User:Brandonpweiss/sandbox

Jay Kopel Guben is an entrepreneur and activist, focusing on innovation in social impact and education. During the 1960’s, Guben was involved primarily with the Civil Rights and Vietnam War resistance movements. Moving from activist to advocate for job creation and career-based education, through the 1970’s Guben played a key role in Philadelphia’s first restaurant renaissance. In addition to opening more than 10 restaurants, he founded The Restaurant School in 1973 with partners Tom Hunter, Hans Bachler, and Anita Simon. In 1981, he sold the School to Daniel Liberatoscioli, who had been a student in the School’s second class of graduates. In 1982, he started working with the Retail Clerks Union Local 1357 to save members’ jobs when A&P announced that it would close its stores in the Philadelphia region. That effort yielded several products: A&P reopened most of the stores under the Superfresh brand, members opened 3 of the closed stores as O&O Supermarkets , under worker cooperative ownership structures, and started the O&O Investment Fund , under the aegis of Local 1357, to insure that there would be opportunities in place for members faced with closings and job loss in the future. In addition to The Restaurant School, he was an initiator and co-founder of two charter schools in Pennsylvania: Freire Charter School in Philadelphia, PA and I-Lead Charter School in Reading, PA. Current work involves creating accessible and affordable healthful food choices and opportunities for students and their families under the aegis of Fresh Start Foods and starting up an Institute for Food and Social Justice.

Work
A lifelong social activist with a pragmatic entrepreneurial streak, Guben’s advocacy work started when he received his certificate from the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change at the Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland. PA. After receiving his Certificate in Conflict Management from the MLK Center, Guben joined the Centre for Community Studies at Temple University, tasked with managing the relationship between and interests of the university and the surrounding North Philadelphia community. Guben moved on from the Temple group to serving as a consultant for the Model Cities Initiative in the City of Cincinnati.

Guben’s focus thereafter was create educational and employment opportunities as a mechanism for social change. Restaurant openings were a satisfying start. But it was The Restaurant School that crystalized this purpose by creating an educational model that advanced career change, business growth and job creation. The projects that followed were variations on this theme: cooperative ownership as a vehicle for employment stability, charter schools for promotion of enlightened educational pedagogies, social enterprise to advance innovative solutions to community issues.

Restaurants

 * Aunt Sylvia’s Cheesecake
 * Les Ami
 * Morgans
 * Thursday, Friday, Saturday
 * Bogarts at The Latham Hotel
 * Set Table
 * Avanti Vincenzo’s Upstairs,Downstairs
 * Maxwells Prime

Schools

 * The Restaurant School (now The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College) – Initiator and Co-Founder, Philadelphia Pa 1974-1981
 * Freire Charter School, Philadelphia PA – Initiator and Founder, Philadelphia PA 1999-2004
 * I-Lead Charter School, Reading PA – Initiator and Co-Founder, Reading, PA 2008-2012

Socially Responsible Enterprises

 * GreyAreas: Urban affairs consultancy – specialists in project development and business management for innovative for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises.
 * The O&O Investment Fund: A not-for-profit business incubator and funding mechanism for worker owned and operated ventures; outgrowth of the A&P project.
 * Fresh Start Foods: Non-profit group that fosters healthy meals, job training, and community development - responsible for culinary and product development

Education
A lifelong learner, Dr. Guben earned his Doctorate of Philosophy from Union Institute, a Bachelor of Arts in Management from Saint Mary’s University, and a Pennsylvania Certificate in Conflict Management from the Martin Luther King School at Crozier Theological Seminary. Continuing training includes group process and experiential learning theory with Tavistock Institute, the study and knowledge of social and workplace systems with A. K. Rice Institute.