Richard Greenwald is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Civic Innovation, Manhattan Institute. As part of the Manhattan Institute’s commitment to urban social entrepreneurial initiatives, Mr. Greenwald is assisting Newark Mayor, Cory Booker, and his team in designing and planning the implementation of a strategy to assist formerly incarcerated individuals and the chronically unemployed both in finding and retaining employment and in strengthening family ties. Until early 2007, Mr. Greenwald was the first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia-based Transitional Work Corporation (TWC) and served in that capacity for over eight years, starting in 1998. TWC leveraged its position as a partnership of state, municipal government and private philanthropic organizations and operated a nationally recognized work program, the largest of its kind in the country, which employed and prepared those out of work for private sector jobs, using the transitional jobs model. Under Mr. Greenwald’s leadership, TWC participated in a rigorous U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) evaluation led by MDRC.

For fifteen years, Mr. Greenwald has been addressing the complex economic development and human services issues facing unemployed people. He has done that as a Vice President at America Works—a New York City-based private company that places welfare recipients into the labor market, then at TWC, the Manhattan Institute, as well as serving on a HHS evaluation through Abt Associates of innovative strategies for improving self-sufficiency. Mr. Greenwald has built coalitions among the private, nonprofit, and public sectors in order to coordinate the resources needed to address the multifaceted needs of the unemployed and their families as they transition into the world of work. Mr. Greenwald has had the opportunity to take the experiences from the frontlines of local service delivery and communicate it to researchers and policy makers in the United States and abroad.

Mr. Greenwald has worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in information management in Washington, D.C. and in the Superfund Program in New York City. He also spent two years on Capitol Hill working for Albert Gore Jr. in the U.S Senate. Mr. Greenwald served on the National Transitional Jobs Network Steering Committee. And, he was a Member of the Board of the Philadelphia-based Matrix Research Institute, a research and training center focused on employment programs and policies targeting people with disabilities.

Mr. Greenwald is an Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, where he received a Masters Degree in Public Policy and Administration. He completed his Bachelors Degree at Connecticut College. Richard Greenwald was raised in Memphis and currently lives in Philadelphia.

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