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New CEO at Stamford JCC; Gary Lipman leaving for New York in Dec.

By Cindy Mindell

STAMFORD – Brian Kriftcher, president of the Stamford Jewish Community Center (JCC) recently announced the selection of Eric H. Koehler as the agency’s next CEO, effective in early January 2011. Koehler replaces Gary Lipman, who will be stepping down from his position at the end of November to assume a senior post at Jewish Community Center Association in New York.

A native of Lynn, Mass., Koehler grew up in nearby Marblehead, home of the JCC of the North Shore. His experience with the JCC movement started in childhood, when he attended a Jewish summer camp in Lynn every summer.
“My father grew up in a very modest financial background and the Jewish Federation in Marblehead once sent him to the summer camp in Lynn for two weeks,” Koehler says. “He’s always had a very strong feeling toward the Jewish community, so for him it was very important that I have the Jewish community experience that he didn’t have,”
That attitude influenced Koehler’s professional path. After earning a BA in psychology from Boston University and a master’s degree in counseling and psychological services and industrial organizational psychology from Salem State College, he joined the early childhood staff of the JCC of the North Shore in Marblehead, serving as director of Children, Youth and Family Services from 1991 to 2000.
From there, Koehler was appointed assistant executive director of the Weinstein JCC in Richmond, Va. He currently serves as executive director of the JCC of Northern Virginia, where he started as assistant executive director in 2005.
During his tenure at Northern Virginia, Koehler was instrumental in growing the agency’s budget from $3.5 million to $5.7 million, and significantly increased fundraising results. He was also responsible for implementing many new program and service initiatives, and enhanced the JCC’s community outreach efforts and partnerships. Under Koehler’s leadership, JCCNV hosted the 2008 JCC Maccabi ArtsFest, and improved the agency’s internal capacity through recruitment of esteemed lay leadership and professional staff.
“There have been many opportunities to bring a little more ‘ruach’ to the center,” Koehler says of his tenure. “Looking back over the last five years, I can see that the center is really in partnership with lay leaders and staff and is closer to its full potential. I’m really hoping to use those experiences to build on the outstanding work Gary Lipson has done with the board and staff at the Stamford JCC and help the center and continue to unleash its potential and the great work that’s been done there already.”
Koehler says that he is devoted to the JCC as a pluralistic institution – a place not only open to all but embracing everyone, regardless of their own level of personal religious observance. “Whether you’re a cultural Jew or a Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox Jew, the JCC can be a place that appeals to you because we have many different opportunities,” he says. “JCCs have a special obligation to make sure that there’s something for everyone.”
That’s the “Jewish” in JCC. The “C” or “community” part of the name reflects a place where all those who share family values can come together, Koehler says.
The longtime JCC director recognizes that the traditional role of the JCC has changed and is continuing to evolve. Historically, a Jewish federation would raise funds from the local community and allocate to the JCC, which would implement programs. Many Jews would make the choice to join the JCC out of a sense of obligation to support the central Jewish institution in town, Koehler says. But over the last two decades or so, JCC membership has become much more linked to personally meaningful programming.
The task of the CEO is to help the JCC play a central role in the community, Koehler says. And of course, he says, the old adage applies: “If your programs are really good, people will come.”
Comments? Email cindym@jewishledger.com.

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