About the Founders

Evelyn and Alex met in 2013 while teaching at a family medicine maternity course. They met again early in 2014 at another conference and have been inseparable ever since. Evelyn & Alex are passionate about caring for vulnerable populations and have spent a combined 50+ years in public medicine. They recognize how important addressing basic human needs are for achieving health equity.

EVELYN FIGUEROA & ALEX WU

In the 1950s, Evelyn’s parents, as children, immigrated from Puerto Rico, were displaced out of Lincoln Park due to gentrification, and faced significant challenges due to financial, language, racial, and literacy barriers. Her grandmother, Santa, left school after third grade and was unable to ever learn English and her mother, Lucille, dropped out of high school due to pregnancy (but later earned a GED). Despite the abundant racial mistreatment that Santa sustained, she was resilient and steady. Grandmother, mother, and daughter Evelyn lived together for over 18 years and were mutually supportive. For example, Santa attended Evelyn’s university orientation in English when Lucille needed to work and Evelyn taught Santa to write her numbers to improve her financial independence. Evelyn, like her role models Santa and Lucille, started working at age 13 years and maintained employment year-round from age 15. With her family’s support, Dr. Figueroa became the first person in her family to receive a university degree.

As a family physician, Dr. Figueroa tirelessly advocates for women, immigrants, and additional marginalized populations. Evelyn first became connected to Pilsen in 1995 as a newly matriculated UIC College of Medicine (UIC-COM) student. She joined the UIC-COM Latino Medical Student Association and led volunteer activities locally for Fiesta del Sol and additional health-centered events. For the first time in her life, Evelyn felt capable of fighting and advocating for people who looked like her grandmother—hardworking and disenfranchised individuals who lacked the agency to eliminate rampant racism, classism, and xenophobia that limited their upward mobility. In 2005, she returned to UIC, joined the Department in Family and Community Medicine, and took on many educational and leadership responsibilities. For her efforts, Dr. Figueroa has received dozens of local, regional, and national teaching and advocacy awards. Her community work since 2005 includes a five-year community health screenings project with St. Pius, volunteering for over a decade at CommunityHealth, a free clinic for immigrants, and serving as the medical director at Pacific Garden Mission homeless shelter for four years, including building medical units in collaboration with CDPH to allow months of sheltering in place during the first wave of COVID.

Dr. Figueroa is the first BIPOC professor to achieve this rank in the 51-year history of her department and advises countless fellow BIPOC trainees and faculty. She has been the UI Health Medical Staff Vice President since 2020 and will be promoted to President in November 2022. In 2022 she was appointed as the Director of Community Engagement for her department. For her abundant advocacy and teaching work, Dr. Figueroa has received over a dozen local and national awards over the past decade.

Why Pilsen? Dr. Figueroa’s primary patient postal code is 60608, she maintains a robust clinical practice, and is consistently Press Ganey rated in the top quartile of clinicians nationally. Because of Evelyn’s deep connection to her patients, she wanted to bridge social gaps that were hindering their health and, with patient and community input, developed anti-poverty operations in Pilsen. Social determinants such as food, housing, education, and discrimination are just as important as medical care. Dr. Figueroa wants to support transformative healthcare by bringing community-centered justice to Latinx, immigrant, and additional vulnerable groups. She has spent over two decades of her career serving the Pilsen community and has volunteered more in Pilsen than any other community.

EVELYN FIGUEROA, MD

Dr. Alex Wu was born in New York City. His parents met on the Lower East Side in the 1950s. Alex’s father, Nelson, was a Chinese immigrant struggling to make ends meet in various restaurant jobs, and his mother, Marilyn, was an Indiana native who entered a mixed-race marriage during a time when interracial unions were illegal in most of the country. Due to financial instability and social shunning, the family moved dozens of times during Alex’s childhood, and they were frequently food and housing insecure. Alex was painfully shy, endured significant racism for looking neither Chinese nor White, and struggled to make friends. However, Alex’s superpower was learning, and this quiet person was keen on public libraries and memorizing facts. He realized that education was the key to a stable adult life and eventually became a family physician.

After living in seven other states, Dr. Wu settled down in Chicago in 1997 and has been with the same employer for 26 years. Like Evelyn, Alex has taken care of patients in safety net settings his entire career and is a teaching physician. He advocates for marginalized populations, learned Spanish as an adult, and, since arriving to Chicago, has cared for predominantly immigrant Latinx and Black populations at PCC Salud (Belmont Cragin neighborhood) and at West Suburban Hospital. Alex has volunteered at least weekly at the Pilsen Food Pantry since 2018 and their four children have contributed countless hours as well. Although Evelyn is the Executive Director of the foundation and runs business operations, Dr. Wu is a board member and provides significant input.

Alex Wu is a champion for maternal & child health and works to correct health disparities that negatively affect women and children of color. Dr. Wu is the Co-Director of the PCC/West Suburban Maternal Child Health Fellowship, a training program for family physicians in operative obstetrics, maternity care, and neonatology. A family medicine educator since 1995, his favorite instructional areas are maternity care, operative obstetrics, and children's health. He has been awarded multiple teaching awards by his resident trainees over the years.