MIMI HALPER SILBERT Mimi Silbert serves as the Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO of the Delancey Street Foundation, which Dr. Karl Menninger called “The best and most successful rehabilitation program I have studied in the world.” Delancey Street serves ex-felons, prostitutes, substance abusers, and others who have hit bottom, in six national centers, located in New York (54), Massachusetts, New Mexico (28, 35), North Carolina (57), Los Angeles (43) and headquartered in San Francisco, all living drug, crime, and alcohol free. For 40 years, Delancey Street, a residential educational community, has provided residents with academic, vocational, and social skills, and the discipline, values, and attitudes they need to live in society legitimately and successfully -- at no cost to the client or taxpayer (4). There are currently over 18,000 thousand successful graduates. Silbert lives in Delancey Street, takes no salary, and the organization functions as an extended family, sharing everything. There is no staff . s t n e d i s e r e h t y b y l e l o s d e m r o fr e p e r a s n o i t c n u fl l a d n a Every resident helps the other on an “each one teach one” concept (2, 5). If someone reads at the sixth grade level s/he tutors someone who reads at the fourth grade level while another resident who reads at the eighth grade level tutors him/her. Although the residents are often violent long term gang members who have been in and out of prison most of their lives, hard core dope fiends where the average resident has dropped out of school at the sixth grade, is functionally illiterate, and has never worked even at an unskilled job for even three months, Silbert believes people who are the problem can b ecome their own (21,60). Delancey Street’s approach is to develop resident’s strengths . s m e l b o r p r i e h t n o s u c o fo t n a h t r e h t a r With no staff and no government funding, these residents have not only turned their own lives around, but have built the entire organization from four people in 1971to the many thousands who have now gone through it and . l l e w s a e v i l y e h t h c i h w n i s e i t i n u m m o c e h t d e p l e h e v a h Mimi Silbert was born in Boston, MA in 1942. As the only child of Dena & Herbert Halper she grew up in an extended immigrant family which she has used as the model for Delancey Street (15, 68). Silbert holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Massachusetts (1963), and Masters (1965) and Doctorate Degrees (1968) in Counseling Psychology and Criminology from the University of California at Berkeley. As a result of her pioneering work, Silbert and . s d r a w a s u o r e m u n d e v i e c e r e v a h y e c n a l e D From the academic world she has been awarded ten (10) Honorary Doctorate Degrees including Brandeis (2006) (7), UMass (1995), Golden Gate University (1997), and San Francisco State University (1993). She was awarded UC Berkeley’s prestigious Alumni of the Year (1991) (52) along with being named one of 100 Berkeley Fellows (2003), an Honorific Society. She has also received the Presidents Medallions from both University of San Francisco (1995) and UC San Francisco (2001). From national organizations she’s won awards ranging from America’s Award (1991), National Caring Award (1996), The Mahatma Gandhi Humanitarian Award (1993), The Living Legacy Award from the Women’s International Fund (1993), National Common Cause’s Public Service Achievement Award (1997), League of Women Voters Women “Who Could Be President Award”(1992), The Gleitsman Foundation Citizen Activist Award at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (2002) (13,14), among many others. She and Delancey Street have been called the “pioneers of social entrepreneurialship” and in this regard she has been named to the San Francisco Business Hall of Fame (2007) (3,4,6,10), received the International Association of Business Communicators Leadership Award (1991), as well as numerous other social entrepreneur awards, and featured in many books and articles on the subject ranging from such books and articles as Business of the Heart (26) to the London Financial Times (24,27), Fast Company (31), and Worth Magazine (2002) (18). Silbert has been appointed to the National Institute of Justice Advisory Board by President Carter (1980), to the California Board of Corrections (now the Corrections Standards Authority) by every Governor from Governor Deukmejian (1986) through Governor Schwarzenegger (her current appointment continues through 2012) to the State Advisory Group on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency by Governors Davis and Schwarzenegger, to the Blue Ribbon Commission in Inmate Program Management by the State Legislature, to the Expert Panel on Corrections, to the State Police Officers Standards and Training Advisory Commission, among other correction oriented appointments. She and Delancey Street have received commendations, certificates, and awards from Presidents Bush (H.W.), Carter, and Reagan, numerous Senate and Congressional Leaders, the New Mexico, California, and Delaware State Legislatures and New Mexico and California Governors, the Key to the City of San Francisco, six Mayoral Proclamations of “Mimi Silbert Days” in San Francisco, and commendations from local boards of supervisors and she was awarded the first Minerva Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 from former California First Lady Maria Shriver. She has been f eatured on ABC’s 20/20 in a segment entitled “The Power of Mimi”(64); on This Is Your Life(68); Oprah Winfrey ABC Prime Time Specia l (63); Sunday CBS Morning with Charles Kurault (65); CBS Street Stories with Ed Bradley (61); several segments on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings (60,62,66,67), including their “Year in Review” (67)and featuring Silbe rt as “Person of the Week”(66); along with over 50 segments on local channels, national and international media including Asia (69), Europe, Central and South America, and Africa. Her work has been written up as cha pters in over 35 books and in media rang ing from the London Times,(2 4) New York Times (11,41,42,53,54), Los Angeles Times (12,40,43), The Washington Post (57), through Biography Magazine (34), Reader’s Digest (55), Parade Magazine (23,44), and People Magazine (32), as well as many other national . s e n i z a g a m d n a , s r e p a p s w e n l a n o i t a n r e t n i d n a l a c o l From religious organizations, she and Delancey Street have received the Pope John XXIII Award (51) from the Catholic Federation, the Muslim Award, The Tree of Life Award from the Jewish National Fund among other local and national religious commendations. Delancey Street’s home on the San Francisco waterfront, the Embarcadero Triangle, is the culmination of the Delancey creed of self-help. Silbert was the developer and Delancey its own contractor as they built this 360,000 square foot mixed-use development for their home. With union support, they trained over 300 formerly unemployable people in the building trades, and built a complex that holds up to 500 residents, and a vast array of retail, educational, and recreational facilities which Pulitzer Prize winning architectural critic Allan Temko called “a masterpiece of social design”(45,55,58). The complex, which has won numerous awards, is the largest self- managed, self-built, self-help complex in the country. There, Delancey runs its national moving company (1,16,17,25), catering (9), a screening room (9) considered one of the finest in San Francisco, the highly regarded Delancey Street Restaurant (8,19,26,29,46,55,53), and a bookstore-art gallery-coffeehouse called Crossroads Café (20), among 15 other ventures. In 1998, Delancey formed a new division called Delancey CIRCLE (Coalition to Revitalize Communities, Lives, Education and Economies) through which Delancey collaborates with numerous public and private agencies to expand the model. Under this division Delancey runs a charter public high school for at risk youths, Life Learning Academy (23), selected as 2010 Calif ornia Charter School g n o l a , r e t s a m d a e H e h t s i t r e b l i S h c i h w fo r a e Y e h t fo with other collaborations, exemplified by replications in South Africa, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore, Texas, Alaska and South Carolina among others. Although Delancey Street is her primary life work, Silbert is also a recognized national expert in criminal justice. As a criminal justice planner and evaluator, Dr. Silbert has directed the evaluation of over 100 projects, through such agencies as the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Corrections, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the John D. Rockefeller Foundation. She has designed adult and juvenile justice master plans for numerous cities and states, evaluated and developed programs for the California Department of Corrections, headed an innovative program for Mariel Cubans for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, National Institute of Corrections and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and designed and conducted the largest study in this country on prostitution, a field in which she has published extensively. She wrote, designed and implemented a revamp of San Francisco’s juvenile justice system (38, 39) which independent evaluators called “phenomenally successful.” In her 42 years as a trainer, Silbert has designed curri culae and provided training to over 80 police, sheriffs, and probation departments.
