Joan Edmonds Brophy

Joan Edmonds Brophy, who died in 2000 at age 55, was a determined powerhouse who inspired those who knew her. Combining personal charisma and intelligence with drive, energy, and tenacity, Joan used her impressive talents to fight to correct wrongs. An employee benefits activist and then lawyer, she was inducted into the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel as an In Memoriam Fellow in 2002.

Joan graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1966 and then received a master’s degree from Boston College. In her first career, she was a high school history teacher in Wellesley, MA and a reading teacher in the public schools in Washington, DC before moving to Chicago in 1969. In Chicago, Joan taught at Kenwood High School. In 1971, Joan was one of five founders of the Illinois Democratic Women's Caucus (which later became known as “Illinois Democratic Women”).

When a fellow teacher at Kenwood High School was murdered by the teacher’s ex-husband, who committed suicide, Joan was outraged to find that the couple’s two orphaned children could not receive survivor benefits because they had been in their mother's custody, a different outcome than if they had been in a father’s custody. Joan found the children a lawyer to allege illegal gender discrimination under the state constitution.

Although the state legislature eventually passed laws providing survivor benefits to all female employees of Chicago Public Schools, Joan thought the benefits should be extended to all women in the state. At age 30, she signed up for night school at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago. "That drove her to law school, so she wouldn't have to wait calmly on the sidelines while somebody else did or didn't do what they're supposed to do," said her husband.

Joan was a Lead Articles Editor of the law review and, in 1977, finished DePaul's four-year J.D. night program one year early. She continued her education and received her LL.M. in taxation in 1980 from DePaul, graduating 10 days before the birth of her sixth child.

She became a member of the Illinois Bar in 1977, and worked at a small law firm and then at McDermott, Will and Emery in Chicago. She was hired at Mayer, Brown & Platt in Chicago in 1987, where she worked as a Partner for the last years of her life. A colleague at Mayer, Brown & Platt recalled that Joan gave general benefits advice, but was particularly active and appreciated for her work in the employee benefits merger and acquisition area for the firm in Chicago and for its New York and other offices.

She spoke on employee benefits at the Illinois State Bar Association Law Ed Series. She co-founded the Chicago Chapter of WEB (originally known as Women in Employee Benefits, WEB expanded its membership and changed its name several times). In 1999-2000, Joan was an officer in the Chicago Chapter of WEB (known at that time as the WEB Network of Benefits Professionals).

A friend who met Joan in law school recalled that Joan’s clients adored her — she gave them more than a Code section or a clever solution for the chess puzzle of employee benefits law. Likewise Joan was loved by her colleagues at Mayer Brown. Her warmth, kindness, and phenomenal sense of humor engendered loyalty and affection among all who knew her. Joan made everyone believe that they were important and that what they did mattered. Joan had the gift of empathy and a generosity of spirit that was unmatched. One friend described her as “unstoppable.” She was an incredible person and a force of nature long remembered by friends and colleagues.


Sources include: Chicago Tribune 8/29/2000
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-08-29-0008290053-story.html

Photo Source: The Decade Book, American College of Employee Benefits Counsel 2000-2010