Mark Goldsmith
GOSO Founder and CEO Emeritus
GOSO is proud to present our 2024 Visionary Award to founder and CEO Emeritus, Mark “MG ” Goldsmith, for his unwavering pledge to legal system-involved New Yorkers and his commitment to GOSO’s participants and mission.
An in-demand executive in the cosmetics industry for more than 35 years, Mark L. Goldsmith rose through the ranks at companies like Revlon, Yves St. Laurent, Shiseido, and Almay before starting his own company specializing in buying and selling commodities and inventories in the cosmetics industry. A civic-minded businessman, Goldsmith first visited Rikers Island over 20 years ago, as a volunteer for the “Principal for the Day” program at Horizon Academy, the jail’s high school. He saw in the young men assembled the potential for success, given practical direction and, crucially, the tools and resources for creating stability in their lives upon reentry into their communities.
Goldsmith continued to use his experience and successes in the corporate world to mentor young men who had been incarcerated and were justice-involved. He built GOSO from a volunteer mentorship program to a robust reentry and workforce development organization that helps young people achieve educational goals and jobs that lead to careers.
In the close to 20 years that Goldsmith ran GOSO, the organization helped close to 1,000 young men a year, and the recidivism rate was consistently under 15%, compared to the national average of 52% for individuals 24 years and younger. Now aged 87, Goldsmith regularly receives updates and even Father’s Day cards from many of the young men he mentored.
In recognition of his work and commitment to helping young people stay out of the criminal justice system, Goldsmith was awarded the Encore.org Purpose Prize as well as a Richard Cornuelle Award for Social Leadership. In 2017, he also attended the White House summit on Reentry Services, where GOSO’s results were a factor in the president’s signing of the bi-partisan First Step Act for criminal justice reform. GOSO was also commended as a program to be replicated throughout the U.S.
Learn more about this year’s gala, and find sponsorship and ticket information, here.