Mark and Patti Nussbaum

While we both grew up on the East Coast and met freshman year in college, we decided to move to SoCal from NYC in 1990, when our boys were 2, 4, and 6 years old. We were seeking a community like we both grew up in and found it in La Jolla. We rented, then bought, then remodeled and are still living in the same home 35 years later. We wanted to get involved in communal life, and we quickly joined a warm and welcoming synagogue, Congregation Dor Hadash. It has become our extended family as we both got heavily involved — Mark joining the Board and Patti with fundraising and membership, while our boys became Bar Mitzvah in our community.

CDH has provided space for us to learn and grow and we wanted to make sure that this community was available to others long after we are gone. In 2006, CDH joined the Jewish Community Foundation’s (JCF) Endowment Leadership Institute (ELI) and we were early contributors. Mark’s childhood rabbi was an important influence in his personal growth and development, instilling a desire to pursue social justice by participating in the March in Selma and bringing Dr. Martin Luther King to his synagogue in Westport, CT where Mark heard and met him at age 11. As a result, Mark understands the difference a rabbi can make in individual lives, and he joined the board of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and now chairs the Investment Committee.

An early advocate of socially responsible and ESG investing, he was a founding contributor to the JCF’s Impact Investing Pool and serves on the Impact Investing Advisory Committee. Mark believes strongly in building endowments as a key to future financial viability. In leading by example, as his childhood rabbi taught, we are remembering CDH and other Jewish organizations in our estate plans.