May 18, 2006

Putting Family First: How a Charity Founder Decided It Was Time to Step Down

By Yosef I. Abramowitz

"Is everything OK?" came the note from my friend's BlackBerry to my inbox. "Everyone is worried about you."

Only minutes before, the charity I'd been running for the past decade — Jewish Family & Life — had sent out the news that I was going to be stepping down as its CEO in the fall.

"Everything is great," I wrote back. "Zamir just came home."

Zamir is my fifth child, a 4-year-old AIDS orphan whom my wife, Susan, and I adopted from Ethiopia.

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