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Janet Weisberg

Program Officer, Early Childhood Development and Social Services

Janet Weisberg, Program Officer, Early Childhood Development and Social Services, for The Raymond John Wean Foundation, is a certified public accountant and holds her master's degree in business administration.  Her working career has concentrated in management positions with nonprofit organizations.

She, however, describes her philosophy about people and their occupations in simple terms. "We all have a responsibility to leave the world a better place than we found it," Janet said.

Janet started with The Raymond John Wean Foundation in 2003 as the grants administrator. She moved to a program officer in 2007 to manage the Foundation's Early Childhood Development grant making focus. Janet works with the early childhood community to improve the quality of care for the Mahoning Valley’s youngest citizens. 

Her other focus is with social service agencies, working with them in a variety of ways to increase their programmatic and organizational capacity.

She also works to develop and maintain close contact with a broad cross-section of agencies, informal groups and leaders, both locally and state-wide, particularly those focusing on social services and early childhood development. A key reason for this contact is to help the philanthropic community to develop common agendas and educate state policy makers, especially in the area of social services and early childhood development.

Even after years of working with various nonprofits and social service agencies, Janet said she is still "amazed" at the commitment of the people of the Mahoning Valley to make the community better "especially for those in difficult situations."

Janet said, "I think my role is to recognize the hard work of those committed folks. As I continually tell nonprofits: The easy problems have already been solved in the past; all we have left are the really hard problems.  As difficult as it is for nonprofits to raise funds, it is far more difficult for them to do the work that they do.  While the Foundation’s resources are critical, their work is clearly the important part of the picture."

Before joining The Raymond John Wean Foundation, Janet worked as the finance director as well as briefly serving as interim executive director of Northeast Ohio Legal Services in Youngstown.  She has also worked as a public accountant and briefly in education as a high school teacher. She earned a master's degree in business administration from Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and a bachelor's degree in secondary education from the University of Pittsburgh.

She has served on the boards of numerous community organizations, including the Eastgate Citizens Advisory Board, Coalition for Community Reinvestment, the Continuum of Care of Mahoning County, Akiva Academy, National Association of Community Development Loan Funds and the Good Food Coop.