Prior to starting The Center for Social Leadership, Tony Silard was a leadership development consultant who specialized in facilitating and presenting at leadership conferences for non-profit executives. Silard was named a Visionary of the Year in 2002 by The Visionaries, a public-service television show. He is currently being featured in a 30-minute PBS documentary that has already aired on television stations in over 40 U.S. states (video available upon request).
Tony founded and served for 8 years as Executive Director of Global Education Partnership (www.geponline.org), an international non-profit organization based in Washington D.C. with additional offices in Oakland, California, Kenya, Tanzania, Guatemala and Indonesia. Silard raised over $12 million dollars, developed 12 experiential education programs and managed a staff of 35 for Global Education Partnership, which provides business and job skills training to low-income youth around the world.
Over the last six years more than 2,000 executives have attended Silard’s three-day leadership conferences. Tony’s most recent work includes leadership conferences funded by the GE Foundation, the Irvine Foundation and USAID and attended by over 250 Executive Directors in Monterey, CA, New Delhi, India and Lusaka, Zambia. Silard has recently offered additional leadership conferences attended by organizational executives in Washington D.C. and Northern California. Silard’s conferences are unique in that he renders the line between leadership development and personal development indistinguishable. He notes that a Harvard study found that 85% of a leader’s success is attributable to personal character, and defines leadership as ‘the capacity to develop and sustain multiple key relationships toward a common purpose’.
Silard has received many awards for his work, including Harvard University's JFK School of Government’s most prestigious award, the Robert F. Kennedy Public Service Award. He also received the Echoing Green Public Service Award and Harvard’s Manuel Carballo Memorial Award. Tony was featured as a social change leader for the Presidential Summit for America’s Future and America’s Promise, and has been featured on MSNBC, Voice of America and over 100 television stations and newspapers across America. The documentary on his life and work was recently featured at the Pacific Film Festival.
