I am sure many people have experienced tragedies through our model of healthcare (and many have experienced miracles). Regardless of how one feels about our country’s healthcare system, it should be clear that excusing murder based on your alignment with a particular grievance would give license to others to excuse murders that align with their grievances of choice. How then, could we function as a civil society? I’ll give you the short answer: we could not.

Please do not join in the chorus of those suggesting that this one was “ok” because you think the health care system is broken. It is not ok.

Should Jews Walk Away From the Ivy League?

CNN recently published an article entitled, “Some Jewish Parents Rethink Elite Schools Amid Antisemitism Concerns on Campus.” (https://amp-cnn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/14/us/jewish-families-elite-schools-antisemitism/index.html). The article explores the decisions of some Jewish families who, aware of the rise of antisemitic incidents on US university campuses — especially those long considered to be America’s elite academic institutions — have begun to reconsider college options. Referring to antisemitic activities on elite university campuses in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7th attacks in Israel and Israel’s subsequent response, one parent said, “The shiny allure of an Ivy has been dulled by their administrative responses to the current conflict.” One consultant cited in the article notes Jewish students are steering away from schools such as Cornell, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard[1] and MIT. The primary concern related in the article is one of Jewish student safety at elite university campuses.

While many Jews have been concerned about antisemitism displayed on university campuses across the U.S. since October, 7th, the issue came to a head during the congressional testimonies of Liz Magill, Claudine Gay, and Sally Kornbluth, presidents of University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and MIT, respectively. The controversy surrounding their testimonies is by now well-known. The heart of the controversy is the unwillingness of these academic leaders to answer clearly and affirmatively that calls on their campus for genocide of Jews would constitute a violation of campus harassment and bullying policies. University of Pennsylvania’s president Magill has since resigned her post. Harvard’s governing body, the Harvard Corporation has reaffirmed its support for Claudine Gay, despite alumni uproar over her congressional testimony and, more recently, revelations about serious allegations of extensive plagiarism in her academic work. MIT’s board appears to continue support its president, despite extensive criticism of her behavior before Congress.

The best defense for these university presidents is that they have a difficult balance to maintain, ensuring freedom of speech is not squelched on their campuses, while also preserving a safe environment for their students. There is, after all, an armed conflict underway between Israel and Palestine that is the subject of significant global debate, both due to its historical context and the methods employed by Israel and Hamas. But for many — myself included, despite my natural inclination to defend even the most abhorrent free speech — it is hard to believe that calls for actual violence against any other minority group or citizens of any country would be protected by campus administration under the veil of free speech. For example, if students marched across campus calling for the genocide of their fellow Russian or Ukranian students in light of the conflict between their home countries, it strains credulity to believe such speech would be tolerated.

It is perfectly understandable that some Jewish students and families would be concerned about Ivy League campus environments. The concerns include physical safety, an unfriendly social environment, and academic bias. That said, the CNN article begs an important question: is the best response of Jewish students to not attend some of America’s elite institutions, including those in the Ivy League?

Throughout the last century, Jews were subject to systems that actively suppressed their ability to attend America’s elite universities (journalist Mark Oppenheimer’s podcast Gatecrashers covers this subject extensively). In 2022, Stanford University’s president publicly apologized on behalf of the university in response to a task force report revealing the university’s efforts to restrict Jewish student admission in the 1950s. Jews fought hard for acceptance into this prestigious academic world. In recent decades, as often noted — and frequently for not very Jewish-friendly reasons — Jewish Americans have largely thrived at these institutions and both civically and economically in the United States.

Should Jewish students walk away from the institutions in which they have thrived, and accept that these campuses are now unfriendly environs? The consultant cited in the CNN article noted that some Jewish students are looking to other top, but not Ivy League, schools, such as Vanderbilt, Emory, or Washington University, as alternatives. Perhaps one might consider that if America’s top Jewish students choose other schools, those schools would benefit and rise in stature over time, thus competing with the Ivy Leagues for prestige and academic resources. It may also be the case, as I have heard numerous times in recent weeks, that Ivy League schools are, because of their response (or lack of response) to campus antisemitism, already losing their prestige. Maybe in ten or twenty years, some other top tier institutions will be considered on par with or superior to the Ivy Leagues.

But one must be a realist. I believe the Ivy Leagues and other elite universities suffer from academic bias that has hurt the academic quality of these institutions in recent years. And it may be that in the short-term, some people, mostly Jewish Americans, will hold Ivy League schools in lower regard. I also believe that overall, Jewish students could suffer more for limiting their chance to attend schools such as Harvard, UPenn, Cornell, Columbia, and MIT. Just as has been the case in the last century, many future leaders in areas such as finance, industry, government, science, medicine, law, nonprofits, and academia will come from these institutions. That is not to suggest that the rise of other institutions, in America and abroad, will not dilute the influence these institutions and their alumni have. But the graduates of these schools will, for many years to come, continue to have some of the best opportunities to ascend to positions of leadership, in part because of their talent, in part because of the credibility conferred by their associations with these academic brands, and in part due to the networks built while attending the schools

The concerns of Jewish families — physical, social, and academic — are real and should be important considerations in selecting universities. I believe (at a minimum, I hope) the physical concerns will be short-term, and will be seriously addressed by university administrations. But the social and academic problems cannot be easily addressed through abandonment. Instead, they must be confronted head-on, and from the inside. Jewish students must be prepared to attend these universities and stand their ground, both socially and academically. It’s been said that universities should be places where students are kept physically safe, but intellectually unsafe. For far too long, many have accepted that universities should be socially and academically “safe spaces” for their students. It is not clear to me that the maintenance of such spaces is creating the sort of leaders our world needs, nor is it clear to me that such an environment is good for maintaining the intellectual rigor required for academic excellence.

Jewish Americans have thrived not in spite of the challenges we have confronted since waves of immigration brought us to the United States, but because of such challenges. Our children will be exposed to the discomfort of antisemitism outside of university environments. By confronting antisemitism on university campuses, they will not only make the university environments better, but also become better prepared to lead our world away from antisemitic ideas that follow us from generation to generation.

And, now, for the counterargument:

OK, so now I have made my case for Jewish students sticking with the Ivy Leagues and other elite universities. As a lawyer and a Jewish person I would be remiss in not stating both sides of the case. There is good reason Jews might choose to say, “enough is enough,” and abandon the Ivy League schools and other so-called elite universities that not only tolerate, but perhaps cultivate, an environment in which Jews are held in such low regard as to be unworthy of protection from calls for physical violence.

After all, was it not a Cornell professor who publicly celebrated the October 7th murder, rape and torture of Israeli civilians as “exhilarating” and “energizing?” A Columbia business professor made an impassioned public speech warning parents of students at America’s top universities that the schools “cannot protect your child” in response to perceived “cowardice” in his own university’s lack of condemnation of October 7th attacks and subsequent chants of support for the attacks on his campus. On Harvard’s campus, a Jewish student was recently surrounded, having his face covered with Palestinian keffiyeh scarves and his path blocked as fellow students shouted, “shame” in his face. The list of atrocious behavior could go on and on. And the descriptions of tepid responses from elite university’s could go on just as long.

Would it be wrong to decide that in America’s elite university campuses, the academic atmosphere is such that Jews have been deemed a group incapable of, or perhaps unworthy of, victim status, no matter the — to use a word put to use by Claudine Gay in her congressional testimony — context? That in what many perceive to be a prioritization of progressive politics over intellectual pursuit on such campuses, Jews have been assigned an “oppressor” role and therefore cannot get a fair shake? Having listened to the complaints of Jewish students in recent months, it would not a surprising conclusion.

If this is the state of the top American universities, why should Jewish students lend their intellectual capital? Why not deny these institutions the talent, the energy, and the chutzpah that has helped these institutions maintain their status and instead drive the success of academic institutions that plainly combat antisemitism and the ideologies that generate such discrimination?

Prior to World War II, Nazi policy and harassment and suppression of Jewish scientists resulted in a scientific brain drain that undermined the quality of German scientific advancement, especially in theoretical physics. In the last century, Jews have continued to excel in important areas. For example, Jewish mathematicians have won 27% of Fields Medals, 30% of Abel Prizes, and 40% of Wolf Prizes. People of Jewish descent make up 22% of the recipients of the Nobel Prize and Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between the years 1901 and 2023. These figures stand in stark contrast to the relative population of Jewish to global population (.2%) or to the U.S. population (just over 2%).

In other words, the case could be made that history shows the departure of Jewish students would be a greater loss for the Ivy Leagues and other elite institutions than it would be for the Jewish students. As journalist Bari Weiss recently stated in the Federalist Society’s Barbara K. Olson Memorial lecture, “If you study history and if you look at where Jews stand, for better and usually for worse, you will understand where a culture, where a country, where a civilization stands.” If the standing of Jews in elite university campuses is so poor, then perhaps — extrapolating Weiss’s elegant statement — the universities themselves are already in such a poor state that abandoning them would not be much of a sacrifice.

If Jewish professionals, once rejected in the prestigious banks and law firms of Wall Street, could build in the 20th century some of today’s most respected financial and legal powerhouses, why not do the same for universities that reject antisemitism and the ideas that foment antisemitism?

Jewish high school students and their families deciding on university goals now or in the near future have tough decisions to make. I would argue, however, that the problem confronting Jewish students is a problem confronting all high school students. If these globally revered institutions have permitted or cultivated environments in which Jewish students can no longer feel safe, what does it say about the state of these institutions overall? About the state of our culture, or of our nation?

The question is not simply to go or not to go to academic institutions festering with antisemitism. The question is whether to suffer the current university culture that enables such antisemitism, or to collectively combat the insidious ideas gripping university students and the someday alumni who will be our world’s future leaders.

[1] Two points: First, I am a graduate of Harvard Law School. As an alumnus of the university, I have struggled with the university’s response to certain student actions and statements since October 7th. Second, there is a difference between condemnation of Israeli policy and antisemitism. I do not confuse the two. I have criticized some Israeli policy. I regularly criticize some U.S. policy. When I address antisemitism, I am speaking specifically about behavior such as calls for genocide of Jews, about physical confrontation of or threats against Jewish students, and about attacks on Jewish institutions.

In this season of gratitude, I thought I might share a bit about the things for which I am grateful right now.

I am grateful for my family. Cliche, I know. But when I focus on gratitude, they are always what comes to mind first. My wife lives with my endless pursuit of new ideas, my procrastinations, my quirks, my sarcasm. She challenges me, daily, to do better, to be better. As frustrating as that can be, she does make me a better human being, husband, and father. She supports our children in ways that are completely differently than the way I do, or that I even can. I am grateful for the laughter we share, the moments when our eyes knowingly connect over an inside joke, and the memories we build together. My six children give me the kind of joy that is specific to parenting/child raising. Amidst the beautiful chaos, I get to experience life through them. Watching them react with glee to the smallest things, watching them trying things for the first time, and watching them learn and grow feels like more than just “watching.” It feels like I am experiencing these things with them. This is as true for my oldest (21 years old) as it is for my youngest (5 years old). Yes, I also feel pain with them, but I can live through that pain knowing the moments of joy will return. My parents are alive, each having overcome their share of health challenges. My mother is now in her 9th year of battling cancer and looks forward to many more years. My brother and sister-in-law just had a baby. We could not be happier, and having a baby around the family again is invigorating. My wife has given me extended family that has embraced me (most of the time!). While each of us tends to be biased toward the background/culture from which we came, I have learned to enjoy her family’s traditions, and they have learned to enjoy some of mine. And let’s not forget, our dog, a yellow lab with boundless energy. I complain about her neediness, but she never complains about mine. For that, I act ungratefully, but I am grateful.

I am grateful for the friends I have made who have become family. Family is not just made up of those who share our DNA, but includes those whom we accept and treat as part of our family tree.

I am grateful for my friends. As a Jewish person, this statement has taken on enhanced meaning this year. In my lifetime, it’s never been more important to us to know who our friends are. I have been conscious of the value of my friendships for a long time. I have some very close friends on whom I know I can rely, and they know they can rely on me. We share our triumphs, our burdens, our laughter and our tears. We have plenty of all of them, and that makes our lives full. Beyond that, I am fortunate to have layers of relationships that have been built over the years — people who check in on me, and I on them. Perhaps we are not all each other’s 3AM emergency phone call, but they are genuine friendships, and they make me feel connected and part of a community. That we may live in different cities, states, or even countries has not prevented us from maintaining that sense of connection. These relationships bring me warmth, intellectual stimulation, the ability to interact with a variety of perspectives, and just plain happiness. Thank you to each of you.

I am grateful for my colleagues. I am over-the-top lucky in this regard. I am fortunate to be surrounded by colleagues across the various companies with which I am affiliated who are highly intelligent, creative, ambitious, and most of all, supportive. Without them, I could never accomplish my business goals. They improve me daily, professionally and personally. It feels wrong to classify them as colleagues, because so many of them have become friends. Even when I have faced challenges, colleagues have stood with me. This year I faced one particular challenge during which I put integrity first, but did not get the outcome I desired. My colleagues never wavered in their support. We share our dreams, and we strive for them together. This includes many of the people who have been clients over the years. We have built friendships, and share updates about our lives and families. I include each of you in the universe of people for which I am grateful.

For each of the above people, I hope I earn what I receive from you with reciprocal love and support. Please know that I am grateful. You make my life richer, more interesting, and worth the roller coast that is the human experience.

Everything else is secondary. I am grateful for my home, but it is just a place. I am grateful for the nice things I buy from time to time, but they are largely expendable things. I am grateful that my family has the ability to travel and explore the world. I am grateful we have the means to eat well, to get access to good healthcare, to provide our children what they need to flourish, and to help others in need.

In short, I am grateful right now.

In October 2020, I wrote on the topic of Resilience and posted it to LinkedIn. The post was a message to people raising children, suggesting that resilience was a critical trait for children who will come of age in a rapidly changing world. Given the recent rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our global consciousness and fears about the negative consequences of AI, it seems the post is even more relevant today. The White House recently released an executive order on AI, attempting to strike a balance between ensuring we reap the benefits of AI, while mitigating against its inherent risks. The board of Open AI, arguably the most well-known AI organization, and the creator of large language model chatbot ChatGPT, recently removed its CEO, ostensibly due to concerns he was not placing sufficient focus on the risks of AI while quickly developing the technology. I do not sit in judgment of the pace of changes in our society, but instead wish to again suggest the cultivation and education of children in a manner that emphasizes the development of the tools needed to navigate a rapidly and perpetually shifting environment during their lifetimes. I have re-shared my previous post below:

After swim practice today, my seven year-old son said, “I didn’t win all the races. You wanted me to win all of them.” I replied, “I wanted you to try to win all of them. You did a great job — but do you understand why it’s important to try to win all of the races, even if you know you will lose some?” He shook his head.

It wasn’t an accident that the conversation was going this way. I’ve spent the last several days looking, struggling even, for a way to teach a certain lesson to my children, and I felt this was an opportunity. I continued, “When you lose, but you don’t give up, and instead you tell yourself you will do what it takes to succeed the next time, that’s called resilience. Even if you don’t win the next time, but you tell yourself over and over you will do what it takes to succeed the next time, and then follow-thru, that’s resilience. And that’s what I want you to do.”

I could tell he was processing, so I paused. “Do you understand what resilience is now?” He nodded, but I wanted to be sure. “Tell me.” He said, “It’s like when you try to do something, and you fail, you get back up again and you keep trying.” “Yes. That’s resilience.”

Resilience is an important lesson, but there was a very specific reason I am focused on resilience now. As I look ahead to the lives my children will live, I realize that the world in which they will live as adults will be radically different from the one in which I have lived the first 45 years of my life. Sure, the same could be said for the world my parents grew up in relative to the world I grew up in — the rise of the Internet by the time I was in college, and the proliferation of mobile communications ensured that. But as I’ve pointed out in several social media posts, citing a variety of authors and sources, the rate of change is accelerating as a result of a combination of forces. This accelerated change will have enormous consequences for our children.

While many of us benefited from a well-developed educational system nurturing us through our youth, our teens, and perhaps university and graduate school, the bulk of this education was informational in nature. In other words, the educational format was one in which we were largely the recipients of information from a teacher. This information imparted us with a knowledge advantage in some area, perhaps in geology, or in mathematics, or in the various bodies of information that make up the knowledge needed to practice physical therapy. Some of us, such as those of us who went to law school, had the benefit of being taught a certain critical thought process (for those of you who studied sciences, I am certain you would argue that learning to apply the scientific method does the same). Regardless of whatever critical thinking skills we may have had the opportunity to develop, however, it is unlikely that we have had to apply such critical thought to the particular form of personal, stressful, intensive demands that will face our children, nor with the frequency that the demands will confront them. For that, they will need additional learning.

Accelerated change will have real, significant, and difficult-to-manage consequences. We have already seen what happens when policies permit (or encourage) massive shifting of workforce demand, such as when manufacturers shifted jobs from expensive labor economies to cheap labor economies. We have also seen, although the shift was perhaps less easy to observe, what happens when technology renders even the cheap labor obsolete, as computer-managed manufacturing requires fewer and fewer humans to function. We are now at the precipice of an age in which artificial intelligence may render large swaths of human labor obsolete. Although lower-skilled labor is most imminently at risk, no segment of the economy is immune. Doctors, accountants, and yes even those of the venerated (ahem!) legal profession will find aspects of their value challenged by technology. What’s more — and this is the really tricky part — any effort by a motivated and able member of the workforce to retrain him or herself in a new, more valuable area of expertise may be quickly undermined by the next technological advancement, maybe over the span of just a few years. In such a world, many people in the workforce may find themselves constantly having to reinvent themselves to find some firm financial footing, and perhaps even existential footing, as it’s not hard to imagine one questioning the point of such an existence. While children may enjoy the challenge of running up an escalator, I can’t recall seeing too many adults indulging the practice.

None of the above even addresses the possibility that a rapidly changing climate may alter human living conditions at a pace hard to fathom. Climate changes — natural or human-induced — may cause enormous migrations, within and among nations. The combination of rapid workforce evolution, climate evolution and changes in living conditions and migrations patterns is sure to result in a domino effect leading to more rapid political change. To what form? I don’t know. We have witnessed the beginning of such change as globalism in many countries has given way to nationalism in recent years, and now nationalism is challenged as unworthy of the global problems it must address.

This may strike some as a Chicken Little view of the future. Is it possible that such concerns are unwarranted? It is — the sky may be firmly in place. But this view of the future likely suffers only from a failure of knowing the when, rather than getting it wrong about the if. Even if I am unable to guess the timing of such societal shifts, it’s hard to imagine that, given the current pace of technological and even ecological evolution, the future I envision is more than decades away rather than a century away. The ideas I present here are not novel. Two authors I frequently cite, Thomas Friedman and Yuval Noah Harari, have made arguments related to these topics far more eloquently and forcefully than I, and I owe much of the content here to their work.

I don’t write this piece to simply recite the ideas of those like Friedman or Harari, even as I stand on their shoulders in my thinking on these subjects. Instead, I write for a very practical purpose. I am the father of six children. Having considered deeply the rate of change today and ahead, I find myself struggling with knowing what wisdom to impart and what lessons to teach. I wish to engage myself and others in discussion of these issues to improve my own parenting.

When the adults in the room possess wisdom that’s built from the last fifty years of experience, but largely inapplicable to the next fifty, to whom should the children look? Author Adam Grant recently wrote a piece in the NY Times addressing this subject and offering some ideas. You can find it here. Of course, there are some important behavioral and value-based lessons we can and should teach. Lessons of character will not suddenly become outdated simply because Apple releases a new update to its iPhone/hovercraft in 2045. But life skills and career advice — the sort that is practical (e.g., “study STEM subjects,” or “become an engineer, there are always jobs for engineers”) rather than theoretical (e.g., “do what you love, and it will never feel like work”) — will be hard to give when the person giving the advice cannot even imagine the world ahead. Could one have imagined the job of freelance social media manager fifteen years ago? How about cryptocurrency developer (the average adult today likely could not begin to describe how cryptocurrency works)?

Various thinkers on the subjects addressed here have suggested the Four C’s of creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration as the most important skills children can develop to prepare for adulthood in the twenty-first century. These all seem reasonably valuable to me, and worthy of attention. But as I sat recently contemplating the idea that my children will confront frequent challenges I quite literally cannot imagine, I was overcome with something approaching fear. I then realized the uneasiness I felt would be something my children will likely often experience in the years ahead. For that, I can begin to prepare them. I am beginning that preparation with a lesson and an effort to induce the development of a valuable trait: resilience. Mental and physical resilience will allow my children to react soundly so they might deploy the other soft skills contained in the Four C’s, and any other skills appropriate to the challenges they face.

I will endeavor to develop other meaningful ideas about the traits most needed for the unimaginable decades ahead. As I do, I hope I will put whatever wisdom I’ve developed in the decades behind me to good use so that I may offer something of value toward the development of such traits in my children. Then, even if I cannot guide my children with precise advice about their futures, I will know I’ve prepared them to guide themselves. If I am lucky, that sort of parenting will never be obsolete.

Here are 5 predictions for how government will do business with tech & innovation companies in 2022:

1. We will see massive growth in delivery technologies such as delivery bots and delivery drones. Work From Home, combined with worker shortages, urban congestion, and a shifting consumer expectation for delivery overall will push demand for delivery tech through the roof. This in turn will place pressure at the local, state and federal levels for regulatory reform to support the services.
2. Computer vision technologies will work their way more deeply into govtech. Technologies that can monitor activity (e.g., traffic activity, pedestrian activity, space usage, etc.) and put useful decision-supporting information into the hands of managers will see high demand. The regulatory and political rub here will be balancing privacy concerns with the value of information.
3. AI, AI, AI. From monitoring and predicting everything from carbon outputs to traffic flows, artificial intelligence will become an integral part of government decision-making. Expect to see extensive use cases in energy, transit, healthcare and infrastructure. Here, a question may be what government officials do when AI recommendations conflict with constituent politics.
4. Smart Water. Sensor technologies such as those that apply computer vision/AI to manage water quality and usage at the utilities level and recreation/transportation activity in waterways are bubbling beneath the surface (apologies for the pun!). Perhaps 2022 is the year they pop up at a more significant level.
5. Crypto/Blockchain will solve government problems. A handful of cities are figuring out how to transact with cryptocurrencies as a signal that they are blockchain and crypto-friendly. That’s just the beginning. The proliferation of smart contracts and other blockchain-based applications will give rise to new solutions at the government level, from citizen engagement tools to financial interaction tools and applications to store and manage personal information.

As we kick off the new year, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my business organization and the people with whom I spend a significant amount of time.

Leadership and self-improvement writers communicate regularly about the importance of choosing the right people to surround yourself with. In The Compound Effect, author Darren Hardy cited some interesting research by social psychologist Dr. David McClelland of Harvard that found that, “[the people you habitually associate with] determine as much as 95 percent of your success or failure in life.” So many gurus have spoken about the topic of selecting the right people to spend time with, it’s become cliche.

Just because an idea is cliche, however, doesn’t mean it can’t convey value. In order to extract the value, you may need to dig a bit deeper. If it’s true that 95% of your success/failure may be influenced by the people with whom you habitually associate, it does not necessarily follow that 95% of the people with whom you habitually associate will determine your success. It may be helpful here to apply something like the Pareto principle: for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. In other words, it’s likely the case that a small subset of the people with whom you associate will have an outsized influence on your success. That’s consistent with my experience in business experience, so today I’ve decided to give a shout-out of gratitude to one such person.

Elnatan Rudolph is one of a handful of business partners who have had a big influence on my success. He encouraged me to bet on myself and create Converge Public Strategies. He’s a consistent sounding board before I make big decisions. He also delivers serious value to our clients. As a public affairs professional, he traverses all three categories of our firm: government relations, communications and digital solutions. It’s hard to convey the breadth of his skillsets, and the ways in which he adds value to our public affairs clients.

I suppose it’s not too hard to identify the people who had a major impact on your success after the fact. But how can you identify them on the front-end? That’s trickier, but I can tell you when I knew Elnatan could be a key player for me.

When we first started working together, I referred a campaign client to Elnatan. Within a few days, Elnatan called me and told me he wanted to fire the client. He had observed the client treating others in a demeaning manner, and he did not want to help that sort of person succeed politically. He was worried, however, that I would be upset about losing client revenue. In truth, I was thrilled. I was not happy to learn about the way the client treated people, but I was grateful to learn that Elnatan was willing to put integrity over client revenue. It meant he and I were aligned on our values and how we wanted to build our business.

That value alignment, combined with Elnatan’s complementary skillsets, gave me the confidence to partner with him and rely on him more deeply. The resulting partnership has been of tremendous value to me, to our firm and to our clients. Not a day goes by when Elnatan and I don’t call each other for business and personal counsel.

So I thought today, as I think about the people with whom I will spend 2022, would be a good time to shine a light on Elnatan, and to say: thank you, Elnatan, I am grateful for your friendship and partnership.

In just over a month, through emails, phone calls, texts and video conferences, the Public Affairs Leadership Council organized nearly thirty senior executives from companies like Lyft and Postmates and across all sectors such as tech, transportation, hospitality, health, retail, and financial services, several of which are performing essential services for local governments amidst COVID-19. Our simple, yet powerful message is included in our invitation letter, which says, “As government and public affairs professionals, we are advocates and connectors. We are not passive in our jobs, and we need not be passive in our response to the economic consequences Covid-19 is forcing upon our families, our friends, and those in our own profession.” True to our nature, our professional community stood up to stand together. Starting this week, we expect to begin collecting LinkedIn bios from many people who have lost their jobs, and we will do our best to connect these people with opportunities across the nation. Our website, www.thepalc.org, will serve as the facilitator. We’ve also launched a LinkedIn Group, ­­here, where people in the public affairs, policy and government affairs field can connect and support one another. People need this kind of support now more than ever.

When difficult times come, strong communities and adaptability are paramount. I am proud to see our professional community volunteering their time and their energy to help one another in a time of extreme change. Perhaps this can serve as an inspiration for other professional communities to do the same.

Jonathan Kilman is the Chairman of Converge Government Affairs, Converge GPS, and Converge Digital. Please go to www.convergegov.com or contact Jonathan at jonathan@convergegov.com to find out more about the Public Affairs Leadership Council.

How a Professional Community is Supporting Each Other Through Covid-19 was originally published in Digital Diplomacy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.