NVR: What is the vision of the Wexner Foundation?

The Foundation’s mission is simple – to enhance and enrich Jewish leadership. Of course the term “Jewish leadership” is open to multiple interpretations. Part of our leadership education philosophy is to incorporate that important discussion into our programs.

NVR: The Wexner Israel Fellowship program brings a number of mid-career Israeli public officials to study at the Kennedy School at Harvard each year, can you tell us a little about how this program began, and why the program was created?

This program was the vision of our chair Leslie Wexner and it was designed to make sure that we were strengthening leadership in Israeli society. Most of our Israel fellows are Jewish but not all. I don’t know the mythology behind the founding of this program.

NVR: Can you tell us a little about your background in the Jewish world before you became the director of the Wexner Foundation?

Were there particular experiences that helped to shape how you approach your work at the foundation? I’ve always worked at pluralistic organizations that involved a large dose of informal Jewish education. My first job was as the director of a kosher food pantry in Los Angeles based at the JCC. Probably my most formative professional learning experience was as a faculty member at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute where I served with my father who was the director at the time. I’ve also worked at Jewish community centers. Before coming to the Wexner Foundation, I was the Executive Director of North Carolina Hillel in Chapel Hill, NC. Being part of the Hillel renaissance taught me a tremendous amount about pluralism, informal education and leadership (not to mention management and fund raising).

NVR: What ideas, books, people, etc. (Jewish and otherwise) have inspired you in your own work in the Jewish world?

Currently I am most inspired by the leadership thinkers Marty Linsky and Roger Schwarz. Both serve on our fellowship’s faculty and both have leadership world views that I tap into every day (and both have books that outline their thinking). I am also a voracious reader of Jewish literature but I don’t have one thinker that I most closely identify with.

NVR: What do you think the most pressing challenges will be for the next generation of Jewish leaders in the Diaspora?

I think that, more and more, we are challenged by what it means to support Israel and still value free speech and democracy. This has been a perennial issue but feels to me to be becoming a more urgent issue with each year. We need to train leaders who are able to facilitate this discussion and weave it into their work. In a similar vein, the challenges of emancipation are even more of an issue for Jews in America today. Finding a compelling and non-reactionary relevancy for Jews to invest themselves as Jews and in their Jewish communities is more difficult in this freest of societies. This touches on the cohesion of the Jewish community in general. In American liberal thinking, the differences in the multiple ways of being Jewish are so respected and stark that we need to find a meaningful and compelling common denominator. Finally, we need more passionate, intelligent, committed and thoughtful leaders – both professional and volunteer who are not afraid of having this conversation.

NVR: Looking ahead, what are your hopes and goals for the future of the various Wexner programs?

I think we have something good going at the Wexner Foundation. We essentially have created mini-laboratories for Jewish leadership. I hope that we will continue to maintain the quality that we have become known for and that means embracing change. We constantly hold the mirror up to ourselves and ask “how can we do this better?” My hopes and goals would be to continue asking that question and then acting on the answers.

Copyright 2010 The New Vilna Review