2021 Chicago Silver Circle Honors Program Book

MARDA LE BEAU
Marda Le Beau is proud of her 40 years working in Chicago
news at ABC 7 and CBS 2. From desk assistant to news writer
to producer and executive producer, she has loved every
minute of her career covering everything from war in Israel
to sex-abuse conferences at the Vatican as well as
supervising investigations into corruption here in Chicago.
Marda was born in Chicago and raised in suburban
Lombard.
Most of her time in high school was spent in Thailand where
her microbiologist father was working in epidemic control. She graduated from Mundelein
College which is now part of Loyola University. Her news career started in the late 1970s
when she was hired to answer phones on the ABC 7 assignment desk. Later, she produced
the 4pm and 6pm news as well as the 10pm weekend shows.
But the turning point in her career came when she started producing stories on the health
beat. She and anchor/reporter Mary Ann Childers had a long partnership covering health
and medicine. Their motto was knowledge is power. The more you know about your health,
the more you can take control. They took a critical look at treatments and procedures such as
Lasik and the complaints and side effects no one was talking about. She honed her skills as a
writer and segment producer on the health beat and began to delve into investigations.
Marda and Mary Ann were assigned to Israel during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 when Israel
was attacked by 40 Scud missiles. Fears were high that Iraq would use chemical weapons.
Over the weeks of the conflict, they covered the political situation and the human stories of
Israeli and Palestinian families coping with the stresses of war, gas masks and sealed rooms.
For the last 14 years of her career, Marda was the Executive Producer of the CBS 2
Investigators. Award winning stories by the investigative unit included the critical ambulance
shortage in Chicago, a company spewing fumes linked to cancer into a suburban
neighborhood, Chicagoans getting billed tens of thousands of dollars for water they did not
use and Chicago police terrorizing families by raiding the wrong homes. Marda has won a
national Emmy ® and 10 regional Emmy ® Awards as a producer and 12 more as an executive
producer in addition to Peabody and DuPont Awards.
She juggled this rewarding career with marriage and a daughter. All of it made possible by
Ronald Klein, her incredibly supportive and sharing husband who passed away seven years
ago. Marda’s daughter, Adina Klein, is now a segment producer at Fox 32 Chicago.
Since retiring in May of 2019, Marda has become a docent at the Illinois Holocaust Museum
and Education Center where the mission is to encourage all of us to be upstanders and
speak out when we see injustice. She feels it is an extension of her many years working in
investigative news.