Walter Burley Griffin was an American architect and landscape architect. He is noted for designing Australia's capital city, he has been credited with the development of the L-shaped floor plan, the carport and an innovative use of reinforced concrete. Influenced by the Chicago-based Prairie School, Griffin developed a unique modern style, he worked in partnership with his wife Marion Mahony Griffin. In 28 years they designed over 350 buildings and urban-design projects as well as designing construction materials, interiors and other household items. Griffin was born in 1876 in a suburb of Chicago, he was the eldest of the four children of George Walter Griffin, an insurance agent, Estelle Burley Griffin. His family moved to Oak Park and to Elmhurst; as a boy he had an interest in landscape design and gardening, his parents allowed him to landscape the yard at their new home in Elmhurst. Griffin went to Oak Park High School, he considered studying landscape design but was advised by the landscape gardener O. C. Simonds to pursue a more lucrative profession.

Griffin chose to study architecture, and, in 1899, completed his bachelor's degree in architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The University of Illinois program was run by Nathan Clifford Ricker, a German-educated architect, who emphasized the technical aspects of architecture. During his studies, he took courses in horticulture and forestry. After his studies, Griffin moved to Chicago and was employed as a draftsman for two years in the offices of progressive architects Dwight H. Perkins, Robert C. Spencer, Jr. and H. Webster Tomlinson in "Steinway Hall". Griffin's employers worked in the distinctive Prairie School style; this style is marked by horizontal lines, flat roofs with broad overhanging eaves, solid construction and strict discipline in the use of ornament. Louis Sullivan was influential among Prairie School architects and Griffin was an admirer of his work, of his philosophy of architecture which stressed that design should be free of historical precedent. Other architects of that school include George Grant Elmslie, George Washington Maher, William Gray Purcell, William Drummond and most Frank Lloyd Wright.

In July 1901, Griffin passed the new Illinois architects' licensing examination and this permitted him to enter private practice as an architect. He began to work in Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Oak Park, studios. Although he was never made a partner, Griffin oversaw the construction on many of Wright's noted houses including the Willits House in 1902 and the Larkin Administration Building built in 1904. From 1905 he began to supply landscape plans for Wright's buildings. Wright allowed his other staff to undertake small commissions of their own; the William Emery house, built in Elmhurst, Illinois, in 1903 was such a commission. While working for Wright, Griffin fell in love with Maginel Wright, he proposed marriage to her, but his affections for her were not returned, she refused. In 1906 he resigned his position at Wright's studio and established his own practice at Steinway Hall. Griffin and Wright had fallen out over events following Mr. Wright's trip to Japan in 1905. While Wright was away for five months, Griffin ran the practice.

When Wright returned, he told Griffin that he had overstepped his responsibilities, completing several of Wright's jobs, sometimes substituting his own building designs. Further, Wright had borrowed money from Griffin to pay for his travels abroad, he tried to pay off his debts to Griffin with prints he had acquired in Japan, it became clear to Griffin that Wright would not make Griffin a partner in his business. Griffin's first independent commission was a landscape design for the State Normal School at Charleston, now known as the Eastern Illinois University. In the fall of 1906, he received his first residential job from Harry Peters; the Peters' House was the first house designed with an open floor plan. The L-shape was an economical design and constructed. From 1907, 13 houses in this style were built in the Chicago neighborhood now known as Beverly-Morgan Park. Seven of these houses are on W. 104th Place in Chicago. This street is now named Walter Burley Griffin Place, forms a municipal historical district within the national Ridge Historic District, as it contains the largest collection of small scale Griffin designs.

In 1911 Griffin developed ` Solid Rock' house for William F. Tempel in Illinois, it was the first house built of reinforced concrete. On June 29, 1911 Griffin married Marion Lucy Mahony, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in architecture, she was employed first in Wright's office, by Hermann V. von Holst, who had taken over Wright's work in America when Wright left for Europe in 1909. Marion Mahony recommended to von Holst that he hire Griffin to develop a landscape plan for the area surrounding the three houses on Milliken Place for which Wright had been hired in Decatur, Illinois. Mahony and Griffin worked on the Decatur project before their marriage. After their marriage, Mahony went to work in Griffin's practice. A housing development with several homes designed by Griffin and Mahony, Rock Crest – Rock Glen in Mason City, Iowa, is seen as their most dramatic American design development of the decade and remains the largest collection of Prairie Style homes surrounding a natural setting.

From 1899 to 1914, Griffin created more than 130 designs in his Chicago office for buildings, urban plans and landscapes.

Leila Rahimi is an American television sports anchor and reporter for NBC Sports Chicago. Rahimi was raised in Denton, Texas. After high school, she interned with Mike Fisher. In 2002, she graduated magna cum laude from the University of North Texas with a degree in journalism. After school, she worked as an anchor/reporter with KTCK-AM Sports Radio in Dallas. In 2005, she went to work as a sports anchor/reporter with CBS-affiliate KXII-TV in Sherman and for Fox Sports Southwest in Dallas. In 2007, she accepted a position with NBC-affiliate KXAN-TV in Texas. In 2012, she moved to San Diego to work for Fox Sports San Diego where she served as the field reporter for the San Diego Padres and produced a weekly program, she returned to Texas, working at Comcast SportsNet Houston as an anchor and sideline reporter for the Houston Astros and the Houston Rockets. In 2014, Rahimi accepted a job with the MLB Network before moving to Philadelphia to work as an anchor and reporter for Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia.

In October 2015, she was hired as the anchor for NBC Sports Chicago, where she, as of the 2019-20 season, serves as the sideline reporter for Chicago Bulls broadcasts

Elizabeth Grace Augustus Whitehead was an American classical archaeologist and philanthropist. She was the general secretary of the Archaeological Institute of America between 1971 and 1978 and president of the board of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from 1976 until her death in 1983. Elizabeth Grace Augustus was born in Willougby, Ohio, on June 17, 1928, her father was Ellsworth Hunt Augustus, a businessman and national president of the Boy Scouts of America, her mother was Elizabeth Good Augustus. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, she moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They had three children: Sydney Jones and Evan Jones. Whitehead's interest in archaeology began at the age of 33, on a family tour of Greece, where her father was attending a Scout Jamboree, they were accompanied by a guide, Constantine Nicoloudis, whose deep knowledge of the country's history and antiquities made the trip "nothing less than a first-rate illustrated course in classical archaeology."On her arrival back in the United States, Whitehead applied to study classical archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Enrolling in 1963, she studied under Rodney Young, worked on his excavations at Gordion. She joined an expedition to locate ancient Thurii in Italy, her studies covered a range of topics and she was a regular participant in seminars at both Penn and Bryn Mawr College. By 1969, she had completed the requirements for a PhD in classical archaeology, but never submitted a dissertation, her biographer, Doreen Spitzer, speculated that, while Whitehead remained interested and committed to the discipline, her affluent background left her with little reason to pursue an academic career. The expectations of a housewife and mother-of-three at the time drastically reduced the time she could devote to her studies, as did her divorce from Jones in 1968. In 1969, Whitehead married Edwin C. "Jack" Whitehead, a businessman and founder of the Whitehead Institute. The couple settled in Greenwich, along with Elizabeth's three children and Jack's five from previous marriages; this busy home life put an end to Whitehead's studies at Penn.

However, in 1971, she was drawn back into archaeology when her former teacher Rodney Young asked her to take the position of general secretary of the Archaeological Institute of America. Young was the president of the AIA, an organization that promotes the public understanding of archaeology through its more than one hundred local societies; as general secretary, Whitehead ran the national office in New York. At the beginning of her tenure it was concerned with classical archaeology, she was elected an honorary fellow for life. Whitehead was invited to become a trustee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 1972, was appointed the president of the board in 1976, she initiated a major fundraising campaign and was successful in raising more than $6 million for the school, including a large donation from her own funds. She began the publication of an annual Newsletter, worked to maintain cordial relations between the ASCSA and archaeological authorities in Greece, improved the school's public exposure.

In addition to her positions at the AIA and ASCSA, Whitehead supported a number of other institutions, many concerned with archaeology, through donations and by serving as a trustee. In 1968, she helped him found the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, she was a trustee of her alma mater Sarah Lawrence College from 1976 to 1980, a member of the executive board of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a board member of her husband's Whitehead Institute. Whitehead suffered from pulmonary fibrosis from the mid-1970s, she died of the disease on August 3, 1983. She bequeathed a large collection of books to the ASCSA library, as well as an endowment for a visiting professorship, her husband, who became a trustee after her death doubled the endowment, creating two Elizabeth A. Whitehead Visiting Professor positions at the ASCSA