Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

John Ruskay To Leave Top Spot at UJA-Federation

John Ruskay will be leaving his position as executive vice president and CEO of UJA-Federation of New York.

John Ruskay Image by getty images

The federation announced Ruskay’s departure on Tuesday. His last day as head of the nation’s largest federation will be on June 30, 2014.

Ruskay joined the federation in 1993 and has been CEO since 1999. In Ruskay’s time at the helm, UJA-Federation raised more than $2.7 billion and increased its endowment from $330 million to more than $860 million, according to the federation.

“I have been blessed to have a job that has enabled me to bring together three of my lifelong passions: my conviction that Judaism enhances life; my commitment to care for every being; and my belief in the value of community,” Ruskay said in a letter announcing his departure.

The search for Ruskay’s successor will be handled by the federation’s executive committee and guided by board chairwoman Alisa Doctoroff, the federation said.

Ruskay came to the federation from the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was vice chancellor. In the early 1980s, Ruskay was educational director of the 92nd Street Y on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and earned a doctorate in political science from Columbia University.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.