The 42^nd running of the J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge Chicago will be at its familiar Grant Park location on Thursday, May 8, but the 3.5-mile road race will also make a significant impact 15 minutes away in the city’s Austin neighborhood. 

JPMorganChase, owner and operator of the Corporate Challenge, has chosen BUILD Chicago as the 2025 Corporate Challenge beneficiary and will donate to support the organization that has been on the front lines in Chicago saving young people from gun violence for over 55 years. 

“BUILD is here for the young people facing the steepest challenges. We negotiate gang detachments, deescalate street conflicts, we have a crisis team that responds to shootings 24/7 to support survivors and witnesses.” said Adam Alonso, BUILD’s CEO. “We don’t shy away from the dangers our young people face every day.  But we don’t accept violence as normal either, or let it define our kids. Each young person is so much more than their trauma.”   

A typically large Corporate Challenge crowd will benefit BUILD’s important work. A total of 16,632 entrants from 431 companies took part in 2024, and the 6:50 p.m. race start on May 8 at Grant Park should exceed that number.  

The Corporate Challenge donation expands a partnership between JPMorganChase and BUILD that also included the 2023 opening of BUILD’s 60,000-square foot campus on a full city block in Austin, one of Chicago’s most disinvested neighborhoods. The Corporate Challenge funds will be directed specifically at supporting BUILD’s Mobile Mental Health (MMH) team, according to Alonso. 

“Mobile Mental Health has a purple bus that carries some of our most seasoned and creative therapists out into the communities where they are needed most,” Alonso said. “We launched it during the pandemic to reach isolated youth, but now it’s a crucial way we bring mental health care into the lives of all the youth we serve, plus their neighbors and families. If an elementary school loses a student to gun violence, the MMH bus can be parked in front all week, holding grief circles, working with kids, talking with scared parents – when people see us out, they know we’re there for them. Those conversations on the sidewalk turn into longer-term therapeutic relationships.” 

Alonso sees the BUILD/Corporate Challenge relationship as an important awareness builder and barrier breaker. 

“So many of the challenges facing West Side youth are the direct results of decades of discrimination, isolation, and ignorance. News media usually make this worse, focusing on crime scenes and not the communities living here, working to make their neighborhoods better,” Alonso said. “Austin is just 15 minutes from the Loop, but most Chicagoans have never been here. Our hope is that the visibility of the Corporate Challenge might encourage participants to see Chicago’s West Side in a new way: as a place where families live and strive, make art, play sports, paint murals, and deserve to be safe.”  

Chicago is one of 16 locations in the 2024 J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge Series, an all-inclusive event, with multinational companies registering employees at races around the world, to local manufacturing and entrepreneurial outfits registering with pride in one market. Participants have the option to have their time logged on the Series Leaderboard by in the male, female and non-binary categories, in addition to athletes with disabilities.  

Registration for the Chicago event is open now, with an entry fee of $65 per individual and companies having the ability to register teams as small as four employees to their entire workforce. The largest teams in 2024 were Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois (287), United Airlines (243), CME Group (229), University of Chicago (216), Molex (215), and the fastest were BMO Bank (male team) and J.P. Morgan (female and mixed teams). 

BUILD has impressive results of its own. Only 3% of its youth with arrest records are arrested again, significantly below the national average of 55%. And Alonso is eager to share BUILD’s story with all Corporate Challenge participating companies. 

“Everyone in the Corporate Challenge should come by BUILD’s campus to see how beautiful and impactful community investment can be! Come inside and get to know your city from the West Side, see how connected we all are. We can’t really rise until we all rise,” Alonso said.