Gov. Pritzker Announces Appointments to Illinois Gaming Board, State Police Merit Board

Building on a strong team of diverse experts in their fields, Governor JB Pritzker announced the following appointments in his administration:

 
ILLINOIS GAMING BOARD

 
Charles Schmadeke will serve on and chair the Illinois Gaming Board.* Schmadeke is a partner-in-charge of Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP's Springfield office. He has more than 25 years of litigation, mediation and administrative law experience and concentrates his practice representing business and governmental clients in litigation and mediation, including cases involving employment issues, civil rights defense, regulatory matters, and contract and tort claims. He has represented and counseled governmental clients on a wide variety of matters, including governance, organization and fiscal issues, civil rights, regulation enforcement and employment. Before joining Hinshaw & Culbertson in 2003, Schmadeke served in senior positions in Illinois state government. He was the General Counsel to the Illinois State Comptroller, where he advised the Comptroller on constitutional and statutory matters and fiscal affairs, and also conducted cases before the civil service board and handled litigation with cemeteries, funeral homes and other entities regulated by the Comptroller. He also worked 11 years for the Illinois Attorney General as Chief of the General Law Bureau, which represents all state agencies, state officers and state employees in federal and state litigation. In addition to supervising a staff of 21 attorneys and overseeing an active caseload of thousands of cases before federal and state courts and administrative tribunals, Schmadeke personally handled many cases including matters involving civil rights, professional regulation and employment issues.
 
Anthony Garcia will serve on the Illinois Gaming Board.* Since August 2013, Garcia has served as senior counsel for litigation and investigations at The Boeing Company where he manages litigation as well as supervises and conducts internal investigations implicating violations of the False Claims Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Anti-Kickback Statute and other statutes. Garcia previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois where he investigated and prosecuted violations of narcotics and weapons statutes, murder for hire, and fraud and export control statutes. Previously, Garcia spent seven years at the U.S. Department of Justice, five years as a trial attorney for the Office of International Affairs and Counterespionage Section and two years as an attaché in Mexico City, working closely with senior U.S. and Mexican officials to combat transnational crime. He also served as an Assistant State's Attorney in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and as an Intelligence Analyst at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Garcia received his Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Arts in international studies from the University of Wyoming.

 
 
ILLINOIS STATE POLICE MERIT BOARD

 
Andrew Berlin will continue to serve on the Illinois State Police Merit Board.* Berlin is the Chairman and CEO of Chicago-based Berlin Packaging. He has led the company for 31 years - taking it from a small distributor to the largest of its kind in the packaging industry, with offices and plants throughout North America, Europe and Africa. The $2.6 billion company is a global supplier of plastic, glass, and metal containers and closures to dozens of industries. In the world of baseball, Berlin is a Partner Owner of the Chicago Cubs. He is also the Chairman and Owner of the South Bend Cubs, a minor league affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. Prior to being active in commerce, Berlin was a lawyer with the law firm Katten, Muchin and Zavis. He is also involved in business, community and public-safety endeavors, including sitting on the Boards of Directors of several companies and charities, appointed to the Illinois State Police Merit Board, a Commissioner of the Public Safety Commission in Glencoe, Illinois and he funded the Institute of National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University where he also sits on the Executive Committee and Board of Trustees at Syracuse University. Berlin is a graduate of Syracuse University with a B.A. in Political Science and Loyola University of Chicago School of Law with a J.D. degree. He also studied military history at Boston College and business administration at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
 
Nancy Maldonado will serve on the Illinois State Police Merit Board.* Maldonado is an attorney and partner at Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C., a public-interest law firm, where she represents plaintiffs in civil rights, employment, housing and fraud cases and serves as outside general counsel for several local non-profit organizations. A graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School, she served as a law clerk for the Honorable Rubén Castillo of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois at the start of her legal career. Maldonado is the former Board President of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and has served on its Board of Directors since 2005. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Apna Ghar (Our Home), which is dedicated to combatting gender violence in immigrant communities, and she also serves on the Legal Advisory Board of Arise Worker Center. Maldonado previously served on the Board of Directors of La Casa Norte, a social service agency in Chicago that serves youth and families confronting homelessness, including as its Secretary from 2004 through 2005. She is a recipient of the Hispanic Lawyers' Association of Illinois Mentor of the Year award, was nominated to the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation in 2017, is a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow (class of 2019), was honored by Crain's Chicago Business in 2019 as one of Chicago's Notable Minority Lawyers, and is a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School for the 2019-2020 academic year.
 
* Appointments pending confirmation by the Illinois Senate.