The Anti-Defamation League has announced that Jonathan Greenblatt, a special assistant to President Obama, will succeed Abraham Foxman who is stepping down as the ADL’s national director this coming July.
“The unanimous choice of the 16-member succession committee is Jonathan A. Greenblatt, a social entrepreneur, government official and corporate executive with extensive experience in building socially conscious businesses and creating innovative public-private partnerships,” noted the ADL’s press release, issued on Thursday, Nov. 6.
Greenblatt, 43, has been the director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the White House Domestic Policy Council, where his portfolio includes national service, civic engagement, impact investing and social enterprise since 2011. He also worked in the Clinton White House and for the first Clinton presidential campaign.
After graduating from Tufts University, which is in Massachusetts, Greenblatt attended Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. One of his ventures was starting a bottled water company, but with a socially responsible theme.
Greenblatt also founded the Impact Economy Initiative at The Aspen Institute, which is funded in part by George Soros’s Open Society Institute. He is a Henry Crown Fellow at Aspen. He also served on the boards of Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, KaBOOM!, the Starbucks Foundation and water.org.
The grandson of a Holocaust survivor, Greenblatt is married to a Jewish refugee from Iran, Marjan Keypour Greenblatt.
“The threats that face our community today – including the expanding specter of global anti-Semitism, the continued legitimization of anti-Zionism, and the spreading infection of cyber-hate, are serious and sinister,” Greenblatt said Thursday.
“Fighting this scourge and advocating for the rights of all is not just an intellectual pursuit – it’s personal for me, a deeply held value, one that has been seared into my soul.”