Pablo Eisenberg
Pablo Eisenberg is a leading scholar and advocate for greater accountability and commitment by philanthropy in the United States to the poor, people of color and social justice issues. As Robert Jaquay, associate director of The George Gund Foundation, has observed of Pablo, "His influence is attributable in no small part to his great talent for writing and public speaking. From his basic theme of social change from the bottom up, Eisenberg has woven dozens of variations – functioning as a trenchant, polemical commentator on America’s nonprofit sector, philanthropy and the community development movement. Both tongue and pen have been purposefully pointed in order to provoke critical examination of and by those in the nonprofit world." Stacy Palmer of the Chronicle of Philanthropy has described Pablo as "one of the most influential and outspoken voices in philanthropy."
Biography
Pablo Eisenberg was born on July 1, 1932 in Paris, France. He came to the United States at age 7 in 1939 and grew up in New Jersey.
He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute. Prior to his coming to Georgetown in January 1999, he served for 23 years as Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, a national technical assistance and advocacy organization working with low income and minority organizations and constituencies throughout the country.
Pablo served two years in the U.S. Army and over three years in Africa as a foreign service officer with the U.S. Information Agency. He then spent two years as Program Director of Operation Crossroads Africa before going to work as Director of Pennsylvania Operations for the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) in Washington, D.C. He subsequently became Deputy Director of the Research and Demonstration division at the Office of Economic Opportunity. After leaving OEO, he served as Deputy Director for field operations at the National Urban Coalition. After almost five years with the Coalition, he worked as a freelance consultant for a variety of nonprofit organizations and foundations.
Pablo has published many articles and chapters of books and has been a regular columnist for The Chronicle of Philanthropy for the past seventeen years. His book, Challenges for Nonprofits and Philanthropy: The Courage to Change, was published by the New England Press and Tufts University in December 2004. In 2003 he wrote, with Christine Ahn and Channapha Khamsvongsa, the hard-hitting report, Foundation Trustee Fees: Use and Abuse (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership, September 2003).
Eisenberg is a founder of Committee of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and is President of Friends of VISTA. He serves on the boards of Youth Today, Eureka Communities, the Milton Eisenhower Foundation, ICChange and the University College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, and New Faculty Majority Foundation. In addition, he is a trustee of Citizen Funds, a socially responsible mutual fund.
Pablo is a graduate of both Princeton University and Merton College, Oxford University, where he earned a BA and a B.Litt, respectively. He received a German Marshall Fund fellowship in 1989 to study the nonprofit sectors in Great Britain, the Netherlands and France. He was a nationally ranked tennis player and was captain of both the Princeton and Oxford tennis teams. He was a visiting professor at both the University of Notre Dame and New Orleans University.
He is the recipient of the 1989 award for Outstanding Achievement in Public Service from the Alliance for Justice; the Weston Howland Jr. Award for Distinguished National Leadership from Tufts University; a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 by the National Society of Fundraising Executives; and the 1998 John Gardner Leadership Award sponsored by Independent Sector. In June 2004, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Princeton University.
External links
- Hudson Institute book review of Eisenberg's Courage to Change (2005)
- Interview by Harold Simon (1998)
- National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
- "Recommendations for Reform of the Nonprofit Sector" by Pablo Eisenberg (July 22, 2004)