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September
/ october 2006:
The
Six Who Matter: Stephanie Stein
Health care fundraiser becomes money-machine for Israel, raising $10.5 million in one night.
Words by E.B. Solomont | Photograph by Rebecca Weiss
Stephanie Risa Stein was shopping at a trendy Manhattan clothing store recently when she was served up a reminder that anti-Semitism is alive and well in America. The blond, blue-eyed professional fundraiser was inside a store on Lexington Avenue, of all places, when she overheard a saleswoman scorn a Jewish customer. Immediately, Stein confronted the offender, and her manager.
But the incident still haunts her, and Stein recounts the story weeks later at a Manhattan coffee shop blocks away from her Upper East Side apartment. “I don’t know how this fits in,” she says, since ostensibly we have met to discuss her career in professional fundraising, and her recent shift from rallying support in health care circles to working for organizations that benefit Israel as the president of her own consulting group.
But the story meshes seamlessly with the 33-year-old woman sitting before me, who was the face of a Volunteers for Israel ad campaign, a volunteer in the Israeli army — and who, in her adult life, has worked for various causes to support Israel, in addition to visiting there 25 times, including 10 trips she’s led through the Jewish National Fund.
In her own words, Stein says she feels a larger plan gave her the opportunities, although the desire to help comes from deep within. “I have something in my belly to do this,” she says. “It wasn’t random. It all follows some kind of path.”
With a determined look in her eyes, Stein recalls being the first in her family to visit Israel when she was 16. The summer trip ignited her love of the holy land and simultaneously eclipsed the narrow experience of growing up Jewish on Long Island. Later, Stein would double major in Government and Near Eastern Studies with a concentration in Dance Composition at Cornell, and spend a semester at Tel Aviv University.
Her artistic family, which helped groom Stein as a dancer and actor, also instilled in her traditional, Conservative values, and a strong sense of morality. Her mother is a past president of Women’s American ORT, and her grandmother “gave me words of wisdom,” Stein says of her 91-year-old Nana. “Such as,” I prompt. “I don’t know, ‘Follow the dictates of your heart,’” she says.
Some would call Stein’s latest career move a dictate of the heart. With more than ten years of fundraising and development experience under her belt, last year she traded in her corporate health care job at the Hospital for Special Surgery, where she was the director of resource development, first to serve as the regional executive director of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and then to lead her own venture: The SRS Creative Group, Inc., an international consulting firm that specializes in fundraising and development for non-profits. And this month she and a business partner will launch Philanthropic Capital Advisors, a company which facilitates charitable giving to various organizations by untapped new donors.
Stein says a trip to Poland last year put her life in perspective. After the trip, “I felt this real yearning to get back to working with Jewish and Zionist groups,” she says. In no time, she was facilitating donations to Israeli organizations, specializing in major donor gifts. Her lead client is Nefesh B’Nefesh, which helps North Americans make aliyah.
Still, while remnants of her corporate life fill the table between us (a black blazer, her Treo, notes she brought to facilitate our interview), in the jazz-filled shop, Stein’s passion is more potent than her caffeinated drink.
Her fingers absently folding and refolding a napkin, Stein acknowledges that making aliyah may well be an option for her. “It seems like I’m on a path in that direction,” she says. (She has become nearly fluent in Hebrew thanks to twice-weekly Ulpan classes.) But “I also feel like I’m doing a lot of good work here,” she adds.
Case in point: raising $10.5 million in one night during a fundraiser for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.
Sitting in the safety of New York discussing Israel — which was in the throes of a violent war in Lebanon as we spoke — Stein’s timing seems flawless. “Without Israel, we can’t enjoy our life as Jews in a coffee shop in Manhattan,” she says.
Engaging an emerging generation of Israel supporters is critical, she says later in the conversation when I ask her to reflect on Israel’s acute needs during its current malaise.
A driven look — a smile, too — crosses her face, with her next remark about getting those who have never donated before to give. “Five minutes with me and they will,” she says.
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