Julie Cellini

Julie Cellini is a free-lance journalist and works on special projects for her family-owned real estate company headquartered in Chicago.

She is a trustee for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and the Secretary of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum Foundation. She is on the board of the Hope Institute for Children and Families(a private, not-for-profit residential home, school and treatment center in Springfield, IL and Chicago serving children with multiple disabilities and their families since 1957).^[1] She is also on the board of the Memorial Medical Center Foundation and the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Task Force (appointed by the President of the United States on the recommendation of the Governor of Illinois).^[2] She was one of three people who received honorary doctorates at the Illinois College 172nd commencement in 2006.^[3] She serves on the board of St. Patrick Catholic Academy and Downtown Springfield Inc. and is a member of the Advisory Council for the Community Foundation of the Land of Lincoln and its Women for Women initiative. She serves as vice president of The New Frontier Companies in Chicago.

Cited as a driving force behind the establishment of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, a $150 million project that has drawn over two million visitors since its opening,^[4] she was nominated on several occasions for the Springfield, Illinois First Citizen Award by people who say there wouldn't be an Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library in Springfield without her.^[5]

She is a former reporter who has been active in historical cultural preservation in central Illinois for the past 30 years. In the 1960s, while covering the political news beat, Cellini met then married city councilor William F. Cellini.

As a result of her interest in state history and in Abraham Lincoln, the Illinois governor appointed her as a trustee, then chair, of the Illinois State Historical Library and its extensive Lincoln collection in 1981. In 1985, she became chairman of the board for the Library's successor organization, the Illinois State Historical Preservation Agency. Her committee to develop a more suitable home for the collection resulted in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM).^[6]

References