Hila Revah at Lincoln Center commencement

GSSW Valedictorian Celebrates Giving Back

Hila Revah at Lincoln Center commencement
Hila Revah at Lincoln Center commencement

Someone she was close to told her she would amount to nothing, she said. Yet there she was, standing tall and proud on stage at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, adorned in a fitted white dress beneath traditional cap and gown, chosen by her classmates and the faculty from the Touro College Graduate School of Social Work to be their valedictory class speaker at the Division of Graduate Studies Commencement Ceremony on Tuesday.

Teaneck resident Hila Revah, alumna of the class of ’15, is not a quitter.

“Instead of believing the weightless accusation, I used it as an opportunity for self-growth, not only for myself, but for my future clients,” she told the gathering of approximately 2,000–including students from six of Touro’s graduate schools, their families and friends–to rousing applause.

Being chosen class speaker was just icing on the cake for Revah. The previous week at a student awards ceremony, she had also received the Dean’s Award for Academic Honors with Distinction, and an award for Excellence in Field Education.

To hear Revah tell it, the real rewards of pursuing her master’s in social work the last two years lay elsewhere. They included learning to believe in herself; that giving to others is reciprocal; and the importance of tolerance and respect for diversity.

“These are the most powerful lessons I learned at school,” Revah said on the eve of her graduation. “People should know, ultimately it’s your own decisions that get you to the top–believing you can do it yourself. I learned that at school from every professor. They taught me how to self-evaluate and self-reflect, and how to overcome hard times.”

Even before enrolling at Touro, Hila might have known social work was in her future. She had volunteered at a nursing home while in high school. In 1996, she volunteered as a ‘big sister’ at an Emunah of Israel orphanage in Netanya.

“It seems like I’ve always been a ‘mini-marriage counselor,’” she says, laughing, “to parents, friends–just listening, lending an ear, talking to someone at the supermarket, the gas station. I just needed the skills to become a professional.”

She also needed to complete her undergraduate education. Before Touro, she had begun working towards a bachelor’s degree but had been interrupted as she began raising a family, doing volunteer work, designing fashionable hats in a millinery business, and opening a restaurant/bakery.

Born in Petach Tikvah, Israel, Revah’s parents, who were of Moroccan descent, moved to Ontario, Canada when she was two with her brother and sister. She enjoyed a middle-class upbringing, attending Jewish day schools while her parents operated three restaurants.

At 18, she married, moved to New Jersey and enrolled in a joint program in graphic design and fine arts at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women. After about 18 months, she moved back to Canada, settling in Montreal, where she worked as a hat designer, and over the course of seven years gave birth to three daughters–Shalhevet, Ayelet, and Layla.

With the tri-state area again beckoning, in 2008 the family moved back to New Jersey, settling in Teaneck. “I loved being near Manhattan and the wonderful school options for my daughters. I saw the potential for growth personally and professionally,” she recalls.

Before long, she was running a popular kosher vegetarian restaurant in Teaneck, Mocha Bleu, and had become deeply involved in Emunah of America as its volunteer chapter president–organizing fundraising events and creating awareness of the nonprofit organization and its work on behalf of children in Israel.

She also started taking Zumba classes and became hooked. Soon she was teaching and her classes were filled with as many as 70 people. Through Zumba, she said, she found a clear path to social work, and the timing was right.

“Zumba connected me to people of diverse backgrounds,” Revah said. “They responded like it was their therapy. They would call me for advice. They would write, text, e-mail. I really liked working with people! Through exercise and dance, we somehow connected. It was very powerful and I wanted to do something more. I didn’t feel fulfilled. I felt I could give more. I was ready to just take off.”

With her youngest in first grade, she went back to school to complete her bachelor’s degree and began looking around for a master’s program in social work. After setting foot in Touro’s Graduate School of Social Work she immediately felt at home.

“I was sold. Everyone was walking the hallways smiling, welcoming, and helpful. It was really more like a family than a school. It was one of the best decisions I ever made,” she said.

And Touro was sold on her. It wasn’t long before she bonded with her classmates and became extremely well-respected throughout the school by her peers and the faculty for her concern about others and willingness to always lend a hand.

“Hila is outstanding,” said Dean Steven Huberman, Ph.D., who interviewed her before she was offered a spot in the program and proudly introduced her departing words as commencement speaker. “She embodies the values and ethics of the social work profession.”

A friend and classmate, Runita Rajkumar, valued how Revah would share her real life experiences at school. As an example, she cited a class discussion about immigration policy. Revah discussed how she hires and treats employees at her restaurant and what public policy changes she would like to see happen.

Revah loved her classes, her professors, and her fieldwork. Her first year was spent at a nursing home at the Daughters of Miriam Center in Clifton, NJ. She said she was hesitant about the placement at first, but later found it to be one of the most eye-opening and enriching experiences ever, and she returns to visit, something not ordinarily done.

Reflecting on the next step in her journey, Revah says in the near term she plans to spend time with her daughters, continue working in the restaurant, and plans to start a support group for the recently divorced in her community. Eventually she sees herself having a clinical private practice, working one-on-one with adults.

“I would like to find a niche where my area of strength is, and I think it’s in the adult population, a field that encompasses a lot of variety. All walks of life, all kinds of stories and challenges,” she says. “We’ll see. The sky’s the limit.”

LAS Alum Awarded For CPA Exam Performance

The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) announced recently that Shulem Rosenbaum, an alumnus of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences-Flatbush (LAS), was a winner of the 2014 Elijah Watt Sells award bestowed upon the top scorers on the Uniform CPA examination.

The award is presented to individuals who have a cumulative average score of above 95.5 on all four sections of the CPA exam on their first attempt. Rosenbaum was one of only six winners in New York State and is the second Touro student or alumnus to win the award.

“This is a truly extraordinary accomplishment,” said Barry Bressler, dean of the undergraduate School of Business at LAS. “Of the 91,384 individuals who took the test, there were just 60 candidates nationwide who were up to that standard. That’s about six out of 10,000, which is even better than the top one tenth of one percent.”

After he completed the multiple-choice section of the Financial Accounting and Reporting exam, the first of the exam’s four sections, Rosenbaum, 29, said he believed that he had “hit it out of the ballpark.” His confidence wavered, however, during the task-based simulation section.

“I was devastated,” he said, thinking that he had failed to receive a score of at least 75, the passing grade. “I was close to tears.”

His concerns were unfounded; he said he was “shocked to my core” to learn that he had received a score of 97. He was similarly successful for the other sections, scoring a 99 (the highest possible score) for Auditing and Attestation and a 94 on the Regulation and Business Environment and Concepts exams.

Rosenbaum did not take a direct path to accounting. He had a job teaching students with learning disabilities and eventually enrolled in Touro’s School of Lifelong Education in Brooklyn before transferring to LAS, the school’s flexible schedule allowing him to continue to work full time. He planned to become a lawyer, but when the economy took a turn for the worse he decided to major in accounting instead, though he still hopes to attend law school one day.

“I thought if I ever go into business on my own that I would know what I’m doing,” Rosenbaum said. “Accounting is the essence of business. It allows you to learn the fine principles of how to run a business and is definitely the best business undergrad degree.”

While he was a student at LAS, Rosenbaum was named a “Superior Scholar” by the New York State Society of CPAs and graduated in 2013 with a 4.0 grade point average. He was hired by Roth & Company, a New York-based accounting firm, and received a promotion when the AICPA announced the results of the Uniform CPA Exam.

Rosenbaum grew up and still lives in Boro Park with his wife and four children, where he counts himself as a member of the Chassidic community. As the first in his family to pursue higher education, he said he hopes his award will help others like him realize the opportunities available to them.

“There’s a certain perception among some that Chassidic people can’t get a good education and won’t be successful,” says Rosenbaum. “However, there are many successful Chassidic professionals who took advantage of Touro’s opportunity for a higher education, which allowed them to overcome inherent hurdles and challenges without compromising their values.”

The Lander College in Flatbush, with separate schools for men and women, enrolls 2,500 students annually in fall, spring, and summer semesters. It offers a choice of 25 majors and pre-professional programs in disciplines including accounting (CPA program), finance, management, computer science, and multimedia web design, pre-medicine/pre-dentistry/pre-pharmacy, the allied health sciences (occupational and physical therapy, physician assistant, nursing), education, psychology, biology, political science/prelaw, mathematics/actuarial studies, and speech language pathology.

Henry Rubin Is Named VP For Institutional Advancement

Henry T. Rubin, JD, of Larchmont, New York, was named vice president of institutional advancement at Touro College and University System. Rubin, who will assume his new role at Touro on July 15, has had a distinguished career in nonprofit fundraising and development, directing multimillion dollar major gifts programs. An estate planning attorney who practiced at prominent NYC law firms, Rubin is a recognized expert and consultant on strategic, retirement, and philanthropic planning.

As Touro’s vice president of institutional advancement, Rubin will lead the college’s fundraising effort, define the overall direction of the philanthropic enterprise, and build and manage the required infrastructure and operations. He will plan and implement annual, major gifts, and capital campaigns.

“I view fundraising as a mitzvah or a sacred kind of mission that channels the divine in people. When people give to worthy causes, they are enriched in a spiritual sense. Contributing to something larger and beyond oneself offers a sense of fulfillment. Using my legal background, I work to develop novel ways to help people stretch their charitable gifts. Through tax and estate planning, I’ve been able to turn small gifts into meaningful gifts and meaningful gifts into transformative gifts,” said Rubin.

“I greatly look forward to becoming a change agent for Touro and opening up new doors of donor support to guarantee ongoing success. I look forward to advancing Touro’s culture of excellence and dual mission to strengthen the Jewish community and, more broadly, to serve humankind. I believe that the future of the next generation in the U.S. depends on equality in higher education. By making educational opportunities available to all members of society, Touro is taking the torch and leading the way for America to follow. My goal is to generate support for the wide-ranging programs so that Touro can continue to meet every important need the school identifies,” continued Rubin.

Rubin currently serves as executive director of institutional advancement, Major and Planned Gifts at Yeshiva University, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Cardozo School of Law, and all other schools, colleges, and divisions of Yeshiva University. He began his professional career as an estate planning attorney at Botein Hays & Sklar and then Thacher Proffitt & Wood. From there, he moved into advancement roles at the Federation, Anti-Defamation League and Yeshiva University. He earned a BA from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a JD from New York University School of Law.

“We are very pleased to have Henry Rubin join our staff to serve Touro in this critical role and look forward to benefiting from his wide-ranging expertise,” said Dr. Alan Kadish, Touro’s president.

Touro College ranks #2 in the nation among the “best private colleges for Returns On Investment,” according to 2014 PayScale College ROI Report cited in The Wall Street Journal. Touro ranks #1 in master’s degrees in education earned by African American and Latino students in New York State and 8th in the nation among 5,000 universities for graduate degrees in education awarded to minority students. Close to 100 percent of Touro students achieve a first-time pass rate on national certification exams, especially in the health sciences fields.

Educating more than 6,000 students annually in the health sciences, Touro is fast becoming one of the largest healthcare educational systems in the U.S. In 2014, a second campus for Touro’s College of Osteopathic Medicine was opened, as well as new programs to train allied health professionals. Touro offers integrated honors and medical honors pathway programs that provide opportunities for high-achieving students to combine undergraduate studies with professional education on a fast track.

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