“Hope, Resilience & Rugs”

Lake
Forest resident Connie Duckworth, 2012 recipient of the UNICEF Chicago
Humanitarian Award who also was honored as Woman Extraordinaire by the Chicago International
Women Associates that same year, delivers the third program in “The Resilient Woman
Speaker Series” at Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart, 760 East Westleigh
Road, Lake Forest, on Thursday, Feb. 20, at 10:30 a.m.

Her
presentation, “Hope, Resilience and Rugs: an Innovative Enterprise and Afghan
Women,” is open to the public free of charge. The title reflects on ARZU Inc., which
was founded in 2004 by Duckworth who serves pro bono as its chairman/CEO. ARZU,
which means “hope” in Dari, helps Afghan women weavers and their families break the cycle of poverty by
providing them steady income and access to education and health care by selling
the exquisite hand-knotted rugs they weave at home. ARZU operates as a
“for-benefit” corporation, using private sector practices to create jobs in
desperately poor rural villages where little opportunity exists.

Duckworth is currently a trustee
of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and a director of Russell
Investment Group and Steelcase Inc. She serves on the boards of The Wharton
School in Philadelphia, the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago and NorthShore
University HealthSystem, in Evanston, Ill., where Duckworth was the first woman
to be named chairman of the board.

She also is a member of the
U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council, a public/private partnership aligned with the U.S.
State Department and past chair of the Committee of 200, the organization of
leading women entrepreneurs and corporate business executives in the U.S. In
addition, Duckworth co-authored a primer on entrepreneurship titled “The Old
Girls Network: Insider Advice for Women Building Businesses in a Man’s World.”

The theme
for the current school year at Woodlands Academy is The Resilient Sacred Heart
Woman. Graduating women of courage, confidence and compassion is Woodlands
Academy’s four-year goal.

For more
information, visit www.woodlandsacademy.org.

                                      ###

Founded in 1858, Woodlands Academy is an independent
Catholic college preparatory day and boarding high school for young women, and
part of a worldwide network of Sacred Heart Schools that spans 19 cities in the
United States and 44 countries around the world.  A nonprofit, Woodlands
Academy’s identity is rooted in Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat’s desire to
inspire young hearts and minds to excel, to lead lives of integrity and to
serve.  For more information about Woodlands Academy, please visit www.woodlandsacademy.org