At the San Francisco-based Bureau of Jewish Education, Kerin Lieberman started out answering phones. She still does, except now she runs the place, too.
“When I was first working here, I think I was making $800 a month. It has gone up since then,” deadpanned Lieberman.
The BJE is honoring its longtime associate director on Tuesday, May 10, to mark her 30 years with the organization.
“I’m the first to be surprised that 30 years has gone by,” she said. “But, like everything else I do, if I really get into it, I have a tireless energy for something new.”
When Lieberman found out a night was being planned in her honor, she suggested it be turned into a BJE fund-raiser. Naturally, the drive raised a bundle: $52,000.
That’s typical of Lieberman, who has managed to make a lasting impression in Bay Area Jewish education while enjoying something of a behind-the-scenes position.
Perhaps her most well-known brainchild is the “Feast of Jewish Learning,” which she hatched up in the mid-1990s when then-new BJE Executive Director Bob Sherman told her to get creative.
The yearly festival of exhibits, lectures and brown-bag “Lunch & Learn” sessions throughout the Bay Area is now a local tradition, and, as fellow BJE staffers put it, “Kerin’s baby.”
Like teaching a child to ride a bike, Lieberman has nurtured a number of BJE institutions before handing them off to other leaders or even whole groups.
When she took over the BJE’s financial aid program for Jewish summer camps, roughly $12,000 was allotted for overnight camps only. Now nearly half a million dollars is available for camps, day schools and college students in both Israel and the United States.
Lieberman also has bequeathed the BJE’s fund-raising and marketing wings to others, who are running them at a level she could only have dreamed of in her early days here.
The 60-year-old Lieberman was born in Holland at the tail end of World War II, and her family fled to New Zealand before settling in New York. She arrived with her husband in San Francisco in the 1970s and landed her secretary position at the BJE through the Jewish Vocational Service. She jokes that the JVS has never placed in a job someone who has lasted so long.
Over the years, she found herself doing more and more for the organization, and she was named assistant director in 1985.
“The thing that continues to amaze me is her ability to keep learning new things. She’s constantly in a learning phase,” said Donna Chamberlain, the BJE’s finance manager for the past 19 years.
“At different times, headhunters have tried to hire her away, and I’m happy to say she’s decided to stay with the bureau,” Chamberlain said. “She’s so loving and understanding of individuals. She’s there for people’s births and deaths without intruding into their personal lives, yet still very much aware. We’re not just cogs in a machine.”
Lieberman said the secret of her longevity was her good co-workers. She thanked Sherman and noted that she was still in contact with “95 percent” of the people she’d ever worked with.
“I like the mentoring. I like working with the folks who report to me and seeing them grow,” she said.
“It’s been a mutual love affair, Kerin and the bureau.”