Wexner Heritage Alumni Profiles
Ted Einhorn, a Wexner Heritage alumnus from Cleveland, is the General Counsel of the NRP Group LLC, a privately held company that develops, builds and manages affordable housing developments nationwide. Prior to joining NRP, Ted worked as an attorney in private practice, specializing in real estate transactions and environmental law. Before attending law school, Ted worked as a Legislative Assistant to Congressman Peter Deutsch of Florida. Ted is a graduate of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland, Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut (where he was President of Hillel), and the Columbus School of Law of the Catholic University of America (where he was President of the Jewish Law Students Association).
Ted is an active member of the Jewish community in Cleveland, having served in numerous capacities at the Jewish Community Federation, including as a member of the Board of Trustees, a member of the Community Relations Committee, and as Chair of the Young Leadership Division. In 2006, Ted was the recipient of the Federation’s Bennett and Donna Yanowitz Young Leadership Award, the Federation’s highest leadership honor for members of the Jewish community under the age of 40. Ted has also served Congregation Shaarey Tikvah, in Beachwood, Ohio as a Trustee, as Chair of the Worship and Ritual Committee, and as Chair of the Membership Committee the Pardes School as a Trustee and Vice President, the Gross Schechter Day School as a Trustee and as Chair of the Education Committee’s Subcommittee on Egalitarian Practice, and the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland as a Trustee and as Chair of the Subcommittee on Israel Engagement. Ted lives in Beachwood, Ohio with his wife Amy, Director of Institutional Advancement at Gross Schechter Day School, and his children, Emily (9), Orly (6) and Kobi (4).
“The gift of participating in the Wexner Heritage Program and studying with the Wexner faculty taught me many lessons that have directly enhanced my volunteer work. As I studied with individuals from across the spectrum of the Jewish community, in terms of observance, identification and background, my eyes and ears were opened to a wide variety of approaches and solutions for issues facing the organizations I care about. As a result, I find myself more open to a variety of approaches to Jewish observance and identity and more accepting of ideas that may appear out of the mainstream, but actually represent the gradual change and response to change that has characterized the evolution of Jewish thought and practice over the centuries. As importantly, I have been exposed, through the faculty and my classmates, to different leadership, teaching and learning styles and have a better appreciation as to the impact these different styles can make on an organization’s activities. I am truly blessed to have participated in the Wexner Heritage Program. I have made new life-long friends, learned a tremendous amount and have grown personally in ways I did not anticipate when I began this journey.”
Lorin Fife, a Wexner Heritage alumnus from Los Angeles, retired from the practice of law in 1998 to focus more on family, art and community-oriented activities. Prior to his retirement, Mr. Fife served as senior vice president and general counsel of the SunAmerica Life Companies and as senior vice president and general counsel for regulatory affairs of SunAmerica Inc., a financial services holding company with approximately $110 billion in assets. During Mr. Fife’s tenure at SunAmerica, he worked closely with SunAmerica’s CEO, Eli Broad, whose dedication to community service helped to inspire Mr. Fife to take on personal challenges in this area. Prior to joining SunAmerica, he was associated with O’Melveny & Myers, a law firm headquartered in Los Angeles.
Mr. Fife has served as a Vice President and currently serves as Treasurer of the Jewish Community Foundation. He served for many years as Chairman of the Foundation’s Grants Committee and currently serves as Chairman of its Finance Committee. In addition, he serves on the Foundation’s Executive Committee and Board of Trustees, as well as a number of other Foundation committees and support organization boards. Mr. Fife also has served on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors, and co-chairs the Israel and Overseas Committee of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. In addition, he serves as the Los Angeles Chairman of the Federation’s internationally acclaimed Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership. He also serves on the national committee overseeing allocations of Israel Emergency Campaign funds raised by the United Jewish Communities during and after the recent war in Lebanon and served on the Los Angeles Allocations Committee for the Federation’s Jews in Crisis Campaign during the Second Intifada. A longtime member of the Federation’s Planning and Allocations Committee, Mr. Fife also served on the Blue Ribbon Task Force which helped to chart a new direction for the Federation, and chaired the Federation’s East Valley Task Force.
Mr. Fife also served his congregation, Adat Ari El, as President and as Chairman of the Board, and as Chairman of the Board of its Day School. In addition, he has served on the National Executive Committee and as the Los Angeles General Campaign chair for the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel; as a co-chair of the Regents of Camp Ramah in California and on Camp Ramah’s Board of Directors. An accomplished portrait and landscape artist, Mr. Fife has exhibited his oil, pastel and watercolor paintings in galleries in the Los Angeles area.
Mr. Fife graduated with merit from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Following his military service, he did post-graduate studies in business and economics at Tel Aviv University before earning his law degree from the University of Southern California. A native of the San Fernando Valley, he has been married to his wife Linda for over 30 years. Linda, an educational consultant working in the Jewish community, co-chaired Limmud L.A. and also has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Federation, and as a Vice President and member of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Federation’s Valley Alliance. In addition, she serves on the Camp Ramah and New Community Jewish High School boards of directors. She is a graduate of Syracuse University and has a Master’s Degree in Education from the American Jewish University. Early in their marriage, the Fifes spent two years living in Israel, where the older of their two sons was born.
Laura Lauder, a Wexner Heritage alumna from San Francisco, has held countless positions on the boards of nonprofit organizations, including the Jewish Community Federation and its $2.8B Endowment Fund Committee, where she chairs the Allocations Committee. She has also served on the boards of the Jewish Education Service of North America, the Jewish Funders Network and the National Public Radio Foundation. She and her husband Gary co-founded the Socrates Society of the Aspen Institute in 1996. She recently became a Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In the late 1990s, Laura chaired the capital campaign for the Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, which now houses nearly 400 students K-8, including her own children.
Laura is the founder of DeLeT, a fellowship that gives selected applicants access to a career in Day School teaching. The program is modeled on Laura’s experience in the Wexner Heritage Program.
She was awarded the San Francisco Bay Area Dinkelspiel Young Leadership Award in 1999, and the Jim Brooks Achievement Award in 2004. Also, she was named one of “10 Women to Watch” in 2004 by Jewish Woman magazine.
“I realized I had an opportunity – no, an obligation—to leverage my extraordinary experience using unique Wexner leadership development model. I had to help another group of much more important people: those who help us raise our Jewish children every day in the classroom: our Jewish Day School teachers. Thus, the Day School Leadership through Teaching initiative was born in 2001. And now, 7 years later, this program has trained and placed nearly 100 new day school teachers across the country. It was thanks to Les and Abigail for the inspiration and the opportunity for a spectacular Jewish education that led to this effort.”