Introducing the 2024 Cultural Hall of Fame Inductees

Professor/Psycho;ogist

David Berg is Emeritus Professor of the Psychology Department at Community College Of Philadelphia where he was the recipient of the Lindback Foundation Award for excellence in college teaching. He also served as past chair of the Behavioral Sciences Department. He received his Ph.D. from Temple University in Experimental Psychology and completed postdoctoral training in Family Systems Theory from Drexel University and Hahnemann Medical College. David maintained a private practice in Clinical Psychology for 30 years that served the population of South Philadelphia.

After his retirement from the college (47 years) and his private practice (30 years), he returned to Temple’s Ambler campus where he then studied and received a certificate in floral design; he has been a volunteer at the PHS Flower Show in Philly for several decades.

David has served on several boards of nonprofit community organizations, and is currently on the Board of The Little Shul in South Philadelphia with the goal to help bring worship services to the community at little or no cost. He has also been a yearly volunteer for the MS Society’s fundraiser for the City to Shore bicycle ride. Additionally, David has pioneered workshops focusing upon “wellness in the workplace” and has presented these to government, business, and educational institutions; also he has trained other psychologists to enable them to perform similar workshops. He has also served as a consultant to Wiley Publishers. Since the advent of computers, he has acted on a consulting basis to academic teaching faculty to bring them up to the cutting edge in using technology in the classroom.

Further, he currently serves on the American Psychological Association Division for the Society of the Teaching of Psychology. He has been a frequent presenter and participant at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP) conferences where he has presented invited workshops for college level faculty in utilizing technology and writing in the classroom to engage students, and mentor these issues for professional academics. He has been a long standing member of the American Psychological Association and the Pennsylvania Psychological Association as well as the South Philadelphia High School Alumni.

On a side note: David graduated from SPHS in 1965. While at Southern he served on many organizations as well as the tennis team though he never got to play but kept the bench warm. While in 10th grade in Dr. Arnold Giusini’s biology class, he won an award for growing the best mold and was featured in the Southern newspaper and South Philadelphia Review as “Mr. Mold”; he remains still proud of that title. In earnest, with the sponsorship of Dr. Giusini, David was a winner at the Delaware Valley Science Fair.

The award sent David and Dr. Giusini to Chicago for the 1963 National Youth Conference on the Atom. At his June 1965 graduation ceremony, David was the recipient of the South Philadelphia Alumni Association Scholarship for which he has been forever grateful.

We really wanted Elvis, but he will be appearing at the Deptford Mall so we are honoring David instead.

MASTER STORYTELLER

Charlotte Blake Alston is an internationally acclaimed storyteller, narrator and librettist who performs in venues throughout North America and abroad.

An artist who breathes life into traditional and contemporary stories from African and African American oral traditions, she has made multiple appearances at the Smithsonian Institution, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and numerous festivals around the country including the National Storytelling Festival, the National Festival of Black Storytelling and the Timpanogos Festival. She has been a presenter and featured artist at festivals in Ghana, South Africa, Ireland, Switzerland, Japan and more recently in Austria and Brazil. She has performed at both Presidential and Gubernatorial Inaugural festivities. She was one of two storytellers selected to perform at the weekend opening of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In 1991, Charlotte made her first appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The 2023-2024 season marks her 30th as the host of Sound All Around, The Philadelphia Orchestra’s preschool concerts and her 33srd as a host and narrator on the orchestra’s Family and School concerts. For 17 years, she was the featured host, storyteller, and narrator on the Carnegie Hall Family and School Concert series and performed as an artist for the Lincoln Center Insitute.

She has been commissioned to create both sung and narrative texts for Opera Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Opera North, the Commonwealth Youthchoirs and Singing City and has appeared as a narrator for numerous orchestras around the country including the Boston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony. Her narrative voice can be heard on documentaries aired on PBS. She is the narrative voice of Health Training Videos for Global Health Media.

Ms. Alston has received numerous honors and awards including the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the Commonwealth of PA Artist of the Year Award, the National Storytelling Network’s Circle of Excellence Award, the Zora Neale Hurston Award, two Best of Philly® awards and two honorary Ph.d’s.. In 2021 she was named the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Official Storyteller, Narrator and Host.

AUTHOR / STORYTELLER / POET

Phillip Giambri aka The Ancient Mariner left home at eighteen and never looked back. He’s seen and done what others dream of or fear. That’s how he lives and that’s what he writes. His 2022 memoir Good Boy, Bad Boy, A Better Man covers his life’s journey from South Philadelphia in the 40s to New York City’s East Village in the 70s. Phillip’s 2020 novelette The Amorous Adventures of Blondie and Boho is a story of love, survival, and gentrification in NYC’s East Village, and the chapbook Poems from an Unending Pandemic offers his perspective on New York City life during the COVID-19 pandemic. His 2017 chapbook Love Borne in Retrograde is a collection of love poems and erotica and the 2016 memoir Confessions of a Repeat Offender is a compilation of his performance stories and poems.

He produced and curated a popular monthly spoken word/poetry event, Rimes of The Ancient Mariner, was Associate Producer for the Off-Broadway production of Intrusion, as well as producing and curating collaborative staged events: Barflies & Broken Angels, The Losers Club, What the Hell Is Love? and Are You Dangerous?

Phillip was the 2022 Nassau County Poet Laureate Society poetry contest winner and a 2020 Acker Award recipient for Storytelling and Community Service. He was featured in the New York Times and was a poet headliner at the historic Club A in Bucharest, Romania. His work has appeared in From Somewhere to Nowhere: The End of the American Dream, Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of 100 Poets, Home Planet News, Sensitive Skin Magazine, and the prestigious Revista de traduceri literare (Review of Literary Translations -Bucharest, Romania) among others.

Phillip is a veteran of the US Navy Submarine Force (1959-1963), a life member of Veterans of Foreign Wars, The American Legion, International Submariners Association, and United States Submarine Veterans, Inc. He is also a member of Actor’s Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild.