Marcia Riklis

Marcia Riklis is a businesswoman with a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from New York University. Marcia worked as an account executive at Grey Advertising and later joined her family business, a diverse conglomerate. In 1990, she founded a hair care business, which she later sold to focus on personal investments and philanthropic endeavors. Marcia’s major involvements revolve around Israel, social services, women’s issues, organizational excellence, and opportunities for bringing together diverse voices. Marcia’s philanthropy ranges from small entrepreneurial projects that she can seed-fund and bring to scale, to working with large existing legacy organizations to help to increase their productivity. Marcia has devoted significant resources to the UJA Federation of New York, serving for eight years on the Executive Committee, for two of which she served as Campaign Chair. She presently chairs the IPAD committee, which is devoted to measuring and evaluating the impact of all of the work of UJA. Previously, she founded and chaired a special cross commission task force designed to encourage collaboration across all divisions at UJA as it relates to work in Israel. As an entrepreneurial philanthropist, she helped to found OneVoice on Campus, a fast growing project, which brings together students of all faiths to engage in conflict resolution, particularly as it relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She helped to found in Israel the Institute for Law and Philanthropy at Tel Aviv University, which is making an impact in encouraging Israelis to be involved in philanthropy. Another project involves working with Yehuda Kurtzer from The Hartman Institute on issues relating to Courageous Leadership in the Jewish Community. She also conceived and sponsored the writing of a unique textbook on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict which was team written by an Israeli, a Palestinian, and an Egyptian, designed to demonstrate for graduate students the differing narratives which can be created around the same facts. Today, in addition to these involvements, Marcia is chairing The Jewish Funders Network.