Managing Director, Moelis & Co. Brooklyn Community Foundation Board Member
What do you love about Brooklyn?
I love the diversity, the energy, the feeling that it is still a series of neighborhoods, and you really live in a community. I think that there is so much about Brooklyn that other communities in the country, and in the world, can look to as an example of how to live and work well together.
Why Brooklyn Community Foundation?
The Foundation’s mission statement, its goals, very much resonated with what my wife and I believe in. If you’re in Brooklyn or in New York City, the Foundation is a way to direct your philanthropic giving where you know it’s going to make a real impact, because the Foundation has the infrastructure to get money to places that otherwise don’t have access but that are doing really important work in their communities.
What does philanthropy mean to your family?
To us, it means finding ways to help organizations that we think are really making a difference in the lives of people who are less fortunate than us. There’s so much good here in Brooklyn, and fighting to address the challenges that the people in our community face is really important. I think that it is a way to create a community that is better for all of us.
Why is investing in Brooklyn’s youth important?
The country’s becoming more diverse, Brooklyn is already extremely diverse, and we have the opportunity to show the country how that kind of community can be really successful and to look out for each other, and investing in our youth is a critical part of that. Particularly if you then overlay that many of Brooklyn’s communities are immigrant communities, sometimes you have people who aren’t as aware of how to navigate certain things, and so having young people be empowered becomes that much more important. If you can empower youth, they can help the rest of their particular communities in many ways.
