Sam Grundwerg

Origins and early life

Sam Grundwerg was born on 12 February 1973 in Miami Beach, Florida, a third-generation American raised in an Orthodox Jewish family that the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles described as fervently Zionist.

Work and career

He went to the Hebrew Academy, a Jewish day school in Miami Beach where Ron Dermer, later Israel's ambassador in Washington, was a friend, and at seventeen he spent a year studying at a yeshiva in Israel. He then volunteered for the Israel Defense Forces as a lone soldier and served as a tank gunner in the Armored Corps, and he still serves in the reserves as a casualty officer. He earned a law degree at the University of Miami and a bachelor's degree from Bar-Ilan University, practised law in Florida, including at the firm Greenberg Traurig, and worked for large companies in Israel.

In 2010 he joined the World Jewish Congress and became director general of its Israeli branch, which works to strengthen Jewish communities around the world as well as Israel and the Jewish people. From 2016 to 2018 he was Israel's consul general in Los Angeles, responsible for the southwestern United States, a post in which he set out to reach a younger generation through the creativity of Israel. In December 2018 he became world chairman of Keren Hayesod–United Israel Appeal, the fundraising arm of the Zionist movement, and with Steven Lowy he led a campaign of about 22 million dollars for the emergency aliyah of Jews from Ukraine and Russia.

Since the war began on 7 October 2023, Keren Hayesod has raised 170 million dollars for its emergency campaign for Israel, and he has built ties with Christian supporters in countries such as Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. He lives in Efrat with his wife Julia, a nurse, and their three children, and the Jerusalem Post listed him among its fifty most influential Jews in 2022 and 2023.