VANITY FAIR NOMINATES ANN TISCH

Hall of Fame

BECAUSE 18 years ago Ann Rubenstein Tisch saw no obstato her dream of a public, single-sex school in Harlem, where 83 percent of the stuwere below the poverty line and some lived in homeless shelters or in foster care, BECAUSE, as she interviewed teenage mothers, she came to realize how much a real education could change lives, and she was troubled that there was no New York school that was effectively training young women from disenfranchised families, BECAUSE in 1996 she resisted the American Civil Liberties Union's objection to single-sex education, found space in an office building on 106th Street, and opened the Young Women's Leadership School (T.Y.W.L.S.).

BECAUSE this month Tisch will beam from the stage at the 11th graduation ceremony of T.Y.W.L.S. as the 63 members of the class of 2011 dance down the aisles in their white satin gowns, BECAUSE 100 percent of the school's graduates are accepted at colleges, and some have participated in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair or had their work shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, BECAUSE Tisch's vision of uniforms and Brearley-level homework and enrichment programs has morphed into a movement and spawned sister schools from Chicago to San Antonio, BECAUSE, as Tisch told last year's graduating class, "Ladies, I have an ambition for you ... of succeeding in life, a life that has love and is productive and has visions and dreams, a life that gives back. Please come back to us to mentor your little sisters....They need to know that they can accomplish what you have already done."

MARIE BRENNER