Indian-American businesswoman appointed to succeed Kozak on Schaumburg village board
A bittersweet changing of the guard accompanied the Schaumburg village board's first meeting of 2023 this week.
Cultural Commission member Esha Patel - a village resident since 2008 - became the first Indian-American woman to serve as a Schaumburg trustee as she was appointed to succeed the late Frank Kozak, who died in early December at the age of 78.
"As you're probably aware, we have an empty seat down here, and that was a beloved friend, Trustee Frank Kozak," Mayor Tom Dailly said at Tuesday's meeting. "He moved here in '69, so he was one of the early founders in the village. Got involved in all sorts of activities, and ultimately on the village board here."
Such a loss is both personal and - from the deprivation of institutional memory - practical, Dailly said. But he expressed confidence he had found the right successor in Patel.
She and her husband Timir run their own insurance business and have lived in the area nearly 25 years, including a decade just across the Hoffman Estates border.
"It was like a dream for us to move in back then," Patel said Tuesday.
She was born and raised in Gujarat, India, and came to the United States in 1996.
Her nomination was unanimously ratified by the remaining trustees. After her swearing-in, she was also appointed to chair the board's health and human services committee.
Because Kozak died after Schaumburg's filing period for the April 2023 election, Patel will serve out her predecessor's remaining term through the election of April 2025.
Dailly said that reflecting the village's increasing diversity was one of his top goals after winning the mayor's office four years ago.
Just last month, the village board and administration reviewed a professional analysis of the 2020 census results and committed anew to serving Schaumburg's growing and diversifying population.
The census showed a population growth of 6% in the decade before 2020, increasing the number of residents to 78,723 and making Schaumburg the 12th largest community in Illinois.
Furthermore, residents of Asian descent rose from 20% to 26% of the village population, with the majority of those tracing their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent.
The percentage of foreign-born adults living in Schaumburg rose from 29% in 2010 to 38% in 2020.
The four nations that produced the largest numbers of those immigrants in Schaumburg are India, Poland, Mexico and Japan.