Rachel Garbow Monroe began her term as President of the Weinberg Foundation in February of 2010. Monroe joined the Foundation in 2005 as the organization’s first Chief Operating Officer. During her tenure at the Foundation, significant changes have taken place including retention of a new team of more than 25 professional staff to execute the work of the Foundation as well as the creation and launch of:

• Weinberg Foundation’s Annual Community Gathering (more than 900 guests attended last year)
• Israel Mission Alumni Scholars Program (including more than 400 leaders, mostly from the State of Maryland)
• Annual Employee Giving Program (last year, Foundation employees made $180,000 in grant recommendations which were awarded at a special luncheon for the nonprofit grant recipients)
• Maryland Small Grants Program (which has granted more than $13 million to several hundred Maryland nonprofits during its first five years)

More recently, Monroe helped conceive and launch the Baltimore Elementary and Middle School Library Project (The Weinberg Library Project). This initiative, involving nearly 30 businesses, nonprofits, and government partners, works with Baltimore City Public Schools to design, build, equip, and staff new or renovated school libraries where existing public funding can be leveraged. After an initial commitment of $1 million from the Foundation, and with the success of this initiative in just its first year, the Foundation announced it will provide $5 million in funding to build a total of 12 new libraries over four years. The first three new libraries were dedicated September 12, 2012 at an event where Maryland’s Governor O’Malley spoke. The Foundation also announced the three Baltimore City schools selected for the second year of the Weinberg Library Project. Those schools are East Baltimore Community School, Arlington Elementary, and The Historic Samuel Coleridge Taylor Elementary. More information can be found on the project’s new website, www.baltimorelibraryproject.org.

Looking farther ahead, the Foundation seeks to use learning from its $8.4 million Weinberg Caregiver Initiative (14 programs for family and other non-paid caregivers), which is now in its third and final year, as well as a new $2.5 million pilot program in New York City to improve the quality of training and employment of paid caregivers. Recognizing the critical need for these services will only multiply in the years ahead, the Weinberg Foundation aspires to create the best direct-service and training models for all paid and unpaid caregivers serving older adults as well as adults with disabilities and/or special needs. The Foundation aims to make Baltimore and all of Maryland the best place to be a caregiver and a care receiver by 2017.

Monroe’s previous professional roles include serving as the Chief Operating Officer for The Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, the Worldwide Director of Marketing for the international architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and as the marketing manager for the Jewish Community Centers of Chicago. For five years, Monroe served as an adjunct professor at The Johns Hopkins University teaching a graduate nonprofit marketing course at the University’s Institute for Policy Studies. Previous volunteer leadership roles include serving on the boards of the Greater Baltimore Committee, the Ronald McDonald House of Maryland, the Timber Grove Elementary PTA, and the marketing committee of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

Monroe was named to the 2012 Forward 50, the news magazine’s list of the fifty Jewish-Americans ”who have made a significant impact on the Jewish story in the past year”. She has previously been recognized by The Daily Record as a 2010 Influential Marylander, as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women three times (2011, 2009, and 2007) which placed Rachel in the “Circle of Excellence”, and “40 Under 40” by the Baltimore Business Journal (2006). Monroe is a graduate of both the Wexner Heritage Program, the United Jewish Communities Mandel Executive Development Program, and the Leadership Program of the Greater Baltimore Committee.

Monroe earned a B.A. from Northwestern University and an MM (MBA) from the J.L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she majored in marketing and nonprofit management. Monroe is married with three children.