat and Shirley Ryan and Dr. Joanne C. Smith, president and CEO of Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. (Photos courtesy of RIC)
Need inspiration to lean in and embrace your faith, intellect, gifts and power to create impact? Please get to know Shirley Ryan. Other-centered, eloquent and determined, she is a social entrepreneur extraordinaire, whose strategic and values-driven work to create opportunities that lift up others was honored yesterday at a ceremony celebrating the integration of two groundbreaking organizations. Thanks to a record gift from Ryan and her husband Pat, Pathways — a leading nonprofit research and rehabilitation center for children struggling with developmental delays founded by the Ryans decades ago — will join best-in-class Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago’s (RIC) state-of-the-art research hospital, AbilityLab, with the new institution renamed in Ryan’s honor — “Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.”