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SUPREME COUNCIL CANDIDATES

CONVENTION 2025

DEBORAH RUSSELL
NU CHAPTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Deborah Russell grew up in Colorado and much to her family's surprise decided to move to the East Coast to attend the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School as a finance major. There, she joined Phi Sigma Sigma's Nu Chapter. At that time, there wasn’t a large sorority presence on Penn’s campus and the chapter had only been recolonized two years earlier. She loved being a member and felt fortunate to find friends with the many talented women who were determined to make the chapter a success. She also attended the University of Chicago where she received her M.B.A with majors in both finance and accounting.

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Her professional experience was varied. Deb moved to New York City, and her first job was with a consulting company that created mathematical-based economic models for its client base. Although her academic background was primarily in finance and accounting, she had also taken several classes in advanced statistics. After graduate school, she took a position with the Home Insurance Company managing their convertible bond portfolio and later moved to JPMorgan Investment Management and Morgan Stanley Asset Management to join teams focused on investment policy and strategic asset allocation for client portfolios.

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In 1997, Deb moved with her husband to Scarsdale, NY to raise their two sons. Scarsdale is only about 30 minutes north of NYC and so she still considers herself very much a city girl.  One of her sorority sisters put her in touch with a graduate school friend living in Scarsdale and thus her social network was born.  Since moving to Scarsdale, she has volunteered locally with the PTA and sisterhood of her temple. In addition, she was on the board and treasurer of The Jewish Women’s Foundation of NY.  Currently,  she is on the board of Scarsdale Edgemont Counseling Service where she  participates on both the finance and strategic planning committees. In her spare time, she is a very avid competitive bridge player.​

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Deborah Russell Headshot.JPG

​Candidate for: Grand Vice Archon  Finance

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Education

University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business,
B.S. in economics

University of Chicago, M.B.A. 

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Academic Honors

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Number of Volunteer Years: 

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Phi Sigma Sigma Awards​​

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Other Awards

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Phi Sigma Sigma Staff and Volunteer Experience

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Outside Volunteer Service

Current:

  • Scarsdale Edgemont Family Counseling Service Board Member – Member of the Finance and the Strategic Planning Committee

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Past:

  • Women of Reform Judaism for Westchester Reform Temple, Scarsdale, NY – Treasurer (2 years) and Member

  • Junior League of Central Westchester – Treasurer (2 years) and Member PTA Scarsdale Schools – Several positions over 8 years

  • Jewish Women's Foundation of NY (now renamed Elluminate) – Board member (4 years) and Treasurer (2 years)

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Describe the blend of personality, skills and life experiences that you would contribute to Supreme Council and the mission of Phi Sigma Sigma. You may draw from multiple experiences whether it be professional experiences or from volunteer roles.

Excellent communication skills:

My Professional responsibilities included extensive internal and as well as client presentations.  My written communication included client updates as well as internal memos to senior management.  Internal memos are always important documents in the highly bureaucratic organizational structures of international banking.  New client presentations were often to corporate boards with strict requirements on timing.  These timing requirements mandated highly organized presentations with clear and concise explanations.

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Academic background and professional / volunteer experience in finance and accounting:

I majored in finance as an undergraduate and double majored in finance and accounting as a graduate student.  My accounting background includes issues that pertain to not-for-profit organizations including issues that pertain to private and public foundations and various types of charitable trusts.  My professional responsibilities regularly involved writing investment policy agreements for client relationships. 

 

Team Player:

The entirety of my professional and volunteer experiences has been in multi-person task-groups and other team endeavors.  Success in these environments has always meant developing solid interpersonal working relationships.  I’m always interested in the professional expertise of others and thoroughly enjoy the camaraderie of a group effort.

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​What is your experience in business/organizational management, such as risk management or policy preparation?

I was board member for 4 years and a member of the executive committee as treasurer for an additional 2 years for the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York.  As a board member, I participated in all facets of policy making for the organization.  In addition,  as a board member, I regularly evaluated grant requests to the Foundation. Evaluating a grant request required evaluating the financial stability of the organization making the request as our grants were often disbursed over several years. As treasurer, I was responsible for developing an annual budget as well as a 3-year financial projection.  During the time I was treasurer, the Foundation decided to change its investment manager and I oversaw the selection of a new manager. That process included writing a Request For Proposal (RFP), identifying appropriate alternative managers to submit that RFP to, and leading the committee to consider, select, and hire a new manager.  Once the manager was hired, I subsequently led the effort to write the investment guidelines that put parameters around the risk profile that would be used for our endowment.

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What do you feel is the greatest risk to the Fraternal industry over the next biennium? 

I believe that maintaining core objectives of tolerance and respect within a backdrop of increasing political and religious divisiveness on campuses are of key importance in the next two years.  Additionally, I think that there are many questions as to whether college and university objectives of diversification are consistent with the visible conduct of many Fraternal organizations.  These are very difficult areas to negotiate as specific practices are different from one organization to another and from one campus to another.  I personally do not have meaningful experience with addressing these types of issues, but I can recognize their importance and would look forward to being a part of paving a path forward.

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Tell us about a time you had to lead a team or organization through a crisis, making difficult strategic decisions. Please share the processes you use.

While I was treasurer for the Jewish Women’s Foundation of NY, we experienced a severe budgetary shortfall and had to make difficult decisions with respect to the usage of our surplus account.  Many of the board members felt that it would be financially irresponsible to make a very large expenditure from our surplus account and that we should scale back our grantmaking activities.  Others felt that maintaining our grantmaking profile would be the best way to ensure future donations.  For my part, I researched industry standards regarding surplus management for a non-for-profit of our size and scope and presented a framework to the board that involved a little of both; using our surplus account as well as scaling back our grant making activities.  Ultimately, I used this research to support an alternative organizational model that used Giving Circles as an alternative to direct donations.

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Describe your experience working with budgetary oversight, including profit and loss statements, financial statements and budgets.

My background experience with all matters of financial oversight is extensive and includes:

  • Academic background with an undergraduate degree in finance and a graduate degree in both finance and accounting.

  • Professional experience with JPMorgan Investment Management and Morgan Stanley Asset Management.

  • Volunteer positions as treasurer with The Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York, treasurer of The Junior League of Central Westchester NY, treasurer of The Women of Westchester Reform Temple and my current board position with Scarsdale Family Counseling Service serving on both the Finance and Strategic Planning Committees.

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What are your current personal and professional priorities? Describe your current bandwidth and how you plan to incorporate your commitment as a member of Supreme Council to your current obligations.

My current obligation with Scarsdale Family Counseling Service is flexible.  While meetings for the board and committees I serve on are frequent, remote participation is always an option.  For the past 6 months I have spearheaded an effort to identify and recommend an alternative provider for SFCS’s pension plan.  That project has recently been completed with final recommendations to be presented at the Board’s October meeting.  While working on this, I have not assumed another large project. 

 

In addition, I am an advanced bridge player and travel to many tournaments.  This is time consuming, but also very flexible as far as choosing opportunities for competitive play. 

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Describe your previous experience creating and implementing financial strategies for organizations.

My professional experience was centered on developing investment strategies for corporate and very large trust account (greater than $100M) clients. The highly customized investment strategies that I worked on were typically developed within the context of understanding the entirety of the organization’s asset / liability management needs.  My role as treasurer for several not-for-profit organizations regularly involved short term budgeting and longer-term financial strategy.  I believe that successful financial strategies are developed only by gaining a comprehensive understanding an organization’s goals and objectives for using the funds.

 

​Describe a personal or professional situation (outside of Phi Sigma Sigma) where you needed to make difficult financial decisions to balance the needs of multiple stakeholders.

See answer above regarding leading a team through a crisis.

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Describe how you handled a complex financial situation and the questions that were important to you as you navigated that process.

For a time during my employment with JP Morgan, I oversaw the process by which we set investment policy for split-interest trust accounts for which JP Morgan served as the trustee.  A split-interest trust is one in which the income generated by the trust and the ultimate principal upon distribution of the trust’s contents are legally owned by two different parties.  As the trustee, JP Morgan had a legal obligation to ensure that the financial strategy employed was ‘fair’ to both parties and would not subject JPM to a lawsuit for mismanagement of the funds. Lawsuits were a real problem as the two legal owners of the Trust’s contents were at odds with each other and the stakes were large. Income producing assets would help the party entitled to the income stream, but slow the long term growth of the portfolio.  This hurt the party entitled to the trust’s proceeds at distribution. This was a legal problem, and I worked with an internal lawyer to fully understand the legal backdrop which framed the issue. I also had to develop a method to simulate the range of possible investment results to the two parties and ensure that (within reasonable expectations), the range of possible outcomes would meet the legal framework.  Additionally, I needed to work with our economics team to develop the investment assumptions that would be used in the investment simulations.  Finally, I worked with marketing staff to help them to communicate to clients JP Morgan’s process for investing assets for these types of accounts.

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SUPREME COUNCIL ELECTIONS

Supreme Council will be elected during Plenary at Convention 2025. If you have any questions about the candidate profiles or responsibilities of Supreme Council, please contact the nominating committee at nominatingcommitee@phisigmasigma.org.

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