Windy City Times recently gained access to an internal Howard Brown Health Center (HBHC) e-mail memo that stated "COO [Chief Operating Officer] Beau Gratzer and CFO [Chief Financial Officer] Editha Paras are on administrative leave." The memo, which appears to be sent by Jamal Edwards, CEO of HBHC, also stated that "[m]embers of the Executive Team and the director of human resources will be scheduling 15 minute meetings with each department over the next few business days in order to answer any logistical questions." The memo also stated that Dr. Rob Garofalo was on administrative leave; Edward had confirmed this last week.
When Edwards was asked about the possible changes, he said, "Those are personnel matters and I have no comment." When asked if they were still there or not, he said, "They are still employed by Howard Brown."
About the donor database, as reported on last week, Edwards said, "We continue to look into the suspected breach. We don't believe anyone's information other than names and e-mail addresses have been compromised and we are still confident that no health information, credit card or other sensitive data has been compromised. But we have not concluded our review."
Gratzer, who is also listed as vice president on the HBHC website, has been with the organization since 2003. Paras is also listed as a vice president; she joined HBHC in 2010 as part of Edwards' new team in charge of overseeing changes at the organization. She is the first CFO to be hired after her predecessor, Mark Joslyn, was first put on administrative leave and then let go following allegations of financial mismanagement.
Messages were left for Gratzer and Paras, but they did not respond by the time Windy City Times went to print. Windy City Times will continue to follow up on the story.
