Nora Silver
Founder & Faculty Director for the Center for Social Sector Leadership
Nora is the Founder and Faculty Director of the Center for Social Sector Leadership and Adjunct Professor at University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business. She led the Center to be ranked second in the country (US News & World Report, 2017). The Center was also ranked first among business schools in social impact (Business as Unusual, 2014).
Nora is a serial entrepreneur, having founded a number of nonprofit social enterprises. She was founder of a unique collaboration of corporate, community and family foundations united to strengthen and diversify volunteerism in the United States. She also founded a groundbreaking enterprise that examined traditional notions of community service and taught a broad range of organizations to better engage volunteers. Early in her career, she served as executive director of a domestic violence organization, taught Spanish in an inner city school, and worked as a psychotherapist in private practice.
As an organizational consultant, Nora has worked with hundreds of organizations worldwide – including nonprofits, businesses, governments, foundations, and universities – on strategy and organizational development, cross-sector collaboration, community engagement, and board and executive development. Nora served as a senior trainer for the Peter F. Drucker Foundation.
Nora holds a Ph.D. in organizational and clinical psychology. She is the author of Telling the Whole Story: Voices of Ethnic Volunteers in America, and At The Heart: The New Volunteer Challenge to Community Agencies. She has also authored papers on multi-sector leadership, nonprofit networks, and next generation social sector leadership.