The Wexner Foundation

Guided by the vision of Abigail and Leslie Wexner, The Wexner Foundation focuses on the development of Jewish professional and volunteer leaders in North America and public sector leaders in Israel. In the early 1980’s Les Wexner reached the conclusion that what the Jewish community and Israel needed most was stronger leaders. When established Jewish organizations showed relatively little interest in investing in the development of leaders, Les decided to take up the mission with his private philanthropy. Originally Les founded two separate organizations to pursue this mission: The Wexner Heritage Foundation created the Wexner Heritage Program to strengthen volunteer leaders; and the Wexner Foundation created the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, for emerging professional Jewish leaders, and the Wexner Israel Fellowship, for mid-career Israeli public officials. In the 1990s Abigail Wexner joined Les in charting the Wexner philanthropic vision in their roles as chairmen. In 2003 the two foundations merged, and since then The Wexner Foundation has run all three programs as a unified organization under Abigail and Les’s leadership. The Foundation has also added new programs to expand upon its mission of strengthening Jewish leaders. Since 2013 The Wexner Foundation has launched four additional programs: Wexner Service Corps (2013), Wexner Field Fellowship (2013), Wexner Senior Leaders (2014) and The Wexner Summits (2015).