Vanguard Health System’s 2007 Community Pillar Awardee was Esther Corpuz, Director of Business Development, at MacNeal Hospital.

Annually this corporate honor recognizes outstanding efforts at community outreach and Esther Corpuz’s community ties earned her this honor. She is an executive member of the Board of Directors for Alivio Medical Center, a community-based health center which is responsive and culturally sensitive to many of Chicago’s underserved and vulnerable communities. She co-chairs the American Cancer Society’s Lunchando Contra el Cancer event, the largest Hispanic “prevent event” in Illinois. As Chair of the Spanish Coalition for Jobs, a nationally accredited non-profit education institute, she works to improve the wellbeing of the Hispanic community through job training. In addition she chairs or serves on many other civic and community boards. 

Keith Pitts, Vice Chairman acknowledged that her community ties run deep, opening doors that help solve problems, and underscored her balance in all efforts. “She is a universally respected leader because the work she does and the time she commits is from the heart,” he noted. 

“Because she is a Latina, much of her influence is based in her relationships with the Latino community, however, she exercises fairness and balances her personal, ethnic and political connections in a way that does not land her in one camp to the exclusion of another,” he said. 

“She is one of those people you cannot recruit for and cannot replace.”