Russell F. Robinson is the charismatic CEO of Jewish National Fund-USA and has succeeded in making the organization one of the top-rated charities in the United States, and the leading organization for the land and people of Israel.
Ranked on The Jerusalem Post’s list of the World’s 50 Most Influential Jews, Robinson has been featured in best-selling management books and regularly appears on TV, radio, and in print media.
Robinson has served as CEO of JNF-USA (which is a separate organization from the Israel-based KKL-JNF) since 1998, when at 41 he became the youngest CEO in its history. He has overseen the organization’s groundbreaking One Billion Dollar Roadmap to develop the Negev and Galilee, and its meteoric rise to the $100 million charity it has become today.
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He works tirelessly, traveling around the US and Israel to meet with the organization’s partners and affiliates, to ensure that JNF-USA’s vision and philanthropic investment is more relevant and meaningful today than ever before, particularly among its growing 22-40-year-old JNFuture leadership division.
Today, almost 120 years after it was founded, JNF-USA is unparalleled in the Jewish philanthropic world. Its strategic vision has been, and always will be, to ensure a strong, secure, and prosperous future for the land and people of Israel.
Everything JNF-USA does – every project, initiative and campaign – is integral to the organization’s vision of building and connecting to Israel. JNF-USA plants trees, builds houses and parks, sources water solutions, buys fire trucks, and improves the lives of people with special needs. In addition, JNF-USA works to boost tourism, support aliyah, promote Zionist education and engagement, build medical centers and trauma centers, fund agricultural and culinary research, and run a high school semester study abroad program in Israel.
A sixth-generation American Jew, Robinson grew up in El Paso, Texas, though his family first laid down its American roots in Petersburg, Virginia, after emigrating from Alsace-Lorraine in the late 1700s.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Report earlier this year, Robinson said that the Zionist movement has reached an inflection point, and now more than ever, “we must reclaim the word ‘Zionism.’”
“For too long, those who support Zionism have let others who have no interest in Israel’s future control the narrative,” Robinson said. “We want to spark a new conversation about Zionism and bring people from across the political and religious spectrum together. We have already started the conversation at share.jnf.org, where we are celebrating the beauty and diversity that is Zionism in the 21st century.”
Under the slogan, #ThisIsZionism, JNF-USA has invited people from across the globe to join in the conversation and share their photographs to show the many faces of Zionism.
Robinson noted that JNF-USA is building a 20-acre World Zionist Village in Beersheba, which in his words, is “the biggest project ever in the Jewish world that will bring together Zionists from around the world for the greatest conversation ever had about Zionism.”