Dan Rosenfield has taken over as the new Chair of World Jewish Relief bringing a wealth of professional experience to the role. He has been a trustee of the charity since 2014 and says, “It is truly an honour to be asked to chair World Jewish Relief. I am inspired by our rich heritage of saving Jewish lives, proud of the World Jewish Relief team and the work they do to help the most vulnerable and determined to work with my fellow trustees and the executive team to continue to drive this great charity forward”.

Dan was immediately struck by the charity’s strong heritage, particularly in organising the Kindertransport. He has been involved in approving funding for World Jewish Relief programmes and has helped champion the charity’s livelihoods programme.

He strongly supports the charity’s ethos that enabling people to work and helping them to support themselves is the best root out of poverty and the path to dignity, independence and a better future. “Jewish poverty is changing from generation to generation and we need to cut that off at the source. We must ensure that the next generation do not have to face the same challenges as the last. That’s why the livelihood work means so much to me – it is not just changing people’s lives, it’s ensuring that whole communities are given a chance to haul themselves out of poverty, for good.”

Dan is also passionate about World Jewish Relief’s humanitarian relief work, arguing that it is “profoundly important and Jewish to pull out all the stops when people are in need”, a perspective that he attributes to his background in RSY, the Jewish youth movement.

After finishing Manchester Grammar School in 1995, Dan went on to University College London where he studied European Studies before joining the Treasury in 2000. He worked with the finance teams that oversaw the London 2012 Olympics and the 2006 Northern Ireland peace agreement. In 2007 he was appointed Principal Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, working with him throughout the financial crisis and global recession and then later with George Osborne, managing the transition to Coalition government.

In 2011 he moved to become a Managing Director of UK Investment Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch before leaving to join Hakluyt, a strategic intelligence and advisory firm, earlier this year.

Dan paid tribute to his predecessor James Libson who he described as having been: “a fantastic chair and supporter of World Jewish Relief. I am thrilled that his long association with World Jewish Relief will continue”.

He is a long standing and active member of Alyth Synagogue.