JFS is excited to celebrate its 45th year anniversary
with our extraordinary 2024 honorees:

Martin Cohen

and receiving the JFS Max Michelson Humanitarian Award:

OUR HONOREE: Martin Cohen

Martin Cohen can tell you a lot about health and health care in MetroWest. For the last 24 years he has led the MetroWest Health Foundation in providing close to $80 million in support of health and human service programs in the region. As the foundation’s founding President & CEO, Marty was given the task of turning the proceeds from the 1996 sale of MetroWest Medical Center into a charitable foundation that would, as its mission states, “improve the health status of the community, its individuals and families through informed and innovative leadership.”

Through Marty’s leadership the foundation’s work is more than just providing funding. Rather, the foundation serves as catalyst for change, bringing government, nonprofit organizations, and individuals together to bring innovative ideas and solutions to those in need. Over his tenure, the foundation has helped to establish two community health centers, a young-adult resource center, mental health co-response units within local police departments, as well as support for many of JFS initiatives, including those focused on new immigrant families and older adults.

With a graduate degree in social work from Boston University, Marty began his career in state government, working at the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and later as a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Executive Office of Health & Human Services. He went on to serve as Senior Program Consultant with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation directing their national program on mental illness. In 1992, he founded the Technical Assistance Collaborative, a national health & human services consulting firm assisting state and county governments and nonprofits in the area of health policy.

In addition to his work with the foundation, Marty serves as the Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission, and on the boards of the Point32 Health Foundation and the David & Lura Lovell Foundation.

Marty and his wife Janise reside in Needham where they are active with Temple Beth Shalom and the Needham Community Council. Their daughter Maggie is also focused on social good as Program Manager at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation.

2024 JFS MAX MICHELSON HUMANITARIAN AWARDEES: Yale Appliance Company and Yale Appliance Foundation

JFS of Metrowest is pleased to announce that Yale Appliance Company and the Yale Appliance Foundation will be honored with the Max Michelson Humanitarian Award, at Seize the Dream on May 15, 2024.

The award recognizes those who embody the values underscored (and lived) by Max Michelson (z”l), a co-founder of JFS, author and a greatly respected community leader. Max, who survived the Holocaust, provided wisdom and hope, inspiring each of us to be better, to do better, to never make excuses, and to always move forward. He transformed a personal story of unconscionable torment into a commitment to justice, to ending pain and suffering and to defending the powerless.

The Yale Appliance Company began as one storefront on Portland Street in Boston in 1923. One hundred years later it has expanded to three locations in Dorchester, Hanover and Framingham. Behind the success of the company is CEO Steve Sheinkopf’s dedication to improving the lives of people where they work and live, with projects and programs that directly support the most vulnerable. Since the Yale Appliance Foundation’s inception in 2006 more than $2 M has been generously donated to local nonprofits in MetroWest, Boston and beyond.

The partnership between JFS and the Yale Appliance Foundation began during the Covid-19 pandemic with Yale’s generous donation to the JFS Coronavirus Relief Fund. Since then, the partnership has flourished. In 2021, Yale employees distributed over 100 pairs of new sneakers to elementary school-age students in a JFS affiliated program within the Framingham Public Schools and most recently, the Foundation supported a project that distributed 600 pairs of boots to Framingham school children.

“It has been a privilege for Team JFS to work with Marilyn Newman, head of the Yale Appliance Foundation, whose generosity and dedication to the most vulnerable reflect her family’s legacy of giving back to the community ” Lino Covarrubias, CEO of JFS of Metrowest.

JFS is honored to award the Max Michelson Humanitarian Award to Yale Appliance Company and their more than 200 employees who truly have made a difference in the lives of so many on our community.