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In Chicago, Desirée Glapion Rogers (MBA '85) is known as a hardworking executive at Peoples Energy, a diversified energy company, and as the former head of the Illinois State Lottery. But ask folks in New Orleans about her and you'll get a different story -- to them, Rogers is royalty, none other than the Zulu Queen at the Big Easy's celebration of Mardi Gras.
The Zulu Queen presides for one year over the Zulu Organization, a New Orleans nonprofit that supports charities throughout the city. Rogers's reign is in honor of her late father, Roy Glapion, a New Orleans city councilman and longtime Mardi Gras supporter. "Mardi Gras is a wonderful thing that you don't really understand unless you get away from the city for a while," she told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (March 7, 2000). "Everyone can just come out of their door and experience, basically, a party; that's just not something that happens all the time."
Rogers, who also served as queen in 1988, paid tribute to her father for teaching her that "people are people -- it doesn't really matter what your position or income level is." She said she also learned that "what really matters is not being afraid of anyone regardless of how different they are from you . . . we can all come together to get something accomplished."
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