Member Profile: Gina Tabachki ’83

Posted on Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Gina Tabachki made her first gift to Northwestern in 1983. While it was only $10, she has given to Northwestern every single year since, earning her platinum status in NU Loyal.

Gina’s parents instilled in her the idea that you give what you can. When she received a generous scholarship from her private high school, her father said she had to pay it back. “But they’re just giving it to me!” Gina protested. Her father’s response: “You have an obligation to give it back so someone else can have this same opportunity.” This maxim has stayed with Gina ever since.

Northwestern provided Gina with an exceptional college education, she says, and she is committed to helping other students gain access to a similar experience. She contributes to the art history department (where she pursued her major) at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and to the Northwestern Annual Fund: “I put my trust in the University on deciding how to use the money.”

Gina—like many students—struggled at first and even considered transferring her freshman year. Coming to Evanston from rural Northern Michigan, she felt most at home on the lakefront: “It was like I was back in the woods at home.” She also loved her time in the Norris listening room—looking out over Lake Michigan while enjoying records—browsing the endless stacks in Deering Library, and walking among the spring flowers in various shades of purple.

While her years at NU were occasionally rocky, Gina appreciates how the experience shaped her. She recalls her fondness for art history professor S. Hollis Clayson. “She was a young teacher, an infusion of competence, intellect, and inspiration. Everyone loved her.” Academics at Northwestern were “stellar and demanding,” she adds. “My ambitious and industrious classmates were equally demanding of themselves, their instructors, their peers.”

The legacy of “applying oneself diligently to any task” continues in Gina’s life today. The first in her family to graduate from college, she went on to law school at Washington University. She then practiced law in Fairbanks, Alaska for a decade. Gina now lives on a 200-acre farm in Alaska (pictured) with her partner, Sonny Lindner; she homeschools her son and daughter, and has remained devoted to the causes she believes in.

While large philanthropic gifts often make headlines, Gina believes that consistent giving is equally important. “It’s human nature to say ‘I can’t do that, so my gift doesn’t matter.’ But over the course of my lifetime of giving, I know I’ve made a significant impact on Northwestern.”