Director, Young Leadership Development

Amy Greenstein has been a member of the HIAS professional staff since 2002. In her time with HIAS, she has built the HIAS Young Leaders program from its flagship New York chapter to a national program with active participants and supporters around the country. She also oversees the HIAS Scholarship Program which provides financial assistance to HIAS-assisted refugees for their post-secondary education.

Ms. Greenstein’s interest in international issues and Jewish communal service goes back to her time as an undergraduate at Barnard College, where she received her B.A. with a major in Anthropology, and spent her junior year abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon graduating, she completed a year of intensive volunteer work as a member of City Year, an Americorps program that focuses on education of inner city youth. She then returned to Israel to pursue a year-long program at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

Upon returning to New York, Ms. Greenstein helped build the nascent cultural center Makor (which became part of the 92nd Street Y) with a focus on building community for a number of different special interest groups, including Latin American Jews and high tech professionals. Recently, Amy completed her participation in the Muehlstein Institute for Jewish Professional Leadership. She is proud to now be working at the very refugee resettlement agency that was responsible for finding safe haven for her mother when she arrived to the U.S. from Cuba in 1961.