Erie Neighborhood House

In Chicago, Erie Neighborhood House, a 155-year-old nonprofit, helps immigrants and low-income individuals and families navigate the legal and social challenges they face.

The nonprofit provides immigration legal assistance alongside mental health counseling, English-language classes and early childhood education. In 2025, Erie House added more attorneys to its in-house legal team to keep pace with an increase in deportation and asylum cases. 

“We’re in a time where folks really need to know their rights,” said Cristina De La Rosa, the organization’s executive director. “We want to make sure we’re creating access to these services so we can empower our community.”

De La Rosa said the work reflects a mission that has remained largely unchanged since the nonprofit’s founding more than a century ago.

Then and Now

Erie Neighborhood House started as a settlement house in 1870, offering immigrants a place to live as they established themselves in the city. Staff members lived on site and helped newcomers, mostly from Eastern Europe, learn English and understand their rights as citizens.

“From the beginning, the goal was to support the community,” said De La Rosa, who works in an office that once served as the headmistress’s room. “There was a big movement to protect civil rights and the right to be here in the United States. We’re carrying on that tradition, and we haven’t strayed from that mission.”

Today, Erie House serves about 13,000 people each year, with a $13 million annual budget and a staff of 160. While the population it supports has shifted to primarily Latin American immigrants, the organization’s focus remains the same.

The nonprofit assists immigrants through adult education and English-language classes, workforce training, mental health and legal services. Families also benefit from early childhood classes, after-school programs for children ages 5 to 12 and full-day summer programs. One sign of success: All seniors in the youth programs graduate from high school, and 98 percent continue on to college.

Stronger Board, Stronger Mission

While Erie House leaders focus on day-to-day operations, a long-standing partnership through Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business has helped strengthen governance. Called the Golub Capital Board Fellows program, MBA students are placed on the boards of local nonprofits, where they complete a strategic project for their organization.

“We look at the Board Fellows program as an opportunity to think about how we can strengthen our governance, how we can engage our board better -- and to have somebody dedicated to certain projects that we dream about doing but don’t always have the capacity to do ourselves,” De La Rosa said.

Building Better Practices for New Members

Early in his fellowship, it became clear to Mark Meyers, MBA ’25, that Erie House did not have a formal onboarding process for board members. Many new directors had never served on a board, yet they received little guidance beyond a basic description of the organization’s history and programs. Recruiting board candidates also largely fell to the executive director.

“That wasn’t very value-add for either party,” Meyers recalled.

After discussions with the nonprofit’s leadership team, Meyers focused his project on creating a standardized onboarding process and expanding board materials to include clear explanations of the budget, as well as board roles and expectations.

“The goal was to turn recruits into strong board members who understand their role and responsibilities,” he said. “The other key part of my work was defining ownership of onboarding, with clear responsibilities on both the staff and board sides.”

As part of the project, Meyers interviewed newer board members to learn what went well and what they wished they had known when joining the board. Allison Henry, director of the Golub Capital Board Fellows program, and program administrator Kelsey Creamer connected him with resources and prior fellows who had worked on similar topics.

“That really helped me build a baseline of information, update the onboarding process and customize it to Erie House’s needs,” Meyers said.

During his project, Erie House faced mounting challenges. Federal funding was frozen, and participants stopped coming to the nonprofit amid heightened concerns within the community. Plans for Meyers to meet biweekly with leadership were disrupted as the executive director focused on the increasingly urgent needs of the immigrants the organization serves.

“I had to work within the constraints of her schedule and her priorities, which we were able to do,” Meyers said. “It became a question of finding the minimum level of engagement needed to keep the project moving without burdening the organization. Striking that balance was tough.”

Meyers later met again with board members for their input. After giving his final presentation in the spring of 2025, he was invited to join the board as a full member.

“Mark asks thoughtful questions and brings the energy our board needs,” De La Rosa said. “Having someone new who understands the ins and outs of our organization, our budget and how we operate makes him a meaningful addition.”

He joined the governance committee, where he aims to ensure the onboarding materials and process he developed remain effective and in place.

Meyers said the academic understanding of board governance he gained from his fellowship allows him to contribute in new ways in the boardroom. “Everyone else is deeply committed to the mission and has a decades-long history with the organization,” he said. “Having both perspectives in the room is really valuable, and I would not have that without the Board Fellows experience.”

Tapping Into Fellowship Learnings

Meyers said his experience as a Board Fellow gave him greater confidence to engage in dialogue, raise questions and push back with senior leaders at the nonprofit. Now a project leader at BCG, he brings that confidence when meeting with executives and clients. “I’m much more comfortable having those conversations now.”

Board Secretary Elizabeth Binkley, who mentors the Fellows, said the program’s combination of public service focus and business school perspective gives Erie House a valuable outside view. “The Fellows think about efficiency and problem-solving in new ways, and they bring an outside perspective through their experiences, case studies and knowledge of what’s happening at other organizations,” Binkley said.

Assessing Board Engagement

Adena Leibbrand, MBA ’26, came to Kellogg with volunteer experience as a mentor to a first-generation immigrant girl from Honduras, which she said has served her well at Erie House. She applied to the Board Fellows program as a way to leave “the Kellogg bubble in Evanston” and connect with the Chicago community.

“I didn’t know what board leadership looked like or how boards function in both the private and nonprofit sectors,” Leibbrand said. “It was a unique experience to scratch the itch of getting involved in the nonprofit space and learn about board service.”

For her project, Leibbrand analyzed board engagement at Erie House, identifying areas for improvement and developing strategic goals. With federal funding cuts affecting many nonprofits and increased needs in immigrant communities, she said now is a crucial time for board members to support organizational health.

She adapted a board self-assessment survey developed at the University of California’s Haas School of Business, aiming for full participation from Erie’s board members. She followed up with one-on-one interviews and consulted other Kellogg Board Fellows for best practices at their nonprofits. She and Erie’s leadership team held a board retreat in the spring, using her survey results to help set annual goals and initiatives for the board.

“The key findings from the survey were that our board is incredibly mission-driven and has a strong trust-based relationship with Cristina, our Executive Director,” Leibbrand said.

“We’ll take a deep dive into our budget and financial health to ensure we're making financially responsible decisions during this period of heightened funding uncertainty across the nonprofit sector,” she said. The board will also undergo risk-based scenario planning to ensure they’re setting Erie up for another 100-plus years of service.

In addition to her project, Leibbrand recently finished training to volunteer at Erie House as a mentor for middle schoolers.

One of the biggest benefits of the Golub Capital Board Fellows program, Leibbrand said, was meeting peers who also care about nonprofit work and want to have an impact outside of the private sector. “I really appreciate making friends who share those interests,” she said.

Another benefit was attending board and committee meetings, which helped her understand how a board functions. “We can talk about it in theory in the classroom, but seeing actual meetings solidifies it so much more,” Leibbrand said.

She recalled lessons learned when an urgent vote was needed in between meetings. “I noted the questions people were asking to make sure they’re fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility. It also helped me understand what happens in committee versus board meetings, which I hadn’t appreciated from the classroom.”

Her biggest growth from the fellowship came in learning how to find her voice at board meetings. “The best way to participate is balancing respect for leadership -- because they know the organization well -- with the understanding that it’s helpful to speak up if something feels off. That’s part of taking shared responsibility.”