Jerry Silverman Will Step Down As Federations Chief
(JTA) — Jerry Silverman will step down next year after 10 years as president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, the umbrella body of local community Jewish philanthropies.
Silverman announced his decision in an email Monday to colleagues. He said that after consulting with his family, he decided not to seek renewal of his contract after it ends in September 2019.
“I wholeheartedly plan to continue at my usual pace until September 2019. My decision is bittersweet,” he wrote. “However, as I have always stated, family comes first.” He is the father of five grown children.
Silverman came to JFNA in 2009 after serving as CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Camp. Prior to that he was an executive for various consumer brands, including serving as president of the Keds Corp.
JFNA serves as a coordinating body for 148 Jewish federations and 300 smaller “network” communities, claiming combined fundraising of more than $2 billion annually. The money is distributed to programs in Israel and Jewish social services and educational needs in North America and abroad.
Silverman said a CEO search could take more than a year.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO