Local figure takes Seattle federation job

Penny Sinder knows she can't be Pam Waechter, so she's not going to try. She can, however, try to do Waechter's job.

Sinder, who worked for the Bay Area branches of the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay for 25 years, filled the vacant campaign director position at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle on Monday, Aug. 28. Waechter, her predecessor, was shot to death in July during an armed attack on the federation; Naveed Haq, the alleged shooter, also wounded five other female federation employees.

It's a new challenge for Sinder, who left her position as endowment director of the East Bay Federation in 2004, and had been consulting for the past few years. Not only did she have to "hit the ground running" in the Seattle federation's fundraising efforts, she had to do so in an emotional environment where the six empty chairs of Waechter and her colleagues loom large.

"Hearing people talk about Pam, I was certain that this was a woman I'd have wanted to have known. And that was the only time I became slightly nervous that it might be difficult to accept another person sitting in that role," said Sinder, 54, a Bay Area resident since 1971.

"But I found almost the reverse to be true. For people who had [Waechter] as their mentor, it was a sense of relief to have someone to talk to. It was a sense of relief to have a sense of direction and control."

Sinder has been named the "temporary" campaign director; in three months time she and the federation will renegotiate exactly what "temporary" means.

In the meantime, she understands the pain fellow employees are feeling — prior to her incarnation as a mainstay of the organized Bay Area Jewish community, Sinder was a social worker — but she's still focused on doing her job with the same kind of intensity that a Border collie brings to herding sheep.

Her key task is fulfilling Waechter's goal of upping last year's fundraising total of roughly $6 million. One of Sinder's major hurdles comes on Sept. 28 when a campaign dinner for more than 1,000 donors is scheduled. In a positive development, community interest in the dinner has soared since the July 28 shooting.

While Sinder is loath to play up the shooting, she agreed that the heightened sense of community could make her fundraising job easier. In addition to the general campaign, she is also lobbying donors to contribute to additional funds for the shooting victims and in Waechter's memory.

As an example of community generosity in the wake of the shooting, a donor provided the federation with office space, free of charge, while the federation building's security system is tightened (Sinder noted that a general redesign of the building wouldn't be a bad idea, so that it won't resemble the traumatic site seared into the minds of federation employees).

Sinder confirmed that there have been outbursts of anger and tears and, in a new environment full of cubicles (and not offices) everyone's emotions are broadcast to the office at large. But it's been productive and professional as well, and life must go on.

"I understood I was going to confront a situation I'd never confronted before," Sinder said. "And I don't think anybody knows what it's like until you do it."