After a productive but short period as a consultant and coach working with nonprofit organizations and foundations and their leadership, I have a unique professional opportunity to serve as CEO of a start-up foundation. As a result, I have closed down my practice, and this week I began working with the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Ron entrusted the leadership of this new foundation to a small group of Vancouver community leaders, and they have turned to me to join them in a professional capacity. 

For many years I imagined that working within a foundation setting would be the ideal professional opportunity for me, especially one focused on issues and communities about which I am passionate.  With its focus on strengthening the Jewish community in the Lower Mainland and globally, and on contributing to social issues facing the broader community in the Lower Mainland, the Roadburg Foundation is a great fit.  I get to work closely with leadership with whom I have long and trusting relationships, and together to chart the path of this new philanthropic entity.   

Leah and I had considered moving back to Vancouver as we thought ahead to our retirement.  Now we will be there sooner, and it is a bittersweet transition.  We are excited to return to Vancouver and rekindle our many friendships and connections there.  But our daughters continue to build their lives here in New York City, almost all our family lives in the east, and we are leaving behind many old and new friends in New York.   

Thank you to all who have provided me counsel and encouragement this past year as I started to build my practice.  To those of you who demonstrated your trust and faith and engaged me to work with you, you have my deep appreciation.  We did good work together, and I learned tremendously from the opportunities you gave me. 

I first moved to Vancouver in 2002, six months after the 9/11 attacks. My mind was filled with thoughts about the nature of the United States, and the vision of its founders (I had just read David McCullough’s biography of John Adams weeks before the attacks).  I returned in 2013 to a United States that felt like it had lost its way.  Political and social polarization was ramping up, the health care financing system had become totally irrational, gaps between rich and poor were growing ever wider, and collective concern for the poor and vulnerable was waning.   

When I started my consulting practice I also started blogging, beginning with several posts sparked by reading Robert Putnam’s The Upswing.  That book seemed to crystalize for me both the diagnosis of the growing chasm in American society between haves and have nots, and the loss of collective spirit and will. 

I reacted in horror to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol and the blatant attempt to subvert a national election, and have grown only more saddened by our collective failure to overcome divisions and find common ground.  In the face of a global pandemic and economic crisis we failed to unite to face the challenges, and as a result many more Americans and people around the world have died and suffered than was necessary.  

If I left in 2002 as a proud American worried about the way our country had been attacked but ever committed to its ideals, I am leaving now with a much heavier heart.  I truly fear for the health and well-being of the United States.  And I am searching for signs of change and growth that would leave me more optimistic. 

Moving back to Canada at a moment when its federal government is weighing how to deal with a truckers’ blockade of Ottawa protesting health-related mandates, where some protesters are brandishing flags with swastikas, I am mindful that the issues of polarization and social fragmentation are hardly only American problems. They are, like the pandemic, global in nature and scope.  But they loom especially large right now in the US.

Working in philanthropy is an inherently optimistic thing to do.  It means you believe in making things better, in helping people, in overcoming challenges.  I am excited about the opportunity to ask fundamental questions about how to make the world a better place.  And hopefully to help find some answers.