Diane Troderman, past chair of JESNA (Jewish Education Service of North America), has held numerous leadership roles in the Jewish community on local, national, and international levels. In addition to her passionate interest in Jewish education, she has worked actively on women’s' issues and in the renaissance and renewal of Jewish life throughout the world, especially in the Former Soviet Union. She was the first chair of The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute on Jewish Women, whose mission is to develop fresh ways of thinking about Jews and gender worldwide.
Diane serves on the boards of the American Jewish World Service, Hebrew At The Center; Hazon and The Davidson School of Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Together with her husband Harold Grinspoon, she is a partner in PEJE (Partnership (Jewish Early Childhood Institute for Excellence), PELIE (Partnership for Effective Learning and Innovative Education), and AREIVIM-Fund for the Jewish Future. She presently serves on the task force for the HebrewLearningAcademy (a charter school in Brooklyn, NY)
Locally Diane was past president of the Springfield Jewish Federation, Hillel at University of Massachusetts and founding chair of the Hatikvah Holocaust Education and Resource Center of Western Massachusetts.
An educator by profession in the field of biology, she developed curriculum for grades K through 6 focused on experiential learning. From 1993 to 1998 she directed and oversaw the growth of the Grinspoon Charitable Foundation, including the operations of the I Have a Dream project, co-sponsored by the Grinspoon Foundation and Mass Mutual, enhancing the lives of disadvantaged children and providing them with an opportunity to graduate from high school and further their education. She has remained a trustee of the Foundation for the last ten years.
Diane has a BA from WheatonCollege, an MBA from American International College and a special certificate in learning disabilities from The Children's Hospital in Boston, MA. She has received several awards and honorary degrees, and published articles on intergenerational philanthropy. Between Harold and Diane, they have six children and eleven grandchildren.