Salma Muro, Chief Executive Officer
smuro@bgcn.orgSalma has been in the field of social work and youth development since 1995. After completing her masters in Social Work at Columbia University, she was invited to work with Boys Town. She began as a social worker and, over the next 10 years, held a range of leadership positions during which she oversaw programs and state sites, which included New Jersey. She has experience working with family-based programs, foster care, shelters, residential programs and literacy programs. Additionally, she has worked with evidence-based classroom and parenting training models serving at-risk populations in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Brooklyn, Nebraska and the South Ward of Newark. In her last role at Boys Town as the National Director of Operations, Salma worked with a national oversight team. In that capacity, she was responsible for overseeing 14 sites across the United States with budgets totaling over 42 million, including direct regional oversight of the California and New England expansion sites with budgets totaling over 15 million. While she was the Executive Site Director of the Philadelphia and Newark sites, their programs received national recognition and over 5 million dollars of funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) over a three-year period. Those programs were also selected out of thousands of juvenile justice intervention programs to participate in the National Institute of Justice three-year study on best-practice OJJDP gender-specific delinquency prevention programs for girls.
Cynthia M. Banks, Vice President of Operations
cbanks@bgcn.orgCynthia has served the Boys & Girls Clubs of Newark with distinction for 25 years and has held several key leadership roles. She began as a Unit Director and now serves as Vice President – Club Based Programs. Cynthia has taken great pride in watching the many accomplishments of Club members during her tenure. In 2006 she received the Herman S. Prescott Award from the Association of Boys & Girls Club Professionals Garden State Chapter for her work with women and minority professionals in the Movement. She was also named Ms. BGCN in 2009. Currently, Cynthia is on the Youth of the Year Committee for Boys & Girls Clubs in New Jersey, working with colleagues from across the state to develop the Youth of the Year candidates and training local staff for the Youth of the Year program.
Diana Zeller, Chief Financial Officer
dzeller@bgcn.orgA long-time employee, Diana has served BGCN with distinction since 1976. Diana rose through the ranks in the finance department to become the CFO in 2005. In addition to her responsibilities with BGCN, Diana also handles the finances and payroll for our Life Camp and the Branch Brook Park Alliance. In 2007, Diana created a system to track the percentage of time each employee is allocated to grants. This system has been instrumental in our recordkeeping and has been shared with other Clubs in the state. Diana was named a BGCN employee of the Year, and in 2006 Diana was recognized at BGCA’s Leadership Conference for 30 years of service.