Thomas A. Demetrio appointed chair of IIT Chicago-Kent Board of Overseers
Thomas A. Demetrio '73, a nationally acclaimed trial lawyer, has been appointed chairman of the Board of Overseers of IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. Demetrio succeeds John R. Schmidt of Mayer Brown.
A founding partner in the Chicago-based law firm of Corboy & Demetrio, Demetrio focuses his practice on medical negligence, airplane crash and commercial litigation on behalf of plaintiffs. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame and his J.D. degree at IIT Chicago-Kent. He served as president of the IIT Chicago-Kent Alumni Association in 1988-89, and has sat on the law school's Board of Overseers since 1992. Demetrio received the law school's Alumni Merit Award in 1989, its Professional Achievement Award in 1990, and its Distinguished Service Award in 2000.
Demetrio served as chairman of IIT Chicago-Kent's campaign for its state-of-the-art-building at 565 West Adams Street. Recently, he spearheaded a successful campaign that raised more than $1.5 million to endow the law school's faculty chair in honor of IIT Chicago-Kent Professor Ralph L. Brill.
"All of us at IIT Chicago-Kent are delighted with Tom Demetrio's appointment as chairman of our Board of Overseers," said IIT Chicago-Kent Dean Harold J. Krent. "His professional excellence and his record of public service make him a role model for our students and an inspiration to the entire law school community. We'd also like to express our thanks to another first-rate professional, outgoing president John Schmidt, who steered our board masterfully for more than a decade."
A member of the IIT Board of Trustees since 2010, Demetrio also sits on the boards of the Center for Disability and Elder Law, Big Shoulders--Archdiocese of Chicago, and the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Chicago. He serves on the Dispute Resolution Research Center Advisory Committee at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. He is a past member of the boards of the University of Notre Dame Law School, St. Ignatius College Prep and Mundelein Seminary.
Demetrio is a past president of the Chicago Bar Association and the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. During his tenure as president of the Chicago Bar Association, Demetrio established the Lend-A-Hand program to support and fund mentoring programs for disadvantaged youth in the Chicago area. The program was renamed to honor the late federal judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, a 1925 graduate of what is now IIT Chicago-Kent.
Demetrio has authored numerous articles on civil litigation and has taught extensively in the area of trial techniques.
IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, psychology, architecture, business, design and law.
