If you walk into a Jewish institution in Los Angeles, you will probably feel safer today thanks to Ivan Wolkind.
A former senior executive at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Mr. Wolkind is recognized for his radical improvements to safety in the Los Angeles Jewish community. He dedicated himself to protecting synagogues, schools and hundreds of other Jewish institutions, and did so with love, determination and vision.
Wolkind died on May 10, two days after suffering sudden cardiac arrest while working out at the gym. He was 56 years old and is survived by his parents, wife and three children, aged 18, 21 and 23.
Hundreds of people gathered on Mother’s Day to pay tribute to Wolkind, who served as the federation’s chief financial and operating officer for 13 years and also volunteered as a reserve officer with the Los Angeles Police Department.
At his funeral, attended by more than 500 people at B’nai David Congregation in Pico Robertson, Wolkind was remembered as a “gentle giant” who cared deeply about the Jewish community and was an easy-going person who loved pranks and puns. An athletic 6-foot-3 Brit with a mischievous smile, Wolkind treasured his family and friends and was committed to keeping those around him safe through his work and volunteer work.
In 2012, Wolkind worked with then-Jewish Federation CEO Jay Sanderson to launch the Community Security Initiative (CSI), the nation’s first community-wide effort to connect Jewish institutions through a security network. Launched with a federal grant, CSI provided Jewish institutions with access to security resources and became a national model for critical incident coordination, information and intelligence sharing, and safety and security training.
“Ivan’s legacy, among all the other things he did, was that he looked after all of us, making sure we were safe to pray, safe to send our kids to school, safe to be Jewish.” – Jay Sanderson
“Ivan’s legacy, among all the other things he did, was that he cared for all of us, making sure we were safe to pray, that our children were safe to go to school, that we were safe to be Jewish,” Sanderson said at the funeral. “We all owe our safety and our lives to Ivan Wolkin.”
Wolkind’s work on CSI paved a new path for him into the world of law enforcement. In 2014, he attended the Los Angeles Police Academy and was sworn in as a reserve officer with the LAPD. He was assigned to the Wilshire District Patrol, where he worked in community relations, outreach and counter-terrorism operations.
At his funeral, a police honor guard presented an American flag to his family.
In 2017, Wolkind was invited to serve on the InfraGard National Member Coalition Committee, eventually serving as its Chair. InfraGard serves as a bridge between the FBI and the private sector, facilitating communication and collaboration to help prevent terrorism and crime.
Wolkind volunteered as a security specialist at Jewish institutions with which he and his family were involved, including B’nai David Judea, Happy Minyan, Shalhevet High School, Hillel Day School and Maimonides Day School.
In 2023, Wolkind became CEO of Magen Am, a nonprofit security company and training center for Jewish communities on the West Coast. Just 10 days before his death, he was announced as the new CEO of the Houston Holocaust Museum, a role he was scheduled to begin later this summer.
Ivan Wolkind was born in East London in 1967, the middle of three children. His father, Stephen, was a child psychiatrist and his mother, Leanne, a child psychologist.
Wolkind is a graduate of Ilford County Boys’ School, where he was student council president, and completed his undergraduate degree at Keele University before qualifying as a chartered accountant.
Wolkind’s family had deep ties to Israel: his grandparents, Leonard and Nettie Wolkind, retired to Israel in the 1970s and his grandfather is buried in Netanya. Ivan frequently visited his grandmother in Netanya while growing up. In his teens and twenties, he worked in the banana fields of Amiad Kibbutz in the north and spent six months working as a scuba instructor on a dive boat in the Red Sea.
As a young professional, he left his job as an accountant with KPMG in London, sold everything he owned, and emigrated to Israel with his brother Philip.
When he arrived in Israel in 1996, Wolkind spoke little Hebrew, so he answered the only job ad in English and joined the software quality assurance team at a tech start-up called Superstudio. By the time he left a year later, Wolkind had been named CFO and met his future wife, Leah Resh, a Chicago native who worked in production at Superstudio. After Superstudio was sold to The Learning Company and moved to the US in 1997, Ivan and Leah moved to Palo Alto in Northern California. They were married in March 1998.
Over the next 12 years, Ivan rode the dot-com boom, adapting the accountancy skills he’d honed in London to the fast-paced, high-risk environment of Silicon Valley. He worked as an executive at several biotech and financial services startups, and founded and sold a company called eLease.com.
In 2001, Ivan and Leah moved to Los Angeles with their newborn daughter, Rosie. Wolkind remained in the tech industry until 2011, when he was approached by the Jewish Federation.
While she never imagined moving into nonprofit work, she was eager to take on the challenge of applying a process-oriented approach to a century-old social service organization.Wolkind spent 13 years at the Jewish Federation, where she overhauled the organization’s budgeting process and leveraged data and technology solutions to improve efficiency and performance.
Colleagues at the Federation, Magen Am and in law enforcement described him as a beloved team builder who was demanding but fair and always put the people he served first. Friends spoke of his sense of humor, his passion for life and his love of subjects as diverse as World War II, quantum physics, music, Judaism and birds.
Wolkind’s death came as a shock to his family and the community because he was an athlete and competitive swimmer who completed multiple triathlons and enjoyed hiking, skiing, cycling and running.
One of his proudest achievements was winning the annual wife-carrying competition in Maine in 2007, when Ivan completed the steeplechase with Leah on his back.
At the funeral, Mr Wolkind was remembered as a loving husband and father who was the foundation of his family.
“I stand today weakened, depleted and lost without the strong, brilliant, beautiful, clever, funny, sassy, competitive, determined, irreverent and amazing man we called Ivan,” Leah said in a statement.
Wolkind’s children also paid tribute to their father.
Renee, 21, said her father made friends with anyone, anywhere, even a survivalist he met at a truck stop during a father-son road trip. “Maybe he would have been happier being part of the solution in a world that had problems,” Renee said.
Despite his busy work and official schedule, he never missed a family dinner, said his daughter Rosie, 23. “He loved deeply and loudly. Ask any of us and I’m sure we’ll all secretly say we considered ourselves his favourites.”
Nettie, 18, said she spent the rest of her life trying to make her father proud. “My father inspired me in every aspect of my life,” Nettie said. “I feel so blessed to be Ivan Wolkind’s daughter, to have his DNA, his lame sense of humor and his love as a part of me.”
Mr Wolkind is survived by his wife Leah, children Rosie, Renee and Nettie, parents Stephen and Leanne, brother Philip (Maria) and sister Helen Rostron (Chris), as well as many nieces, nephews and friends.
Anyone wishing to make a donation in memory of Ivan Wolkind may contact Magen Am, the Houston Holocaust Museum or Shalhevet High School.
Julie Grunbaum Fax, formerly a senior writer at The Jewish Journal, currently works as a writer and content creator for the USC Shoah Foundation.