Jay Ruderman

Early life and education

Jay Ruderman was born on March 16, 1966. He is the oldest of three siblings and attended public schools in Lynnfield, Massachusetts. He received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University, where he served as president of the student body in 1986-87. He earned his JD from Boston University School of Law in 1993.

Career

Ruderman began his career as Assistant District Attorney in Essex County, Massachusetts. He later worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), first as Deputy Director of the New England office and then as Leadership Director of the Jerusalem office. He served in the Israel Defense Forces as Liaison with the Jewish Diaspora. He has been President of the Ruderman Family Foundation since 2008.

Activist philanthropy

Ruderman built the Ruderman Family Foundation from a local foundation serving the Boston Jewish community to one with an international focus. His leadership seeks to change the priorities of society and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities in their communities.

The philanthropic strategy of the Foundation is to go narrow and deep. It focuses on a limited number of issues and works with the media to raise awareness of those issues in society.

The foundation maintains major partnerships with the Government of Israel and many national Jewish organizations in the U.S. and Israel. Key nonprofit and denominational partners include the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Union for Reform Judaism, Chabad Lubavitch, and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Signature programs of the foundation include the Ruderman Prize in Inclusion, which recognizes Jewish organizations around the world that serve as exemplars of disability inclusion. Twenty Ruderman Prizes have been awarded since 2012.

An additional signature program is the Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion, which has been given annually since 2013 to an individual for outstanding accomplishment in the field of disability inclusion. In 2013 the award was given to Michael Stein, co-founder and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability. In 2014 it was given to Ari Ne’eman, President and co-founder of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

The foundation brought delegations of members of Israel’s Knesset to the United States to expose them to the diversity of the U.S. Jewish community in 2011, 2012, and 2014. This was also instrumental in establishing the Knesset Caucus on Israel-U.S. Relations.

In 2013, with funding from the Foundation, Haifa University launched the Ruderman Program in American Jewish Studies, the only degree-granting program of its kind in Israel. In conjunction with the foundation's 2015 Inclusion Conference, the Israel Office has organized a national advocacy network of families and organizations promoting inclusion of people with disabilities.

The foundation created the ADVANCE Conference series in 2011, 2012, and 2013 to educate the Jewish funding community about the issue of disability inclusion. As a result of those meetings the Disability Peer Network was founded at the Jewish Funders Network by the Foundation and others.

In November 2015 in Boston, the foundation is convening 500 leaders and activists for the first-ever international Ruderman Inclusion Summit.

Op-eds

Ruderman has authored many opinion pieces on the issues of philanthropy, inclusion of people with disabilities and U.S. Jewry-Israel relations.

In a Huffington Post piece, Ruderman asked “When Will Disability Slurs End?” after a spate of derogatory terms were used in the public sphere. After the Boston Marathon bombing, he looked at those who were injured and became a person with a disability in an instant. After the United States Congress passed the ABLE Act, Ruderman co-authored an op-ed in The Hill with Rep. Gregg Harper about what the next steps are in order to level the playing field for people with disabilities.

In his piece "Oceans that Divide", he discusses the widening gap between how Israeli leaders view the U.S. Jewish community and how U.S. Jewry views Israel and how important a strong relationship between the two is critical to Israel’s survival.

In March 2015, Ruderman authored an op-ed about what billionaires and philanthropists owe the Jewish community. In October 2015, he followed that with a widely read piece urging nonprofits to not allow major donors to co-opt their mission and crowd out other stakeholders.

In April 2015, following the Germanwings airliner crash, Ruderman and colleague Jo Ann Simons co-authored an op-ed in CNN highlighting the wrongful stigma associated with mental illness.

With over 13,000 followers, Ruderman is one of a small group of foundation presidents who are active on Twitter. He discussed the reasons he engages on social media in a GrantCraft piece and in Nonprofit Quarterly, where he urged his fellow philanthropists to utilize Twitter. In the Chronicle of Philanthropy in October 2015, Ruderman argued for philanthropists to engage more hands-on in the causes they support, and to also use their resources to drive messaging and impact.

Interviews and quotes

Ruderman has been interviewed and quoted in many articles and different publications. In this Bloomberg Businessweek article, he is quoted discussing the potential cutting of U.S. aid to Israel.

In this wide ranging interview with Jewish News Service (JNS), Ruderman discusses the state of inclusion in the Jewish community, philanthropy and the relationship between U.S. Jewry and Israeli leaders.

Jay Ruderman, his wife Shira and his sister Sharon sat down with The Jewish Journal to discuss the roots of the foundation, their view on philanthropy and how the foundation is helping to transform the Jewish community.

In September 2015, The New York Times prominently featured Ruderman and the foundation in an article on how foundations can be run effectively by family members.

Board memberships

Awards to the Ruderman Family Foundation