Issue date: 7/10/08 Section: Campus

Northwestern University's Fiedler Hillel Center will welcome Lisa Kudish as executive director in August, Hillel Board of Directors Chairman Fred Marguiles announced in an e-mail July 3.

The appointment fills a vacancy left by former Hillel executive director Adam Simon, who left the post in June for a position at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. Simon joined Northwestern's Hillel in 2005, and in three years' time increased Hillel's budget from $200,000 to $700,000 and began Hillel's Ask Big Questions program, among other accomplishments.

Kudish comes to Northwestern with five years of experience as Director of Development and Communications for the Jewish Council for Youth Services in Chicago, Marguiles said. He called Kudish a "dynamic, warm and engaging professional."

The job opportunity came after Kudish returned to the United States from a Jewish Federation mission to Israel.

"I had the privilege of spending some time on an army base and realized that the front lines of the Jewish homeland were essentially college students," Kudish said. "The opportunity at Hillel and at Northwestern couldn't have surfaced at a better time in that it really resonated with me. The front lines of the future of the Jewish community are students, our next generation of leaders."

Kudish said she will emphasize the pillars of Hillel's programming that are important for students' personal growth, including education, arts and culture, social responsibility and social action.

"I am flattered, humbled, all of it," Kudish said. "I'm looking very forward to getting to know them better, to getting to know a great many students and giving them what they deserve in terms of the ultimate college experience, the ultimate Jewish experience."

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