CJE Senior Leadership

Fagin comes to CJE with extensive experience in the healthcare industry, most recently as CEO of Cedar Village Retirement Community in Mason, Ohio. Cedar Village is a nonprofit continuing care retirement community with a mission similar to CJE’s mission—providing services and supports for older adults and their families.

A Cincinnati native, Fagin was COO of The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati from 2012-2015 where he developed a new shared service organization for Jewish communal agencies and congregations and launched SAFE Cincinnati, a Jewish community security and disaster planning initiative.

From 2002-2012, he was a Managing Director and Healthcare Industry Leader for Protiviti Inc., a global consulting firm that helps business leaders identify, anticipate and solve critical business problems.

Fagin is a graduate of Indiana University, Kelley School of Business (BS, Finance) and Thomas More College (MBA), and during his accomplished 30-year career, he has also worked for Arthur Andersen, Ernst & Young, Kettering Medical Center and Florida Hospital in managerial and information technology roles.

Thomas “Tom” Lockwood, CJE’s Chief Financial Officer, has more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare and eldercare fields, including several hospitals and Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRC). He has served on the board of trustees for various senior service organizations, including an inner-city nursing home, the largest meals-on-wheels program in the Greater Cincinnati area, and an organization operating four group homes for the developmentally disabled.

Lockwood was previously an attorney at Peck, Shaffer & Williams, a division of Dinsmore & Shohl LLP in Cincinnati, in the area of public finances, refinancing capital expansions, and annual capital needs for not-for-profit organizations and local and county government. Prior to that, he served as VP of Finance and CFO for Life Enriching Communities, Inc. (a multi-site CCRC) and the Jewish Home of Cincinnati, Inc., and worked in the finance departments of Children’s Hospital Medical Center as Controller and The Deaconess Hospital as Internal Auditor and Staff Accountant.

Lockwood has direct experience leading CCRC campus development as well as merger and consolidation of long term care facilities and operations. In addition to his strategic planning and budget management experience, he has been involved in the planning and development of an upscale retirement community as well as merger of two existing inner-city nursing home operations into a new facility. His experience with labor negotiations, managed care and benefit program contracting, Medicare and Medicaid compliance, and information technology planning will serve him well at CJE.

Laura Prohov joined CJE SeniorLife in 2005 as Director of Planning & Government Affairs before she became VP of Community Services in 2006. Laura’s entire career has been related to social work, healthcare, advocacy, and community. From the moment she started at the local YMCA as a camp counselor, the impact of the role seemed “right” and energizing. Since beginning her career as a medical social worker, pursuing her MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and joining CJE SeniorLife’s team, among her many other ventures in healthcare, her work has been an invigorating process.

Although her current role as VP of Community Services is not necessarily as “hands-on” as her job once was while working directly with clients in the field, she values implementing new programs and observing the results of their impact. Stemming from an earlier time in her career embracing an advocacy role as a social worker working with individual clients, her advocacy efforts have now evolved into a programmatic and policy level. Of course, you can’t take a social worker out of the field. She emphasizes that her work is always about the people, not just the widgets that make it function. When the opportunity arises, such as a special event at one of the Adult Day programs, she is still very active in her approach to seeing how the programs are currently operating by meeting the participants.

With a great team in place in community services at CJE SeniorLife, Laura finds it exciting at the ground level. She watches people who are struggling with dementia and frailties come alive through the Adult Day Service programs and caregivers. She listens to what transportation providers and nurses, who have often dedicated decades of service to the agency, observe and discuss when it comes to issues involving members of the community. As innovators from the core, she notes that all members of the CJE staff are eager to try new things, and have the desire and willingness to come up with alternate proposals. Ideas come from all over the agency.

Coming into such a pioneering atmosphere, she immediately realized that working for CJE offers not only the opportunity to come up with new possibilities for programs and reach uncharted geographic or service areas, but also presents chances to build on older programs in creative and resourceful ways to meet the needs of the community, particularly in spite of economic decline. As for the future, Laura would also like to see CJE SeniorLife continue to broaden its reach to keep people in the community through continued efforts to develop innovative approaches to meet the growing population’s needs.

As Vice President of the Human Resources and Learning department, Ron has been in a prime position to discover the overarching complexity of CJE SeniorLife as a multi-faceted agency, and how each division operates independently in terms of their staffing and training needs. After 25 years directing human resources initiatives in various institutions, often working with unionized environments, Ron wanted to become part of a non-profit, mission-based organization. Since 2005, he has dedicated his professional career to CJE SeniorLife, drawing from his extensive education at Michigan State University with a Master of Labor and Industrial Relations, additional professional certifications, and previous experiences serving in the human resources departments of a number of established institutions, including Cardinal Health, Exelon Corporation/Commonwealth Edison, Northwestern Memorial Hospital and University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers.

He has enjoyed working with those involved in a non-profit environment, and the most rewarding aspect of his job at CJE SeniorLife is the opportunity to work closely with dedicated, passionate staff members, as well as the ability to build on both a traditional HR team as well as groups of staff that support the agency’s non-traditional elements, such as the learning team. The learning team develops and manages the regulatory education and training programs for CJE, which is a unique challenge in that the organization is comprised of a wide variety of services and programs with roots running deep within the community.

As a Certified Senior Professional in Human Resources himself, Ron encourages his team to pursue higher credentials within the field of human resources. Five of his staff members have earned their Professional in HR certifications through a series of examinations. Fueled by the dedication to his own professional development and love for teaching, he has continued to instruct students at Northern Illinois University through a human resources credentialing course for the past 15 years. He also pushes his own department to continually think of innovative ways to recruit new staff members, such as through social networks like LinkedIn.

This foundation of encouragement sets the tone for the rest of CJE with its agency-wide rewards and recognition programs, which range from ‘One Mitzvah at a Time’ recognitions to Perfect Attendance and Service Anniversary awards to the President’s Award for Innovation and Achievement. He has worked hard to provide CJE SeniorLife employees with competitive compensation and benefits packages, informative orientations and in-services, and continues to hire staff that help maintain the solid, supportive work culture with vision and values that will inevitably increase employee retention in the long run. He hopes to continue to meet the ever-changing needs of the community in a challenging environment, maintain union relationships, and retain and build upon CJE SeniorLife’s dedicated employees.

Bio for Carole is on its way

CJE recently welcomed Stephanie Smerling as Vice President of Resource Development. She is responsible for managing both the Development and Grants Departments that raise critical funds that help support many of CJE’s special programs and services, as well as events such as Celebrate CJE, our annual gala.  
 
Stephanie has significant experience in the fundraising arena, serving in leadership positions over the past 30 years at several local, regional and national nonprofit organizations. She is actually “coming home” to CJE, since she was the first person to hold the position of Development Director when CJE SeniorLife was known as the Council for Jewish Elderly back in the 1990’s.  
 
Most recently, Stephanie partnered with Nativ College and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, to launch Yozma Nativ, a 9-month gap year program in Israel for young adults aged 18-21 with cognitive and social challenges. Prior to 2013, Stephanie was the Director of Institutional Advancement for Rochelle Zell Jewish High School where she managed the annual fund and developed an endowment campaign. In addition, Stephanie held fundraising leadership positions at many other organizations, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Cancer Wellness Center and Jewish Theological Seminary.
 
Stephanie considers this is an incredible opportunity for her to bring her extensive knowledge back to CJE to support CJE’s next phase of growth. She said she “knows firsthand how CJE positively impacts the lives of older adults and their families throughout metropolitan Chicago. We have an unparalleled mission and it is an honor to share our success stories with the Jewish and larger community.”
 
A Deerfield resident, Stephanie earned her BA in Sociology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago.