Like nonprofits everywhere, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation is working hard to develop the next generation of leaders. Here are profiles on two such volunteers who are stepping up.
Michael Feldman
“Fundraising is my shtick,” says Michael Feldman.
Perhaps that’s why, since joining the board of the federation’s Young Adults Division in 2002, he has chaired the federation’s Major Gifts Campaign three times and has played an important role in a variety of fundraising activities.
In 2008, Feldman was recognized by the federation with the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award, given to an outstanding young leader under 40.
When queried on the topic of asking for money, Feldman replies, “Other people hate it. They’re uncomfortable. But I enjoy it. And often it leads to interesting conversations with interesting people.”
Feldman, 42, grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in a “federation family.” It was a tight-knit Jewish community, and at one time the Jewish Federation of Cleveland had one of the highest per capita giving levels of any federation, he recalls. Simply by following his dad’s lead, Feldman was instilled with a commitment to federation and to the Jewish community.
Being part of a community is one of the motivations for Feldman’s involvement. The other is his core belief that everyone is indebted to others for the lives they lead today.
“I really do believe that every Jew in this country came from somewhere else where the conditions weren’t so good,” he says. “The reason they got here is because someone else helped them. It’s our responsibility to recognize that, and honor it by continuing to do the same.”
Feldman is married, the father of a son and daughter, and is a partner in a real estate firm. He serves on the federation’s board of trustees and its Strategic Advisory Committee, and is a participant in the Wexner Heritage program, a national leadership development initiative.
If he had a wish list for the federation, he says, it would include increasing the number of people who understand its importance.
“To have a positive impact on someone else, to feel you’re making a difference, it makes you feel good,” he says.
Tanya Kaminsky
Tanya Kaminsky isn’t opposed to having a good time.
But when a YAD officer chatted her up at the group’s Blue Monday happy hour about coming to events more often, she told him she had something else in mind: She wanted to use the skills she had achieved through schooling and her career to give back to the community that had given so much to her family.
That was two years ago. In July, Kaminsky will be handed the gavel as the new president of YAD. At 32, she’s come a long way since she left Iviv, Ukraine, with her family at 14 and immigrated to Pittsburgh.
When she arrived in the United States as a teen, Kaminsky couldn’t speak English and didn’t know anything about American culture.
“I didn’t even know what baseball was,” she says.
But her family knew that they wouldn’t be left on their own — thanks first to the help they received from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and then from the Jewish community in Pennsylvania.
Kaminsky, who is single, earned a degree in computer science from Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, then went for an MBA from Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. At Wells Fargo Bank where she works, she is responsible for the development and implementation of strategic growth initiatives within the small business segment.
Involvement in YAD and the federation has been an “amazing experience,” Kaminsky says.
“I enjoy being part of an organization that helps to connect young people and get them engaged,” she says.
And for her, talking about the value of federation is easy.
“I’m here today because of the help my family and I received 17 years ago.”