Cimone Sylver

Cimone Slyver (Philpotts)

Degree: 2022 PhD; 2013, MPA

Job Title: Program Manager, Christiana Care 

Cimone Philpotts (PhD '22, MPA '13) is a program manager for Christiana Care where she..... In 2022, she earned her doctorate in Urban Affairs and Public Policy program at the Biden School with specific research interests in race, gender, and education policy. After receiving her Economics degree from Spelman College where she began her research on the financing of urban public schools, she moved to Delaware to pursue her MPA and continue her research. 

Cimone started her public service career while at Spelman as a management analyst in the Department of Veteran Affairs in Atlanta, Georgia. For her capstone study in the Biden School's MPA program, her research looked at the urban school districts in Wilmington, Delaware, and found that the students in the public schools located in Wilmington – mostly black and Latino students and students from low socioeconomic status – perform significantly lower than their peers on state administered exams. Upon graduating, the governor commissioned the Wilmington Education Advisory Committee, now known as the Wilmington Education Implementation Commission or WEIC, to strengthen public education for Wilmington students. 

From the "outside," first as a legislative aide for Delaware State Senator and Majority Leader Margaret Rose Henry and then as the projects coordinator in the office of United States Senator Christopher Coons (D-Del.), Cimone stayed actively engaged with the developments of projects, organizations, task forces, and commissions with the goal of getting under-resourced students college and career ready. Now from the "inside," she is a member of the WEIC research team as a doctoral student, as well as a research assistant in the Institute for Public Administration, continuing the work of evaluating and defining equity in resources and resource allocation through her dissertation research. 

Cimone's experience in Dover and the community relationships she built during her time as a legislative aide prepared her to place as a semi-finalist for the 2015 Miss Delaware USA Contest. She was also listed as the youngest person on the Delaware Business Times"2015 40 Achievers Under 40" list, she was one of the first recipients of the Delaware Commission for Women's "She's On Her Way" Award, and recently she was awarded DAPA's 2018 Outstanding Student Public Service Award. 

Cimone volunteers her time with several organizations focused on providing resources and opportunities to disenfranchised and marginalized populations in the urban community. They include United Way of Delaware's Women in Action Mentoring Program, which organizes mentoring relationships and outreach efforts to engage women in the State of Delaware in increasing the literacy rates in the state, and the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Program, which brought Scholastics and My Very Own Library to the City of Wilmington and has provided 10 free new books to over 6,000 students for the past 2 years. She also serves as the Public Policy Co-Chair for the Delaware Chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women Inc., as the Secretary of the Delaware Chapter of the National Alumnae Association of Spelman College, and as the Vice President of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League Young Professionals. 

Cimone was a University Graduate Scholar in the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration. She served as a research assistant in both the Women's Leadership Development Program as well as the Conflict Resolution Program in the Institute for Public Administration, where she assisted in researching, planning, organizing, and presenting professional development training programs throughout the State of Delaware. She served as the Financial Director of the Black Graduate Student Association and the Treasurer of the Student Association of Policy and Administration. She was also a member of the Delaware Association for Public Administration and was selected as the 2012 Spring Student Spotlight in the DAPA Public Service Reader. She was a 2011 recipient of the Peter A. Larson Prize and a 2012 Professional Development Award that afforded her the opportunity to both travel abroad to Seoul, South Korea, and Costa Rica, as well as present her research to academics and professionals at conferences, such as the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management and the Northeast Conference on Public Administration.

Cimone's time spent as an MPA student and now as a doctoral student has given her once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to travel abroad to Seoul, South Korea; Costa Rica; Chennai, India; and Beijing, China, as well as across the nation to present her research at various public administration and policy conferences. However, the one thing that stands out as the best opportunity to have propelled her career in public administration as a transplant to Delaware was her time spent as a Legislative Fellow. It was the best experiential learning opportunity to kick-start her Delaware public service career and she highly recommends the program to individuals interested in a career in public administration.