Michael Simon, Executive Director of Northwestern University Hillel, was awarded the Richard M. Joel Exemplar of Excellence Award at Hillel International’s Global Assembly in Orlando on Dec. 10. The Exemplar of Excellence award is Hillel International’s highest professional honor for Hillel professionals around the world who exemplify an outstanding commitment to their campus Hillels.

“On behalf of Northwestern Hillel, I am deeply honored, thrilled, and humbled to receive this recognition,” Simon said. “This award would not have been possible without the amazing work of our lay leadership and our campus and community partners, the fantastic efforts of our talented and tireless staff, and the creativity and passion and energy of our wonderful students. I look forward to building on this honor toward even greater achievements of excellence for our students, our campus, and for the Jewish people in the months and years to come.”

“I have been associated with Hillel for many years and I have been impressed by how we are so often blessed with remarkable campus leaders,” said Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro. “Michael Simon is as good as it gets. He is entrepreneurial, personable, and tireless in both fostering a welcoming Jewish community, and in his outreach outside that community. He is at every campus event and represents us beautifully. He is unflappable, forward-thinking, and inspiring. What a perfect candidate for an award named for the magnificent Richard Joel.”

Simon, who lives with his family in Evanston, joined the Northwestern Hillel staff in July 2010, after seven years as the associate director of Harvard Hillel, where he worked to connect Harvard undergraduates, graduate students, faculty members, and local community members to Torah, Israel, tikun olam (repairing the world), and one another. As Executive Director of Northwestern Hillel, Michael works with students, staff colleagues, and community members toward achieving Hillel’s mission of inspiring every Jewish student at Northwestern to make a meaningful and enduring commitment to Jewish life.

He grew up in Long Beach, Calif., and completed a bachelor’s degree in American Studies at Stanford University. He spent three years teaching elementary school for Teach for America corps, and then attended the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he completed a master’s degree in Public Policy.

Simon traveled to Israel for the first time in 2000 as a participant on Livnot U’lehibanot, and returned the following year as a Dorot Fellow. While in Israel from 2001 to 2003, Michael studied Torah intensively at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies and worked as a madrich (counselor) with The Nesiya Institute’s summer program in Israel for American and Israeli teens.

“I am so grateful to Hillel for offering me a space where I could explore my own leadership, spiritual identity, and look to each of the amazing staff members as role models to help me do these things,” said Ariella Hoffman Peterson, current Northwestern student and president of Zooz, Hillel’s Service Learning Group. “Michael, especially, has been an incredible person to learn from. He has showed me through his command of balancing all the moving parts, what leadership should look like. His passion for Jewish learning and community building has deeply influenced me and reminded me how important it is to me to be active in the Jewish community. And his investment and the encouragement of me and my fellow Hillel-goers’s initiatives and personal growth has truly empowered me and helped to shape my college experience.”

Fiedler Hillel is a division of The Hillels of Illinois, a partner in serving our community, supported by the Jewish United Fund.