Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 154

Chicago Voices CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY Chicago's the place to work on the other family business 've wanted to work at the Merchandise Mart from the time I was a little boy growing up in Virginia as the eighth of Robert and Ethel Kennedy's 11 children. I was a bossy child, and all my brothers and sisters believed that this family business guards didn't want us around. They would be- better for me than our told us to "move on" and meant it. other one. Love brought me back here three Even so, I tried to visit the Mart years later.

Sheila Berner, a Winnetonly once before I moved to Chicago. ka girl I had met at Boston College, In the summer of '83, my little broth- negotiated the move. She was ready er Max and then 17 and 19 respec- to graduate and go on to Northwesttively, were driving cross-country, ern University's law school when we and we decided to camp on Wolf knew we were in love. But she Point, next to the Apparel Center agreed to stay in Boston another year near the Chicago River. But security if I agreed to live in Chicago once I got my political science degree.

Christopher Kennedy is the vice pres- We were married Aug. 15, 1986, at ident of marketing for Merchandise Winnetka's Sacred Heart Church on Mart Properties, which manages the hottest, wettest weekend the Merchandise Mart and the Ap- Chicagoans could recall. It was so parel Center in Chicago and the wet that O'Hare was surrounded by Washington Design Center in Wash- a moat and had to be closed. My ington, D.C. The Mart was pur- family took a press helicopter from chased by Kennedy's grandfather, Terminal 1 to Rosemont, where they Ambassador Joseph P.

Kennedy, from got in taxis to get to Winnetka. the Marshall Field family in 1945. Archer Daniels Midland was my The look is gutsy. Beautiful. Timeless.

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(3 min. east of 53 expressway) 520-5252 10-9; 10-5; Sun 12-5 8 CHICAGO TRIBUNE MAGAZINE "For me, there's no better place to be than the Merchandise Mart. It's so involved with the City of employer then. First, I was their runner on the floor of the Mercantile Exchange, and then I sold their meal, beans and bean oil throughout Illinois. I have the dubious distinction of being the only runner I know who has been fined for speeding.

A Board of Trade floor guard saw me sprinting towards the live-hogs pit and gave me a ticket saying, "Runners can't run." I still don't know why we weren't called "walkers." A few months later, I took an entry-level position in the Merchandise Mart's convention department and, off the bat, collided with authority. I had been moving chairs and tables around to set up audio equipment, just doing what I was told and oblivious to union rules. Soon union people stopped me. It turned out that moving furniture was their work. My four-year basic training at the Mart familiarized me with all its departments and all its jobs large and small.

I walked around construction sites checking completed parts of projects off punch lists. I sold wholesale showroom space in the leasing department and worked on promotions in market research and strategic planning with Joe Hakim, president of marketing, to whom I now report as his vice president. At the same time, I went to the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University to get an MBA and discovered one of the best-kept secrets in Chicago. Kellogg is not only ranked No.

1 in the country for its business courses but for the cross section of pupils it attracts. They're not the average money-grubbing MBA; they're some of the great lefties of my generation. As many students in my classes went to work for hospitals, notfor-profits and community-minded organizations as went to Wall Street. The emphasis on not-for-profit management is true in both of the (Continued on page 10) We've got you surrounded! Here between the Lake, the Loop and the Magnificent Mile, Chicago surrounds you with Chicago's best. Chicago the best views to the best weekends! For information please call us at S'weekend (312) 565-0565 From or Toll Free at (800) 654-7263.

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