Lilia Chacon

After spending a year with a Mundelein public relations firm, former television news reporter Lilia Chacon is taking a job with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration.

Starting Monday, Chacon will join the City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection as public information officer. It’s a return to City Hall for Chacon, who spent four years as spokeswoman for former Chicago City Treasurer Stephanie Neely.

Chacon was a general assignment reporter for more than two decades at Fox-owned WFLD-Channel 32, where she won a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award and six local Emmy Awards. In 2016 she was honored with induction in the Silver Circle of the Chicago/Midwest chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

After a brief stint on the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, Chacon joined Mundelein-based GreenMark Public Relations as director of public affairs. She left the firm last month, calling her experience with company founder and president Sue Markgraf “a very productive year.”

In her new role with the Chicago department that licenses and regulates businesses, Chacon will be working for commissioner Samantha Fields. “We also do a lot of small business expos helping entrepreneurs launch and succeed, which are familiar to me from working for the treasurer’s office,” she said.

Chacon added: “I’m looking forward to an exciting new challenge in the middle of everything that happens in Chicago. Just the way I like it.”

On Friday, Chacon will serve as emcee of this year’s Silver Circle Awards at the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel. The event will honor six living broadcast veterans — Mary Ann Ahern, James Angio, Steve Baskerville, Ron Born, Katie Carrillo and Sam Ventura — and three posthumously — Paul Hogan, Gene Siskel and Phil Walters.