Lois Weisberg was the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs in Chicago, Illinois from 1989 until January 2011. She founded the Chicago Cultural Center

Chicago Cultural Center

The Chicago Cultural Center, opened in 1897, is a Chicago Landmark building that houses the city's official reception venue where the Mayor of Chicago has welcomed Presidents and royalty, diplomats and community leaders. It is located in the Loop, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park...

 and Friends of the Park, and was responsible for the establishment of the renowned Gallery 37

Gallery 37

Gallery 37 is a job training program and was created in 1991 by Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs' Lois Weisberg and Maggie Daley, wife of the city's former mayor, Richard M. Daley. Its purpose is to attract artistically inclined city youth to work as apprentice artists at a vacant downtown...

 program, which gathered Chicago youths to a vacant block in downtown Chicago to make art; she also created the Taste of Chicago

Taste of Chicago

The Taste of Chicago is the world's largest food festival, held annually for ten days in Grant Park, in Chicago starting the Friday before the 4th of July and ending the Sunday after . The event is the largest festival in Chicago...

 festival, the Chicago Blues Festival

Chicago Blues Festival

The Chicago Blues Festival is an annual event held in June that features three days of performances by top-tier blues musicians, both old favorites and the up-and-coming. It is hosted by the City of Chicago Mayor's Office of Special Events, and always occurs in early June...

, the Chicago Gospel Festival, citywide neighborhood festivals, and the Chicago Holiday Sharing It Program. She launched Chicago's Cows on Parade exhibit, the first in the US.

Renowned for the breadth of her acquaintanceship as well as for an ability to make keen and canny introductions, Weisberg was declared a connector by journalist Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, CM is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He is currently based in New York City and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...

 in a January 11, 1999 New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

article titled "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg." The article is included in Ira Glass

Ira Glass

Ira Glass is an American public radio personality, and host and producer of the radio and television show This American Life.- Early life :...

' compilation The New Kings of Nonfiction. Portions of the article were republished in Gladwell's book The Tipping Point (2000).

She has won many civic and arts awards, including the League of Women Voters

League of Women Voters

The League of Women Voters is an American political organization founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman Catt during the last meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association approximately six months before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote...

 Civic Contribution Award, Governing Magazine

Governing Magazine

Governing is a national monthly magazine, edited and published since 1987 in Washington, D.C., whose subject area is state and local government in the United States. The magazine covers policy, politics and the management of government enterprises...

’s Public Official of the Year Award, the Harold Washington History Maker Award, and the Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

“Chicagoan of the Year” award.

Lois Weisberg is the mother of Slate

Slate (magazine)

Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...

magazine's Jacob Weisberg

Jacob Weisberg

Jacob Weisberg is an American political journalist, serving as editor-in-chief of Slate Group, a division of The Washington Post Company. Weisberg is also a Newsweek columnist. He served as the editor of Slate magazine for six years, until stepping down in June 2008...

.

Despite her long history of fundraising, in a 2009 interview with Chicago Life

Chicago Life

Chicago Life Magazine is a magazine included every other month in the Sunday edition of the New York Times in the Chicago area. Among its topics are politics, health, the arts, and style....

Magazine, she reported not always enjoying the process, stating "Even since I first started with the Shaw celebration in 1956, I’ve never really liked asking people for money. I don’t mind asking people for money for something I’m not involved with, and I bet a lot of people feel that way."

External links

• Malcolm Gladwell, Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg
• A Curriculum Vitae