Sallie A. Glickman is a civic entrepreneur dedicated to aligning expanded opportunities for individuals with the economic growth goals of companies, regions, and nations. She joined the Burning Glass Institute (BGI) in 2024 to lead the Comebacker Completion Initiative and continues to advance this work as a Senior Fellow. 

The Initiative builds on Sallie’s two decades of leadership in adult education and workforce innovation. In the early 2000s, she co-founded Graduate! Philadelphia, pioneering a cost-effective model to help adult “comebackers” return to college and earn degrees. From 2000 to 2023, she led The Graduate! Network, the national organization created to replicate and scale this approach. 

Before serving as CEO of The Graduate! Network, Sallie chaired its board (2012–2018). Earlier, she was the founding executive of the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, which she conceptualized and grew into a $6 million nonprofit aligning workforce skills with industry needs. In that role, she oversaw more than $100 million in annual public investments and launched multiple regional initiatives. In addition to Graduate! Philadelphia and The Graduate! Network, Sallie co-founded the Life Science Career Alliance, a regional - and later a statewide - initiative to address life science workforce challenges and the Job Opportunity Investment Network (JOIN), a fund to seed innovation in advancing low-skilled workers toward self-sufficiency. She launched Excel Philadelphia, which spotlighted the economic impact of low adult literacy and proposed actionable solutions. She shaped and was the primary spokesperson for A Tale of Two Cities, a landmark report in shaping Philadelphia’s inclusive economic mobility agenda. 

Sallie is also principal of SJM Consulting LLC, an independent practice she founded in 2010 serving government, corporate, foundation, education, and nonprofit clients. 

She holds a master’s degree in education and a bachelor’s degree in history from Temple University, completed two executive leadership programs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and earned certification in appreciative inquiry for strength-based leadership and innovation from Rutgers University.