Career
She was profiled by writer Malcolm Gladwell in a New Yorker essay, "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg". Gladwell, who called Weisberg a "connector" and included the essay about her in his book The Tipping Point, asked: "She’s a grandmother, she lives in a big house in Chicago, and you’ve never heard of her. Does she run the world?"
Weisberg was appointed by Mayor Harold Washington to head the city" General’ s Office of Event Planning in 1983.
She helped establish the Gallery 37 program, which gathered Chicago youths to a vacant block in downtown Chicago to make art
She also created the Chicago Blues Festival, the Chicago Gospel Festival, multiple citywide neighborhood festivals and the Chicago Holiday Sharing lieutenant Program. She launched Chicago"s Cows on Parade exhibit, the first in the United States. Before her appointment to city government, she helped found the Chicago Cultural Center and Friends of the Park.
Lois Weisberg was the mother of four children, among them Slate magazine"s Jacob Weisberg and former Central Intelligence Agency agent turned television writer-producer Joe Weisberg. In a 2009 interview with Chicago Life, she reported not always enjoying the process of fundraising, "Even since I first started with the Shaw celebration in 1956, I’ve never really liked asking people for money.
I don’t mind asking people for money for something I’m not involved with, and I bet a lot of people feel that way.".