| Vanderbilt Hillel Alumni Updates
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| Marty Singer, Class of 1977
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What drew me to Vanderbilt in 1973? My undergraduate honors thesis focused on reading disability. My thesis advisor recommended Vanderbilt and a particular professor, Joe Lappin, as someone who would support my research in this area. Vanderbilt’s psychology department had built a national reputation, and they offered a full scholarship. It was a great fit.
The move to Nashville, though, took me out of my comfort zone. At Michigan, I was 30 miles from my suburban Detroit home and surrounded by friends from two high schools and Camp Tamarack, the largest Jewish summer camp in the Midwest. It was hard to walk through the central campus without meeting someone with a shared history.
A sense of isolation motivated me to seek out the Jewish community. They embraced me. Rabbi Posner, from Sherith Israel, encouraged me to attend services. If I attended Shabbat services, someone always invited me to lunch or dinner. I felt as if I were a member of several families.
I wanted to share that feeling. In my first year at Vanderbilt, I started a Hillel group with the support of the JCC. We raised money from Vanderbilt parents for Sunday bagel and lox brunches and invited the local rabbis to talk at those events. We started something meaningful to Jewish students and it has been an honor to be associated with the growth of the Vanderbilt Hillel.
And my career? Serendipity and opportunity propelled me along an unplanned path.
After Vanderbilt (1977) I took a post-doctoral fellowship in developmental psychology to pursue my interest in reading disability. Then, I secured an Associate Professorship. During that year, I attended a conference in Arizona. Joe Lappin was there and told me that Bela Julesz, a Bell Labs pioneer in AI perception at Bell Labs, wanted someone to drive him on the Apache Trail. Would I chauffeur Bela?
What a day! Bela told me about his life in Hungary, leaving in 1956 and opting for a future but forced to abandon friends and family. He discussed his research at Bell Labs and asked me about my research. He listened for a moment and then said, “you should apply for a job at Bell Labs. I will sponsor you.”
Once that switch flipped, my path shifted. Bell Labs hired me as a Human Factors Engineer. I took courses on communication networks and studied small business operations. Our group developed prototypes that resulted in patented technology. That led to a new assignment that thrust me into the world of high-speed networks and a path to Illinois and, ultimately, an opportunity to head up a wireless test and measurement company. Soon after, I became Chair and CEO of PCTEL. Our team transformed the business into a successful wireless technology leader. Looking back, it still seems improbable that I spent 37 years in an industry completely foreign to me when I left Vanderbilt.
Every day, I have the sense of winning the lottery: My wife of 46 years, our three sons and their terrific wives, five grandchildren (soon to be six), a great education at Michigan and Vanderbilt, and an exciting career. Reflecting upon this, I recall a conversation that I had with Keith Clayton, one of my committee members. I worried about finding a job after the post-doc. He said, “Marty, you developed skills here that go beyond dyslexia. You have been trained to identify issues, how to examine them and how to problem solve. You are going to be fine.” He was right and I’m grateful to Vanderbilt, the Nashville Jewish community, Joe, and Bela.
Marty Singer is a member of the Vanderbilt Hillel Board of Directors. To get in touch with Marty, he can be reached at marty@mhsinger.com
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| Serena Deutch, Class of 2018
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Serena Deutch lives in New Orleans, where she has been since graduating from Vanderbilt in 2018. She lives there with her fiancé, Derek Brody, fellow Vanderbilt ’18 alum, and they are planning their fall 2024 wedding, where they will be joined by many friends fostered through Vandy Hillel. Serena began her career through the Venture for America fellowship which originally brought her to New Orleans. She currently works for VELA Education Fund, a national nonprofit that provides early-stage funding to education entrepreneurs focused on innovative approaches to K12 education.
Serena looks back fondly on her time spent at Vanderbilt Hillel, which helped her find her close friend group that travels together at least once a year, as well as a welcoming campus community. She loved planning programs for first year students and helping start the Vandy Challah for Hunger chapter, and she is most proud of the collaborative “Kehilah” mural that is still in the upstairs classroom at Hillel. Years after co-founding the Challah for Hunger chapter, Serena now runs a micro challah bakery out of her home. She is so grateful for her time at Vandy and at Hillel, and she was thrilled to go back and visit for her recent 5-year reunion in Nashville.
If you want to get in touch, Serena can be reached at serenadeutch@gmail.com (or on her challah Instagram @SerenaBakesBread).
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| Breanna (Bre) Stein Genecov Class of 2012
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I graduated in 2012 from the School of Arts & Sciences with a BA in Economics, a minor in Financial Economics, and a lot of energy to take on the world. After enjoying a few weeks of summer, I moved to California to start work with an endowment style investment management group, Makena Capital, based in Menlo Park. I spent four years with this company focusing on risk management, asset allocation and public equity before taking a two year “break” to go to business school. I didn’t stray far, attending the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) from 2016-2018. It was an incredible experience, though not Vanderbilt!
After business school I found myself back in finance at Makena and even more cemented in the Bay Area with the community of GSB classmates around me. I have been very fortunate to have been able to grow the excellent foundation I received at Vanderbilt to become a significant contributor at Makena. We do meaningful, sophisticated work in a quality environment, and I am proud and appreciative every day to be able to work there and contribute to our organization and the organizations and families whom we serve.
In the 2nd half of 2020 as the world was internalizing the extent of the Pandemic and lockdown situation, I was introduced to a friend of a friend who was looking to move back to the Bay Area from Denver. We started talking and the rest is history. Adam and I were married in 2022, moved into a house in the suburbs with our super-mutt dog, Niko, and are expecting our first child, a baby boy, in mid-May.
Even after 10+ years away from Nashville, I can still remember so much of the Vanderbilt experience and, particularly, my time at Hillel. From the first welcome weekend on campus attending Shabbat services, to so many Friday nights enjoying the best meal of the week in the company of my classmates – I spent a significant portion of my time amongst my peers at Hillel, and the Schulman Center for Jewish Life became a second home for me. I am so grateful for the people and opportunities I received through Hillel and hope that future classes continue to find friendship and belonging within that community.
Bre Stein Genecov is a member of the Vanderbilt Hillel Board of Directors. She can be reached at bstein@makenacap.com or breannastein@gmail.com.
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| Alumni Events:Ari Dubin joins New York City Young Alum for Happy Hour at Clinton Hall
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| Vanderbilt Hillel January and FebruaryProgram Highlights
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Gift of Life Swab Event
The Gift of Life Swab Event took place this week in which Vanderbilt Hillel swabbed students to help find stem cell and bone marrow matches for people fighting cancer. This school year, we have collected over 900 swabs, which means we are second of all colleges and universities in terms of number of swabs for the year! Mazel Tov to our students.
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Mean Girls Shabbat
Students gather together to observe Shabbat with a fun theme from an all time favorite movie. Our students love to keep Shabbat services fresh with fun weekly themes.
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Ice Skating at Centennial Sportsplex
Our students love to get out into Nashville for fun programming. Last week, our students enjoyed an ice skating outing at nearby Centennial Sportsplex.
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Holocaust Lecture Series
Vanderbilt Hillel is proud to partner with Vanderbilt University's Holocaust Lecture Series (HLS), which was established by the University Chaplain, the Rev. Beverly A. Asbury, in 1977 and has become the longest continuous lecture series on the Holocaust at an American university. Dedicated to reflection on ourselves and our society in the wake of the Holocaust, for over 40 years HLS has brought notable scholars, Survivors and Liberators, and artistic examinations of the Holocaust to Vanderbilt’s campus. Our most recent event featured Mark Schonwetter, a Holocaust survivor.
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Miznon
Miznon is a new and innovative program at Vanderbilt Hillel in which students have an opportunity to learn about Israeli food and culture. In the month of February, the students made falafel.
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