“Word is out, and we served a record number of people in 2024,” said Jewish Family Service CEO Liz Vogel, speaking at Jewish Family Service’s 2025 Annual Meeting. 

This year’s meeting was held on March 25 at the Mayerson JCC, to impressive turnout. It featured Vogel, as well as two board presidents, Joanne Grossman, just finishing her two-year term; and Ellen Feld, MD, who assumed her new role at the meeting. All focused on this year’s theme: One Community Thriving, One Person at a Time, showcasing the person-centered care JFS is committed to, from youth mental health to support for elderly adults aging at home.

JFS’s services, Vogel said, are available to all: “Thanks to strong community support, we can still afford to remove economic barriers to accessing our services and also invest in high performers to deliver best-in-class care.“

Other highlights included Ann Sutton Burke, JFS’s Chief Services Officer, giving out the Miriam Dettlebach Award for Outstanding Volunteer of the Year. This year’s winner was Charles Albers, one of the first individuals to step through the door of Jewish Family Service’s brand new Adult Day Services (ADS) program when he enrolled his wife, Melisa, in 2023. When Melisa was eventually admitted to a long-term care facility, Charles chose to stay and volunteer with ADS. 

Adult Day Services was also recognized for another accolade. Despite being only a year old, ADS has already garnered acclaim at the national level, winning a $145,000 grant from the national Alzheimer’s Association for innovative nature programming.

A video captured a final moving moment, telling the story of how, last summer, a group of Holocaust survivors we work with came together to write a letter to Jewish students encountering antisemitism since October 7. The letter gained attention locally and nationally, including in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The survivors read it aloud to students from Cincinnati Hillel and at the one-year commemoration of October 7 at Adath Israel Congregation.

“To close, Jewish Family Service is strong,” said Vogel. “In recent years, we’ve responded to the pandemic, a national mental health crisis, and October 7th. We’re ready to meet the current year‘s changes as well.“

Photo: Ellen W. Feld, MD, was installed as the new JFS President of the Board.