Editor’s note:
Sharon Fairley, Rahm Emanuel’s choice to head the Independent Police Review Authority, was married to John Rogers Jr., CEO of Ariel Investments LLC, from 2002 until last year. Ariel manages hundreds of millions of dollars worth of city and state pension funds, and is a major shareholder in a second company, JLL, that has received substantive city construction contracts. Rogers and his colleagues are also major donors to the campaigns of various city, county, and state officials, including the mayor’s.
Most recently, Fairley worked under Chicago inspector general Joe Ferguson in the hiring-oversight section, according to her faculty page at the University of Chicago, where she is listed as a law lecturer. Prior to that Fairley was a prosecutor at the Illinois attorney general’s office, before moving on to the U.S. Attorney General’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.
Hobson gave $31,150 to Emanuel’s campaign in 2010 and 2011.
Ariel’s standard management fee is approximately one-half of 1 percent for accounts in excess of $20 million, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. While that fee is negotiable, the company’s management of the $139 million for the teachers’ pension fund earned Ariel roughly $695,000 in 2015.
“I promise you I bring no agenda other than the pursuit of integrity and transparency in the work that IPRA does,” Fairley said the day of her appointment.
