McHenry Times

Denise Barreto, the Chicago Transit Authority’s first Chief Equity Officer, recently discussed her six-year tenure as a trustee for the Village of Lake in the Hills.

In an interview with WBBM, Barreto said McHenry County “wasn't very friendly to people that look like me,” regarding her racial identity.

She said he has used her time as a village trustee to lobby lawmakers in Springfield.

“I'm telling these people you are going to be judged right in 20 years from now from the decisions that you make today,” Barreto told WBBM.

Barreto also discussed her journey from corporate America to public service, emphasizing her frustration with the lack of promotion in the corporate sector.

“I was on my way to being someone's CEO or someone's CMO. That's the way I was going. I was not – I was a business major, I was in communications,” Barreto told WBBM.

“Like, I wasn't trying to be in equity, but let's be real – corporate America didn't know what to do with this energy, and it abused this energy and it didn't promote this energy in the way that it should have. And I ended up turning this energy to public office as a hobby.”

“Because I couldn't get all of this, you know, energy fulfilled in the work that I was doing and that – I'm not giving them plug at all – back when I was in my corporate days.”

On LinkedIn Barreto noted her resignation from the Lake in the Hills Village Board.

“I resigned my position with a move to Evanston, IL in August 2015 to pursue greater diversity for my family as well as expand my business which has greater impact and influence on local policy across the region specifically Northern Cook, Kane, DuPage, Lake and Winnebago Counties versus my elected position and staying McHenry County,” her LinkedIn account reads.

Barreto calls herself an “Intersectional Justice Maven” on LinkedIn.  

According to the Heritage Foundation, intersectionality is a Critical Race Theory concept “that allows someone to claim victimhood based on his or her identification with more than one group.”

Many critics argue that the application of intersectionality, particularly in the establishment of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) roles like Barreto's, contributes to a misunderstanding of bigotry in contemporary America.

“Critical race theory and intersectionality—formerly confined to graduate seminars—have seeped into corporate America and Silicon Valley, as well as into many K–12 education systems,” Eric Kaufmann wrote for the Manhattan Institute in 2021.

“With their spread has come an increase in the misperception that bigotry is everywhere, even as the data tell a different story: racism exists, but there has never been less racism than there is now.”