Monday, November 13, 2023 6 pm ET
Awards Ceremony and Program Followed by a celebratory cocktail reception
Performances to be announced
The 92nd Street Y, New York 1395 Lexington Avenue Entrance on 92nd Street between Lexington and Third Avenue
Jewish Values Award
Jill Sharfstein
Jill Sharfstein is a proud daughter of Brooklyn. Married at 19 to Howard Sharfstein, and happily married for 54 years. They have two daughters, Ann, a public high school reading specialist, and Jenny, with whom she joyfully shares the Jewish Values Award. They are proud of them for their commitment to Tikkun Olam. They have two wonderful sons-in-law, Dan and Andy, and four loving, kind and community-minded grandchildren, Sadie, Helena, Eve and Max.
Central Synagogue is an integral part of Jill’s spiritual and personal life. She became a bat mitzvah at age 50. Preparing for and celebrating Shabbat and the Jewish holidays with her family are part of the fabric of her life.
Jill taught 3- and 4-year-olds at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School for 26 years. Upon retirement, she started volunteering at Ronald McDonald House and upon noticing the children waiting in the lobby with their families, began reading to them. This led her to establish a “Giving Library” so that the residents of the House could choose and keep books, for which she was named “NY 1 New Yorker of the Week”. Jill practices Tikkum Olam through volunteering at the pediatric floor at the Hospital for Special Surgery, helping senior students at the High School for Art and Design with their college applications, interviewing Holocaust survivors for the USC Shoah Foundation, and writing postcards to get out the vote with “Markers For Democracy”.
Jill is grateful for her family, friends and clergy and the examples of their lives guided by Jewish values. She is grateful to the 92NY for the tremendous good it does and for giving her and Jenny this meaningful award.
Jenny Sharfstein Kane
Jenny Sharfstein Kane leads the post-secondary education portfolio at Bloomberg Philanthropies. She is responsible for managing the foundation’s college access and success and career and technical education initiatives. As part of this portfolio, she helped launch CollegePoint, a virtual college advising program that has reached over 70,000 high-achieving, lower-income high school students since it launched in 2015. She also leads the American Talent Initiative, a coalition of more than 130 selective colleges and universities committed to accepting and enrolling more high-achieving, lower-income students. Previously, she was the Director of Programs and Managing Director at the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City during the Bloomberg Administration.
Jenny is a lifelong member of Central Synagogue where she now serves on the Board of Trustees. She is also on the board of Project Renewal, a nonprofit organization that helps homeless New Yorkers secure healthcare, housing and jobs and is co-chair of the friends committee of the Good+ Foundation, which provides essential goods and innovative services for low-income fathers, mothers and caregivers in New York City. She lives on the Upper East Side with her husband, Andrew Kane, daughter Eve and son Max.
Champions Award
Lauren Neustadter
Lauren Neustadter is President of Film and Television at Hello Sunshine. Since joining the company in 2017 as Head of Film and Television, she has executive produced numerous television projects including three seasons of the Emmy award-winning series The Morning Show (Apple TV+), three seasons of the NAACP award-winning series Truth Be Told (Apple TV+), and the five-time Emmy nominated limited series Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu). She also served as a Supervising Producer on Season 2 of HBO’s Emmy Award-winning series Big Little Lies.
Neustadter’s most recent television work includes executive producing adaptations of the Reese’s Book Club picks The Last Thing He Told Me (Apple TV+) and From Scratch (Netflix), plus Tiny Beautiful Things (Hulu) and Daisy Jones and the Six (Prime Video) which received a combined total of 11 Emmy nominations. She also executive produced My Kind of Country, Apple TV+’s first music competition series, and the psychological thriller series Surface (Apple TV+). In 2022, Neustadter and Reese Witherspoon were named TV Producers of the Year by The Hollywood Reporter, and Neustadter was also named one of the publication’s Power 100 Women In Entertainment.
On the film side, Neustadter produced the adaptation of one of Reese’s Book Club’s most beloved selections, the chart-topping New York Times bestselling novel WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING (3000 Pictures/Sony), which stars Daisy Edgar Jones and surpassed $100 million at the worldwide box office. She also produced Aline Brosh McKenna’s feature directorial debut YOUR PLACE OR MINE (Netflix) and SOMETHING FROM TIFFANY’s (Prime Video) starring Zoey Deutch, both of which earned the top spot on their respective platforms. She is currently in post production on the wedding comedy YOU’RE CORDIALLY INVITED, starring Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell, for Prime Video.
Before joining the team at Hello Sunshine, Neustadter spent over a decade working in film as an executive at Miramax then Twentieth Century Fox (with a producing stint in-between). In 2011, she left the feature world to become an executive at FOX network, where she oversaw shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Mindy Project, Lethal Weapon and 24, among others.
Neustadter lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.
Impact Award
In memory of Jill Iscol z”l
Activist, Educator and Author, Jill Iscol, EdD, was President of the IF Hummingbird Foundation, a family foundation established in 1989 with a vital mission: to support domestic and international efforts to strengthen democracy and reduce the social, economic, and educational inequalities that threaten it.
For the past three decades, Jill supported and participated in organizations whose work fosters that mission. In doing so, she became expert in identifying visionary leaders and promising, new programs. By providing seed capital and guidance, Jill enabled them to grow into stable, sustainable and successful organizations, impacting lives around the globe.
These organizations included Prep for Prep, Stand for Children, Facing History and Ourselves, Vital Voices Global Partnership, Acumen (where she served as a Founding Advisory Board Member), City Year New York of which she was a Founding Co-Chair, the Iscol Family Program for Leadership Development at Cornell University, Horizons National, DC Greens, Blue Engine, and NEST. Jill was also an appointed member of the New York State Commission on National and Community Service and the US-Afghan Women’s Council.
Jill was a strategic advisor to Secretary Hillary Clinton and was Co-Chair for Hillary Rodham Clinton for Senate’s New York Finance Committee which raised a record $29 million dollars, Vice-Chair of Senator Clinton’s New York and National Finance Committees in 2006, and a National Vice-Chair of Hillary Rodham Clinton for President’s 2008 Finance Committee. She was a Co-Chair of Hillary for President’s 2016 Finance Committee.
In 2014, following the release of her book, Hearts on Fire, Jill launched the Hearts on Fire Visionary Program creating a community of like-minded individuals using their talents and skills to improve the lives of others. The program’s mission - to inspire people of all walks of life to join the social change movement. Hearts on Fire has supported over 100 Visionary Leaders.
Jill was a member of the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau and appeared on MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports, PBS’ To The Contrary, at the Milken Institute, TedXWomen and SXSW. Her articles have been published in education journals, on The Huffington Post and The Diplomatic Courier. She been honored by City Year New York, Women’s Campaign International and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
Jill was a born and bred New Yorker. Jill passed away suddenly on May 22nd, 2022 and is survived by her husband, Ken Iscol, her two children and four grandchildren. Jill leaves behind a legacy of love, service and the belief in ensuring dignity for every single life on this earth.
Juju Chang ABC News Nightline Co-Anchor
Juju Chang is an Emmy Award-winning co-anchor of ABC News’ “Nightline.” She also reports regularly for “Good Morning America” and “20/20.” Chang’s decades of reporting converged in two hour-long specials about the rise of hate crimes toward the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community in 2021. She co-anchored an ABC News Live special “Stop The Hate: The Rise In Violence Against Asian Americans.” And after the mass shooting at three spas in Atlanta, Chang co-anchored and reported from the scene for an “ABC News 20/20” breaking news special “Murder In Atlanta.”
Chang has been recognized for her in-depth personal narratives set against the backdrop of pressing national and international news: from natural disasters to terrorism and racial equity. Her long-form storytelling includes a critical examination of the controversial “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy, told through the eyes of one pregnant woman and her family among the 60,000 asylum seekers camped for months along the Rio Grande. Chang’s award-winning report “Trans and Targeted” on violence against transgender women of color across the country caps a series of her stories on LGBTQ+ issues. Chang won a GLAAD award for her story about Matthew Shepard’s murder and the legacy his parents built in his honor.
A former news anchor for “Good Morning America,” Chang joined ABC News just after college as an entry-level desk assistant in 1987 and rose to become a producer for “World News Tonight.” After reporting for KGO-TV in San Francisco and the ABC News affiliate service NewsOne in Washington, she co-anchored the overnight show “World News Now.” Chang’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including multiple Emmys, Gracies, a DuPont, a Murrow and Peabody Awards.
Rabbi David Ingber, vocals Rebecca Schoffer, vocals Donovan Taylor, percussion Kareem Devlin, guitar Shy Kedmi, piano
Naomi Guerrier, reading
Ephrat “Bounce” Ahserie, dance
Kylie Kuioka, vocals Josephine Roses, drums Ezra Kessler, drums Yasuhiko Fukuoka, piano
As of November 20, 2023
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All donations until June 30, 2024 will go twice as far thanks to two anonymous donors in honor of this milestone anniversary.
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