SARA PRESLER: A PASSION FOR SERVICE
At 33 Sara Presler has held more high-level jobs than most people do in a lifetime. She’s been a public defender specializing in children’s and family issues. She recently finished serving two terms as mayor of Flagstaff. She’s also practiced law privately, and last December she was chosen to head the Maricopa County Medical Society, a nonprofit physicians’ association.
Presler’s different jobs don’t seem, at first glance, to have much in common: mayor, public defender, private corporate lawyer, children’s advocate, CEO. But Presler has another perspective. “Even though I move from one environment, like serving as an attorney, being mayor and now this position (CEO of MCMS), I’m not interested in climbing a ladder. I want to take opportunities like this and use them to serve the communal good. I believe to my core in living a life that matters,” she continues. “I believe I’m called to serve, not just my community, but in the areas I’m needed most.”
The Maricopa County Medical Society was founded 121 years ago, before Arizona became a state. “The Society is designed to increase professional, philanthropic and educational opportunities for physicians in Maricopa County,” Presler explains. “We serve not only our member physicians, but all physicians, by making sure they have a critical voice on health care issues. One individual doctor can’t advocate as effectively as when a group of doctors organize collectively. Other stakeholders –
policy makers, regulators and special interest groups – often end up making decisions for doctors and their patients. We advocate for the doctor/patient relationship.”
Six months before the MCMS recruited her, Presler ended a four-year stint as mayor of Flagstaff. In her early work as a public defender, Presler was intimately involved with the justice system and government regulations. “I realized the face of government doesn’t look like me or talk like me as much as it should. That’s why I ran for mayor,” she says. “If you told me in 2000 I’d be elected the first woman and the youngest person to be mayor of Flagstaff, I’d have said you have the wrong person,” she chuckles. Nonetheless, Presler threw herself wholeheartedly into the challenges of holding public office. “I loved being mayor of Flagstaff,” says Presler.
Presler wasn’t raised in a Jewishly observant home, but her parents emphasized study, the importance of family ties and the need to serve one’s community. Presler may not have grown up with the term tikkun olam, but she believes her life is a demonstration of repairing the world. “My career path is unusual, I admit,” she says. “It’s a journey, not a destination. If someone wants to change the direction of their career, I would remind people that they are created for a greater purpose than themselves. I encourage everyone to do the work and live the life that best represents who they are and what they believe.”
AMY HIRSHBERG LEDERMAN: “If You Love Grapes, Make Wine.”
Like Sara Presler, Amy Hirshberg Lederman has worn many professional hats. Today she’s best known as an award-winning author and nationally syndicated columnist. Lederman has published stories in many of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Jewish Stories from Heaven and Earth and Not What I Expected: The Unpredictable Road from Womanhood to Motherhood.
From 1980 to 1994 Lederman practiced real estate and corporate law. During those years, she was also the assistant North American director of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School and the director of the Department of Jewish Education and Identity for the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. Today, Lederman stays involved with Jewish education, teaching courses on Jewish spirituality, ethics, law and literature.
Lederman is also the Legacy Consultant for the Southern Arizona Jewish Community Foundation. “Life’s paths are not linear,” declares Lederman. “They are of your own making. I’m a perpetual life learner, so it didn’t discourage me to think I’d have to learn a lot of new things as I contemplated a new career. I’m also a natural risk taker, so I wasn’t worried about giving up professional and income security.” Major changes in income and lifestyle are often significant obstacles for people contemplating new careers, and Lederman acknowledges the importance of having her husband’s financial and emotional support as she made the transition from lawyer to writer. “There’s no way I could have accomplished this without my husband’s support,” she says. “We made a lot of choices about reducing our financial burdens. At one point, my income went from six figures to six dollars.”
Lederman describes her family as “interfaith,” although in her case she means half Sephardic, half Ashkenazi. “My family was very secular. We had the Maxwell House seders and candles on Hanukkah, but most of my awareness of Judaism was gastronomical and cultural. I began exploring religion in college, and I relish the richness of my two traditions. Ashkenaz meets Sepharad makes for very different kinds of conversations.” Several of Lederman’s personal essays and memoirs trace the history of her diverse family, particularly her mother’s Turkish Sephardic ancestors.
The one constant in Lederman’s professional life has been her desire to form mutually supportive relationships with people. “The longer I practiced law, the more it became clear that what inspires and motivates me is being able to be in meaningful, nurturing relationships with others,” she explains. “In law, success is defined by adversarial relationships: somebody wins and somebody loses. I was good at practicing law and I gained valuable skills, but it wasn’t a reflection of who I was or what motivated me.”Lederman sees her job as a legacy consultant “as a synthesis between the legal part of me and the Jewish storyteller part. I ask people to tell me their life stories, their values and what’s important for them. Using that information, I help them create endowments, charitable gift annuities or other vehicles for meaningful giving, both while they’re still alive and after they die.”
“At this point in my life, all the things I do at work reflect my values outside of work,” she continues. “I feel really privileged to do the work I do.” amyhirshberglederman.com
LARRY COHEN: Self-Described Risk Taker
When it comes to Jewish federation professionals, Larry Cohen’s career stands out: At 38, he was one of the youngest executive directors ever hired when he was recruited by the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix in 1980. In 2005 Phoenix’s Jewish community asked Cohen to head the federation again, this time as a volunteer chair.
“No other president of a federation in the country had ever come back to work as a volunteer chair,” says Cohen, with pride. “I’d developed all these skills when I was
there the first time, and I knew the workplace culture, how budgets worked and what to expect from the staff.”
Today, Cohen is “mostly” retired, after 25 years managing real estate investment funds. When he started his financial career in 1987,at E.F. Hutton, Cohenspecialized in a then little-known investment market known as illiquid securities (securities that cannot be traded on public stock exchanges), particularly real estate investments trusts, or REITs. “There weren’t more than three or four people in the country doing this kind of investment work
when I started,” says Cohen. In his new career, Cohen found several uses for his nonprofit skills. “Building consensus and facilitating negotiations have served me well,” says Cohen. “When I’m working with a mutual fund, we have lots of lawyers and accountants around the table who may have different agendas. That’s where consensus building comes in. As a federation CEO, when I sat with Orthodox and Reform Jews who wanted to spend our money on different things – more education versus more activities, for example – I learned how to build common accord among them, which allowed everyone to walk out of the meeting thinking they were a winner.”
Cohen grew up at his local JCC, in the tight-knit Jewish community of Youngstown, OH. “During high school I played basketball there; summers I was a camp counselor. The JCC was the center of my social life, and that was true for most of the Jewish kids in Youngstown.” After college, Cohen earned his master’s
degree in community organization, while he worked at the Pittsburgh Jewish Federation. He later worked in a number ofaJewish federations, first in his hometown and later in Richmond,VA; Kansas City, MO; and finally Houston, before he moved to Phoenix.
Cohen is a self-described risk-taker and is “a bit too impatient,” which accounts for his move away from federation work in 1987. “I like change, and it was time. If you’re in a position for seven years, it’s fulfilling to move on and do something else. I couldn’t stay in one job for my whole career; it’s not who I am.” When asked what advice he would offer someone contemplating a mid-life career change, Cohen laughs. “I’d tell them to be careful and know what they’re going into, but I didn’t do
that.” On a more serious note, he says, “You can’t take all your successes with you from your first career into your second. You may have been the greatest salesman in the world, but if you then become a lawyer, no one in your firm cares about your sales credentials. You have to start all over. It can be a bit humbling.” TheREITAdvisor.com
TANIA KATAN: PRODUCER OF SHENANIGANS
After years of freelancing, author, playwright and comedian Tania Katan has transformed her singular skills and experiences into a regular job. Last year
Katan was hired by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art to coordinate programs for its SMoCA Lounge. “The director of the museum, Tim Rodgers, converted one of the galleries into a multi-use space for watching films, live performances, even a no-host bar,” Katan explains. But what to do with the space? Enter Katan.
“My unofficial title is producer of shenanigans, and my official title is SMoCA lounge program coordinator,” Katan explains. “I’m interested in breaking down the real or perceived hierarchy that happens within museums; that is, people who are privileged or educated can access museums, while other people can’t or don’t.” Katan’s programs are designed to appeal to a wide variety of people, both confirmed museum-goers and folks who’ve never been inside a museum before Katan’s programs are definitely outside the box, even a contemporary art box. In just one year she’s created several events that double as fundraisers,
including Arm Wrestling for Art. “Imagine it,” says Katan. “For $10 per person, you get to arm wrestle, trash-talk, scream and have a chance to win a piece of
art.” What’s not to like?
Katan also started the Lit Lounge, where writers and performers tell true stories, accompanied by live music. “I got the idea from Sit ’n’ Spin at Comedy Central Stage in Los Angeles. Once a month, we bring talented musicians in front of an audience to share the stage with writers, performers and
bestselling authors. We always sell out.” All money raised goes to fund another of Katan’s projects, the Good ’n’ Plenty Artist Grant, which Katan describes as “a
community-generated grant to support the projects of innovative art makers, wisecrackers and trailblazers based in Arizona.” SMoCA solicits proposals from artists and selects six finalists, who present their ideas to a live audience, which then chooses the winner. Katan’s relationship with her half-Sephardic, half-Ashkenazi
ancestry is complicated by both history and biology. “All my family was literally involved in the Holocaust; there are some very real stories about survival,” says Katan.
She also carries a biological inheritance from her Ashkenazi father’s side: the BRCA1 gene, which causes breast cancer. Katan’s strongest sense of Jewish identity comes from the gene. “The one time I consciously think that I’m Jewish is in relation to that gene,” she admits. “As a carrier, I realize I’m also talking about my cultural heritage when I talk about my DNA.” (Katan was first diagnosed at 21; after a partial mastectomy, her cancer returned 10 years later. She wrote about these experiences in her book, My One-Night Stand with Cancer, which she later adapted into a one-woman show, “Saving Tania’s Privates.”)
Katan says the most effective thing she’s done in transitioning from freelancing to regular employment was to look for a job that would allow her to use the skills she already had. “Don’t look for a job totally outside your field,” she advises. “It’s very hard to make those kinds of major about-faces. Don’t cram yourself into a space you don’t belong; instead, find work that makes sense for you and go for it.”
taniakatan.com
