’85 Caryn Cieplak Stancik

“Empathy. Empathy. Empathy.” Caryn Cieplak Stancik knows very clearly the overarching value she remembers best from Nazareth Academy. It is a quality she recognized, having grown up with a mother and grandmother who were public servants. “Empathy and the desire to make people’s lives better were all around me. Nazareth helped me practice that in a new way. It is where I really learned about helping people in whatever way they were most vulnerable.”

Caryn felt that keenly as a transfer student into Nazareth. “People like Sr. Jackie, Mrs. Gurney and Mr. Michalek were so good to me. I realized right away I was in an environment where people are not just a number or a name in a gradebook. We were treated as individuals, pushed when we needed pushing, but these same people were also our biggest cheerleaders.” Caryn got involved with Campus Ministry and credits Sr. Pat Bergen with helping to open students’ eyes to diversity in all forms. As a Naz parent to Sydney ’15 and Charlie ’17, Caryn and her husband Randy recognized that those same values were still present. Their daughters each succeeded as individuals and were encouraged in multiple ways to go out and make the world a better place.

Caryn has held fast to the values practiced at Nazareth, spending 25 years working for Cook County, the last ten of those as the Chief Communications & Marketing Officer for Cook County Health. She was on the front lines during the pandemic, strategizing ways to inform the public, enrolling the support of physicians and working to keep Cook County’s most vulnerable citizens safe. The work she did on the

“My Shot” public service campaign led to her receiving a PR Top Women in Marketing award and being named a 2023 Chicago Woman of Impact. Her lifetime of continued learning includes Southern Illinois University, University of Illinois Chicago and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has served as the City Treasurer in Countryside, IL and acted as a consultant for both the public and private sectors in her ongoing drive to improve communities. In fact, this year she turned her attention to consulting full time. “The timing felt right. I think I can have a greater impact by working to make more meaningful partnerships, so that public and private entities can pool resources instead of running down parallel tracks toward the same goal.”

As Caryn devotes her skills to this new part of her career, she leans heavily into the same advice she would give to young people today, “Take the time to understand who you are and keep track of that throughout your journey. At the same time, make the effort to understand the people around you. At the heart of every person who is truly successful lies empathy.”