Concern for baby boomers on new JVS head’s agenda

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

The challenges never stop for Leonard Schneider. As the new executive director of the Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest, his agenda is piled high with urgent needs of the elderly, the unemployed, people with disabilities, and a growing number of baby boomers on the cusp of leaving the workforce.

Underlying all of those considerations is a need to keep seeking more funding streams in the wake of government cutbacks and cuts in allocations from United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey. JVS is a beneficiary of UJC MetroWest’s annual fund-raising campaign.

The tasks may sound staggering, but they are sources of joy for a man who says he is “excited about coming to work every day” at a place where his workday can be 13 hours long.

Schneider moved into the agency’s top spot seamlessly on July 1, the day after his predecessor, Ronald Coun, retired.

“It was a planned succession,” he said, reflecting on his lengthy career from a seat at the head of the conference table in his East Orange office. “Ron and I were able to look forward to the future, and I was able to complete a lot of things we had planned together.”

They began working as a team in 1989, when the job-hunting Schneider defied the conventional wisdom that most positions are found by networking, not in newspaper want ads.

“What did I know?” he said. “I looked in The New York Times and saw an ad for the Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest as assistant executive director.”

Coun hired him away from the Washington, DC, offices of B’nai B’rith International and into what Schneider called a life “down at the local level where the action is, at the grass roots. You roll your sleeves up. You’re really in the trenches. It’s very exciting.

“It was a terrific match. We hit it off immediately and had a terrific relationship. Ron and I described it as the perfect marriage.”

Schneider took a circuitous route from his boyhood home in West Long Branch to his job at JVS.

He said that “many paths lay open” before him after he received a master’s degree in vocational counseling and psychology from the University of Maryland, including stints in family counseling and running summer camp scholarship and home health care programs.

After getting a doctorate at Columbia University’s School of Social Work, Schneider’s focus shifted to mental illness.

After jobs with the state of New Jersey, he moved to the National Institute of Mental Heath in Bethesda, Md., and a position working on programs for the chronically mentally ill.

Schneider had hoped to continue developing federal policy on mental health. But he was sidetracked by a circumstance way beyond his control — a presidential election.

“I began my job the day before the Carter-Reagan election. Rosalynn Carter had this vision of a five-year plan for mental health services, and I envisioned myself being integral to that plan. But the day after the election, when Reagan had won, my supervisor said, ‘Len, I think you may want to revisit your career plans.’”

That reevaluation took Schneider away from government and into his first experience with Jewish communal work as the director of research and planning with B’nai B’rith International. His work for the organization was in leadership development, staff training, and management information systems, “so I could broaden my skill set.”

His move from government work to Jewish communal service was not as radical as one might imagine. “I’ve always had a strong feeling about Jewish values. I had a very strong Jewish upbringing,” moving from his parents’ Orthodox synagogue to his own practice as a Conservative. The transition was very comfortable, he said, “coming from a large federal system into a large international system.”

As he hit the frontlines of local community social work at JVS, Schneider faced an immediate challenge posed by thousands of Soviet immigrants who had just begun resettling in Essex and Morris counties. “We came upon a tremendous opportunity as a community to pull together,” he said. “In the first year, MetroWest resettled 600 refugees. When I arrived, there were seven staff members and two English-as-a-Second-Language classes. In five months, the staff grew to 30 professionals and 13 ESL classes.”

Since then, as one crisis fades for the JVS, others arise.

“Our most important clients are people with barriers to employment — people with disabilities, immigrants, and the growing number of middle-income Jewish unemployed,” he said. “Every year we are providing services to members of this community who are — for one reason or another — out of work. The caseload has remained at a high level despite what some people consider an improvement in the economy.”

Coping with all of these challenges makes Schneider view his agency as an “almost $7.5 million business,” in which “social enterprise” reflects a necessity for replacing declining government subsidies with more corporate and foundation grants.

Then there are the baby boomers, some 76 million Americans who are hitting retirement age — although many cannot afford to retire.

To Schneider, they are of special concern.

“The future of the baby-boomer generation is going to determine much of what happens in the United States and the world for quite a few years to come.”