From the Executive Director
Rebecca Neuwirth
is Executive Director of Thanks To Scandinavia, an institute that awards scholarships to Scandinavian and Bulgarian students and educators in gratitude for efforts to rescue Jews during World War II. Thanks To Scandinavia is an institute of AJC as of 2001.
Rebecca also serves as Director of AJC's ACCESS initiative to bring a "new generation" of Jewish leadership into the work of the agency and, in parallel, to help prepare AJC to be able to engage and absorb that demographic successfully. Rebecca leads the NY ACCESS group and oversees ACCESS programs in eleven other major US cities.
Since she joined AJC in 1999, Rebecca has worked closely with AJC's executive director on issues of international priority for the Jewish community in the United States and worldwide, developing a focus on Germany and the Nordic countries.
She also worked on humanitarian relief following Hurricane Katharina on the Gulf Coast, the Kosovo refugee crisis in 2000, and the Turkish earthquake in 1999. Rebecca created an education and advocacy project, IKAR (Israel Knowledge, Advocacy and Responsibility), with then-Solomon Schechter High School of New York. The curriculum is online and has been used by educational institutions around the country.
Rebecca earned her bachelor's degree magna cum laude from Yale University and was chosen to be a member of Phi Beta Kappa. While in college, she served as editor-in-chief of The Yale Herald. After graduation, she was awarded a year research fellowship in Berlin from the German Academic Exchange Program, a Fulbright affiliate. She went on to complete at Master’s Degree at Berlin's Free University and translated a book by leading German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, which has since been published in English.
A New York native, Rebecca attended Stuyvesant High School. While in high school, she initiated a project to make the arts accessible to young people, which eventually became a non-profit organization known as High 5 Tickets to the Arts. She currently serves on its board. She has also participated in the Ronald S. Lauder Student Exchange Program in Austria, the first Young Jewish Leadership Diplomatic Seminar organized by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and the International Nahum Goldman Fellowship for Jewish leaders. She has written occasional articles in the international press, and co-authored the chapter on Scandinavia in the 2007 American Jewish Year Book.
Rebecca is married and is the proud mother of two little boys and one girl.
