Carolyn Silver
Carolyn Silver joined Futures and Options as Executive Director in May 2021. Prior to joining Futures and Options, Carolyn served as Legal Advocacy Director and then as Chief Program Officer of Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, a large multi-service Settlement House in New York City. During her 14 year tenure at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, she provided strategic vision and programmatic oversight, empowered interdisciplinary teams, coached and mentored staff, created and developed new areas of programming, spearheaded organizational efforts to improve outcome measurement and program evaluation, and worked collaboratively with myriad partners to ensure the highest quality of program operations. Carolyn is thrilled to be joining Futures and Options and is looking forward to continuing the organization’s dynamic programs, cultivating strategic opportunities for our City’s youth and business partners, and achieving operational excellence and sustainable growth.
Trained as an attorney, Carolyn has dedicated her career to the pursuit of social justice and has been a steady leader throughout New York City’s legal services community. Carolyn was awarded the Felix Fishman Award for Outstanding Advocacy on behalf of New York’s underserved communities in 2012 by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) and was a Harvard Law School Wasserstein Fellow in 2013. From 2018-2020, she served as Co-President of the Board of the New York State Legal Services Coalition. Earlier in her career, Carolyn clerked for United States District Court Judge Andre’ M. Davis, served as a Housing Attorney at the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania and represented employees in labor/employment matters with a civil rights firm in New York City.
Carolyn graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Tufts University with a BA in Social Psychology and graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Carolyn has also received a Certificate from Columbia Business School’s Senior Leaders Program for Nonprofit Professionals and a Certificate in Nonprofit Leadership from Baruch College.