On Location At Moxy Allentown Downtown
What does it mean to be exceptional? Look no further than Lehigh Valley Style magazine’s Influential Men of the Year. The six honorees in our 2025 class didn’t seek out the spotlight, but we’re shining it on them anyway. We believe the work they’re doing is worth celebrating. They’re making the Lehigh Valley a better place through the arts, advocacy, community outreach and a push for equity for all creatures, on two legs or four.
Al Jacobsen
Orchestral classics, blues, jazz, holiday pops and contemporary favorites: it’s happening on Allentown’s 6th Street, and Al Jacobsen is at the center of it all. Jacobsen was hired as executive director of the Allentown Symphony Association and Miller Symphony Hall in 2018. A native of New York, Jacobsen has held several positions in arts administration; prior to bringing his family to this side of Pennsylvania, he worked for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for many years.
In Allentown, he hit the ground running, digging into the association and hall’s shared mission of advancing education and community engagement initiatives. More people than ever before are enjoying the array of programs, concerts and events offered inside the hall’s hallowed walls; the Allentown Symphony Orchestra subscriber base has grown by 85 percent since Jacobsen arrived, which was no easy feat when you consider that there was a global health pandemic happening in the middle of his tenure. “It’s a matter of getting word out, and we’ve really made some good progress in that regard,” Jacobsen says.
Jacobsen has also helped grow the El Sistema program, which started in 2011 in partnership with the Allentown School District. Students in grades kindergarten through 12 are offered daily instrument lessons and choral instruction after school. “It’s very much a social empowerment program that uses music as the tool,” Jacobsen says. It’s now offered at four different sites in the Allentown district, but it attracts students from around the Lehigh Valley. During the last school year, a record 160 students took part in El Sistema. “Having exposure to instruments, whether it’s playing in an orchestra, or having exposure to concerts early on, is so important to develop an appreciation for this art form, this orchestral music which is the main part of our mission,” Jacobsen says.
Recently the Allentown Symphony staged its first “movies in concert” productions, with the orchestra playing live alongside two original Star Wars movies at the PPL Center. It’s a prime example of how Miller Symphony Hall, which marked its 125th anniversary in 2024, stays true to its roots while finding ways to attract new patrons. “This is a place for all ages and demographics,” Jacobsen says.
Hal Warner
Hal Warner makes his job sound easy: “It’s animals, right? Who doesn’t love animals?” In reality, though, his position as president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Humane Society entails a lot more than dog kisses and cat snuggles (although those are a nice perk).
He’s overseen both a major expansion and renovation of the shelter on Dixon Street in Allentown, transforming the space into a welcoming place for the animals who make their temporary home there, and the launch of the Community Vet Clinic, which provides affordable animal care to those who might otherwise not be able to afford it. “It’s really taken off for us,” Warner says. “We probably serve two to three thousand customers through our clinic every year now.” The goal is to keep animals with the owners who love them, rather than forcing those owners to surrender or even abandon their pets.
What Warner is most happy about, though, is the shelter’s save rate. When he came aboard more than seven years ago, that rate was only 60 percent, meaning the other 40 percent of animals was being euthanized. But now the save rate is 95 percent, one of the highest in the state. “We’re really proud of that,” says Warner. “It’s taken a lot of work to get there.”
Warner previously worked for the Allentown Rescue Mission and YMCA of Greater Brandywine. A common theme in his career is fighting for equity and trying to level the playing field for those playing from the margins, Warner says. In his current role, that means not only caring for the animals that end up on their doorstep, but also making pet ownership possible for anyone who wants to open their home to a furry (or not so furry) friend, regardless of income. “We don’t view ourselves as just an animal shelter or a vet clinic, we view ourselves as a community support organization,” says Warner.
Stephen Walker
Stephen Walker felt a little lost as a young adult, navigating the challenges of higher education and everything that came after with little money or guidance. “I didn’t know how impactful it was for networking and understanding my resume and job interview tips,” he says.
Now, as an academic coach for Student Support Services at Kutztown University (KU), Walker aims to be a guidepost for other students who find themselves in a similar situation. “It’s getting them comfortable and settled on the way in, and then on the way out, getting them used to networking and making connections so they can have a safe landing outside of the university,” says Walker.
In November of 2024, Walker was honored with the annual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Keepers of the Flame Award from Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education. It’s given to those who promote inclusive environments that cultivate a sense of belonging. KU says Walker is “intentional in providing and adopting inclusive practices to minimize individuals from feeling marginalized, isolated and discouraged.”
Walker (nickname: Nyce) is also an entrepreneur with a number of irons in the fire. He hosts a podcast with a former student, Luis Bardales Jr., called Empower 610. “Our motto is ‘empower minds, one episode at a time,’” Walker says. They talk personal development, business and hip-hop culture.
He’s also working on a book and closing in on his Doctor of Education degree while maintaining his own creative media studio, Nyce Visions LLC. In addition, Walker runs Nyce & Bryght, a brand he shares with his fiancée, Katosha Grays, who goes by the nickname Bryght. They organize community events and promote Black-owned businesses in the region through their Black Pages directory.
In all of his endeavors, Walker seeks to give more people a seat at the table. “If I have the chance to make things easier for other people, so they don’t have to struggle the way I struggled, I’m going to do it,” he says.
Yusuf Dahl
The odds were stacked against Yusuf Dahl when he was growing up impoverished in Milwaukee, WI. He was in the juvenile correction system by 14 years old; at 18 years old, he went to prison for more than five years for dealing drugs. After his release, as a Black man with a criminal record, he struggled to find substantial work, so he created his own opportunities, first in information technology and software development, then in real estate.
Grad school at Princeton University brought him east in 2015; two years after that, an opportunity with Lafayette College’s Dyer Center brought him to the Lehigh Valley, where he co-founded the Real Estate Lab in Allentown, an accelerated program for real estate entrepreneurs in the making.
Since 2022, Dahl has been working as the CEO of The Century Promise, a public/private partnership that builds career pathways for Allentown high school students. “I think their lives are going to be very different because they have access to opportunity,” Dahl says.
But even after all those successes, Dahl’s 25-year-old drug conviction can still come back to haunt him. While searching for a new place to live in 2022, he was denied housing under the Thurmond Amendment (named after the segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond), which was introduced in the 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act and strips federal housing protections from those who have been convicted of drug distribution. “That set me on a mission,” says Dahl.
It’s thanks in large part to his tenacity that there’s now a bill before Congress, called the Fair Future Act, that would repeal the Fair Housing Amendments Act. Senator Cory Booker and Congressman Maxwell Frost cited Dahl and his story as a catalyst for introducing the measure in September of 2024.
The Fair Future Act has been endorsed by the National Housing Law Project and other advocacy groups. Dahl says it’s a matter of not if, but when it’ll be on the president’s desk. “I know it’ll eventually get passed,” he says. “I just won’t stop until it does.”
Keith Lampman-Perlman
If you haven’t heard about all the good things ProJeCt of Easton is doing, you need to talk to Keith Lampman-Perlman. Touting the nonprofit’s many programs is part of his job as director of development, and it’s something he takes very seriously, whether he’s giving tours, wooing donors or talking up the successes of the center’s participants. “I call myself a one-man awareness campaign,” he says.
Lampman-Perlman, who has a wealth of experience in the world of nonprofits and fundraising, wasn’t looking to live or work in the Lehigh Valley when he answered a phone call from a number he didn’t know back in 2023. At the time, he was retired and living in Bucks County. But on the phone was an executive recruiter, and, as Lampman-Perlman tells it, one thing led to another, and six interviews later, he was working for ProJeCt of Easton. He didn’t know anyone in the Valley, but, as he says now, “Everyone is a new friend.”
ProJeCt of Easton’s overall mission is helping those who help themselves. That motto was a big selling point in convincing Lampman-Perlman that he wanted to work there: “I thought, ‘Wow, that’s how I try to live my life,’” he says. The center offers six programs dedicated to uplifting low-income, at-risk residents through education and community support, including English-as-a-second-language classes, a summer camp for students in the Easton Area School District, a certified pre-K program and a food pantry.
A particularly proud moment for Lampman-Perlman came last June, when ProJeCt held its graduation for the class of 2024 at Easton’s State Theatre. Among the graduates were 49 students who earned their GED, seven who mastered English as a second language, and 10 who became U.S. citizens. The Easton community cheered them on with signs and cowbells during their walk from the Fowler Literacy Center to the theater. It was a moment that helped to shine an even brighter spotlight on ProJeCt of Easton and expand its foundation of supporters. “When they embrace our mission as much as I do, that’s the joy I receive out of this position,” says Lampman-Perlman.
Khalfani Lassiter
Khalfani Lassiter is busy. On any given day, he’s a businessman being pulled in several different directions—car sales, property management and landscaping are among his endeavors. He’s also a mentor and a community activist with the anti-violence nonprofit Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley. “Sometimes people say, ‘How do you find time?’ I say, ‘I just make time,’” he explains.
And he makes the time because reaching out to young men who are in danger of traveling down the wrong path is of paramount importance to him. He faced his own challenges once upon a time but found his way back to a good place. “Now I want to reciprocate it back in the community,” he says.
Lassiter leads a mentorship group called Boys to Men, in which he works with older children and teenagers on life skills and education. There are field trips, too: a go-kart track, a water park, Hersheypark. “Every week I do different things with them to keep them engaged and show them there are positive people in the world,” he says.
Adult men are welcome in his King’s Court program, which Lassiter describes as a brotherhood, a judgement-free forum for seeking advice or just talking it out during tough times. The topics are many: fatherhood, character development and entrepreneurship, among them. Lassiter isn’t just a listening ear, though; he says he can count on the group when he is seeking support or counsel.
Lassiter is a big proponent of second chances, or even third, fourth or fifth chances. He is an advocate for those in the Lehigh Valley who were formerly incarcerated and are now committed to charting a new course outside of prison walls.
So yes, he’s busy. But it’s the best kind of busy. “As I help and I give back, I feel like God in return does something great for me to keep everything that I have going,” says Lassiter.
Published as “Lehigh Valley Style's Influential Men of the Year” in the February 2025 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
