On line Meeting- Gustavo Rymberg, HJF

Special Note for visitors:  visitors are most welcome to join in any of our club online meetings.  Please use the following coordinates to access the weekly Rotary Club of Hamilton AM meeting: 

At this meeting we will also have a cheque presentation to Celeste Taylor, from Hamilton Food Share.  Because our in person meetings have been cancelled since March, Club members have generously donated their breakfast fees to the club.  A portion will go to Rotary International as a part of our committment to Polio Plus and the balance is being presented to Hamilton Food Share.

Gustavo Rymberg is our guest speaker.  His topic is "Holocaust Education without survivors and Antisemitism".

Bio for Gustavo Rymberg

Hamilton Jewish Federation’s CEO was born and raised in Argentina, but his Jewish professional journey began in Winnipeg. In 1997, Gustavo Rymberg, his wife Marisa, and their two young children were among the first Argentinian immigrants brought to that city under the Jewish community’s Grow Winnipeg initiative. Deeply appreciative and impressed by the role played by the Jewish Federation in his family’s integration into Canadian life, Rymberg embarked on a career path that would take him, by way of Ottawa and Toronto, to Hamilton, where, as the leading Jewish professional in this community, he intends for Federation to have a similarly positive influence on Jewish life. 

Rymberg’s disillusionment with his country of birth dates back to 1994, when Buenos Aires’ Jewish Community Centre, known as the AMIA, was the target of a major terrorist attack in which 85 people were killed and hundreds injured. 

A graphic designer by profession, Rymberg’s first job in Canada was with a company commissioned to do publicity for the city’s upcoming Pan Am Games, but then a marketing position opened up at the newly opened Asper Jewish Community Campus. Rymberg applied, got the job, and although it was only a part-time position, was “amazingly happy.” It was then that he decided to devote himself to Jewish communal service. His dream, from that moment on, was to work through the ranks and one day become CEO of a Jewish Federation. 

After a five-year stint in Ottawa as marketing and program director of that city’s JCC, and seven years in Toronto heading up marketing, programming, and revenue development for its two northern Jewish community campuses, Rymberg has achieved his lifetime goal