Boutros Hosts First All-Fed Leadership Summit in Chicago

CHICAGO — United States Attorney Andrew S. Boutros hosted the first Chicago-Area Federal Agency Leadership Summit on May 11 2026, bringing together senior leaders from more than 40 federal agencies.

The summit, informally called “Davos in Chicago,” represents the first structured, in-person gathering of its kind in the region. Attendees included heads of law-enforcement, regulatory, intelligence and administrative agencies that maintain offices or exercise jurisdiction inside the Northern District of Illinois.

Scope reaches every federal employee and contractor whose work touches the seven-county Chicago metropolitan area and surrounding Northern District counties. The district handles more than 2,000 federal criminal cases per year and oversees billions of dollars in annual federal spending on infrastructure, housing, health care, transportation and financial markets.

The operational change is the establishment of a standing coordination forum where agency heads can align priorities, share information and deconflict operations in real time. Prior to the summit, coordination occurred mainly through ad-hoc interagency task forces or Washington-led initiatives. The new summit format institutionalizes regular, district-level engagement with no fixed end date.

Downstream effects begin immediately. Agencies must now designate points of contact for follow-on working groups, schedule the next summit within 12 months and surface overlapping investigative targets before they reach federal court. The forum also triggers faster information sharing on fraud, public corruption, narcotics trafficking and cyber threats that cross agency boundaries, compressing response timelines that previously moved through separate headquarters chains.

Congress and the Government Accountability Office gain a single venue to request unified reporting on multi-agency initiatives inside the Northern District.

This marks the first time a U.S. attorney has convened such a broad, district-specific leadership body. The Justice Department release states the summit occurred at an undisclosed Chicago location on May 11 2026 and involved leaders from every major federal department with a footprint in the region.