According to Kirk Wisemayer, the new CEO and president of the Jewish Federation of Howard County, after he first started meeting people connected with the local Federation, “it became clear to me that this was a place I want to be.”
Wisemayer officially started the position on Sept. 1, following the departure of Joel Frankel and subsequent interim leadership of Susan Bauman Stuart.
Wisemayer is currently staying in a temporary residence as he wraps up his move from Columbia, South Carolina, to Columbia, Maryland.
While his furniture might not be here yet, Wisemayer said he’s hitting the ground running with efforts to get to know his team, fellow Jewish communal leaders and community allies. Just three days in, Wisemayer said he met with the head of the Maryland Turkish-American Inhabitants.
“It sounds like a very nice group that we can do a lot of work with to create allies and friends,” Wisemayer said.
Wisemayer, who has more than three decades of experience in similar leadership roles, has fed his perspective with experiences the world over – from Canada to Australia.
He was born in Toronto, Canada, and grew up in Sydney, Australia. He began his career in human resources and public relations while he worked part-time as a Hebrew school teacher and volunteered with the Jewish Federation’s Young Leadership Division.
In 1991, he returned to the Northern Hemisphere by moving to Canada, where he stayed until 2001, when he made his way stateside. Since then, Wisemayer has worked in various executive roles as a Jewish communal professional in Canada and the U.S.
“I realized that that’s what I was meant to be doing: working in the Jewish community,” Wisemayer said. “I’ve never looked back.”
He credited his upbringing, visits to Israel and community involvement with the development of his Jewish identity both personally and professionally.
“[When you work within the Jewish community,] the connections grow stronger and deeper and more meaningful in many ways because there’s a richer context in your own life because of what you do.”
According to Wisemayer, his experiences have helped him understand and appreciate different perspectives and influenced his personal philosophy on leadership.
“The beauty of the Jewish world is that we’re a diverse people in every way: culturally, linguistically, religiously [and] politically,” Wisemayer said. “A good Jewish leader is someone who can listen and appreciate different perspectives, but I think a good leader is also somebody who brings their own perspective to the table that is also willing to work as part of a team.”
One of the leaders Wisemayer said he looked up to was Shoshana Cardin, who died in 2018. Cardin was named “one of the most influential Jewish leaders of our time,” in her entry in the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame.
“She was a huge philanthropist [and] community leader in the Baltimore area. She was certainly inspired; I was just listening to her and her perspective on Jewish community and the role we all play in the obligations we all have building communities that are strong and sustainable,” Wisemayer said.
Wisemayer’s perspective was also shaped by his Jewish youth program experiences, his Jewish education and his identity as the son of Holocaust survivors. His mother’s family escaped from France and his father’s family from Austria.
He said that growing up surrounded by a strong Holocaust survivor community, which included his parents, led him to admire survivors for their ability to endure and rebuild.
According to Wisemayer, growing up as in a community of survivors taught him two lessons. The first lesson was to look for the positive and see hope and life in the world and to understand the part people play in bringing that to life. The second lesson was to be more appreciative and understanding of others’ suffering and a desire to make the world a better place for others.
“I think understanding other groups helps put the world into perspective,” Wisemayer said.
Cultivating understanding and being a good neighbor is especially important now, according to Wisemayer.
“Since Oct. 7 and the uptick in antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world, we need to have all the friends we can,” Wisemayer said. “There’s a lot of negativity, a lot of hate and a lot of ignorance out there, to be honest, because a lot of people don’t understand what’s going on in Israel or the Middle East and often in our own country.”
Wisemayer, an ardent Zionist, has visited Israel more than 36 times.
“Being a Zionist is the recognition that [Israel] is our ancestral homeland and that today, it plays a very important part in the Diaspora and the relations of Jews in the Diaspora with each other and with Jews who live in Israel,” Wisemayer said.
Here in Howard County, Wisemayer said he hopes to get to know the community and do his part to help the Jewish community of Howard County become “more of what they would like it to be.”
