I’m an Israeli-American CEO. Here’s Why I Support Kamala Harris.

I’m an Israeli American and I am voting for Kamala Harris. My Israeli mother, 96, is also voting for Harris. My mother was born in Jerusalem, raised by parents who escaped pogroms in Poland/Russia to live as Jews in the Jewish Homeland. She fought in the infantry in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

My father was raised in Brooklyn by parents who escaped pogroms in Lithuania. He became a doctor, served in the medical corps in World War II and was at the Dachau concentration camp after its liberation.

I attended Hebrew day school in NYC for 12 years and have studied the history of the Jewish people, Israel and the Middle East throughout my life. I speak fluent Hebrew, hold dual Israeli and American citizenship, and have been to Israel countless times, also serving on Boards of Israeli biotech companies. I practiced medicine and then founded a biotech company, Acorda Therapeutics, where I served as CEO for 30 years. My colleagues and I developed novel therapies for people with neurological diseases, such as MS and Parkinson’s. At our peak we had 650 employees. I also served as Chair of the Board of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), which represents over 1,200 US and international biotechnology companies.

I learned a lot about leadership from these experiences. I learned that the best leaders think about the interests of the people they are leading more than they think about themselves. I learned that they take counsel from many perspectives, not just those that reinforce their prejudices. I found in hiring people that  it was essential to accurately assess their skills and, just as importantly, their character. It was critical to determine whether they could contribute at the high level we needed and whether they were likely to  uphold the values of the organization, which included, among other things, communicating truthfully  regardless of whether the news was good or bad, not shooting the messenger, teamwork, integrity, and a focus on the well-being of the patients we served.

I’m voting for Kamala Harris because I’ve been observing both her and her opponent closely, with the interests of both Israel and the U.S. in mind. In Kamala Harris, I see an accomplished professional and a “mensch,” a person who cares and understands what it means to work for the benefit of her constituents, rather than her selfish interests. In the Presidential candidate debate Harris impressed me as self-confident and accessible, as she articulated a vision for equality of opportunity and a woman’s right to control her own body. I also saw someone who completely controlled the debate, inducing Trump to dissolve into incoherent rants about his crowd sizes and people eating cats and dogs. If you saw two job candidates in such an encounter, which one would you hire?

When I observe Donald Trump, I see an individual with deficient character and poor self-control, who encouraged the only domestic assault on the U.S. Capitol and the only attempt to undermine the peaceful transfer of power in our nation’s history. His guiding motivation appears to be self-aggrandizement at the expense of others. He has been shown repeatedly to lie more prolifically than any other candidate on record. That alone should negate any faith one might wish to have in his  expressed policies and promises, not least any concerning Israel. He has turned on virtually every friend and ally he has had the moment they have dared to disagree with him.

I ask, is Trump what we need in someone who is charged to lead the free world, who would have his finger on the nuclear button? Is this what Jews who love Israel need—someone who has demonstrated he will, for example, bend over backwards to satisfy Putin’s whims? Putin is a great friend to Iran; when it suits him to go all in against Israel, is Trump the person we should trust to stand up to him and defend Israel’s interests? And do we want someone who issues anti-Semitic dog whistles, such as when Trump preemptively blamed “the Jews” if he loses the election? 

My experiences in leadership have taught me that how a person treats others is an indicator of both their character and overall performance. If you were on a Board hiring a CEO, how would you consider a candidate, regardless of their talents, who brags about grabbing women by the genitals, publicly mocks a disabled person, demeans those who bravely have risked and lost their lives for their country, muses at a rally about the size of an athlete’s penis and concocts insulting names for everyone who disagrees with him? Would you want your children to look up to such an individual as a role model, if he or she were President of the United States?

Meanwhile, notwithstanding occasional, select policy disagreements, the Biden-Harris administration has provided a record $23 billion in military equipment and aid to Israel since Oct 7, sent carrier groups to protect the country, collaborated with Israel’s intelligence services, participated in shooting down the hundreds of missiles and drones launched at Israel by Iran and Yemen, and sent F-16 jet fighters and in-flight refueling tankers to support the recent retaliation against Iran.

Is Kamala Harris perfect, and will she always make the right decisions for Israel and the U.S.? No politician ever was or has. But she’s promised to have at least one Republican in her cabinet, and her actions and behaviors over time, as well as those of her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, predict that she will strongly support Israel. Whereas, a new Trump presidency would be staffed solely by loyalists, missing the guard rails of key centrists he had around him the first time (who no longer support him) thus giving free rein to his extreme unpredictability and lack of self-control. This could risk a cataclysmic disaster for Israel, as well as for the U.S.

I’m voting for Kamala Harris. I’m voting for the mensch.