This article was originally published in the Winter 2024 issue of the GFS Bulletin.

 

On a bright day in September, GFS’ Chief Advancement Officer Hannah Caldwell Henderson ’91, and photographer Scott Foley, stood outside of a tall iron gate in front of a limestone manor perched on a hill in Ottawa, Ontario. 

This circa-1908 estate, called Lornado, is the official residence of the United States Ambassador to Canada, and the current home of U.S. Ambassador to Canada David L. Cohen and his wife, Rhonda R. Cohen. The Cohens moved there in 2021, when he was appointed to the ambassadorship by President Biden and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate. 

 

Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Cohen held a number of significant business, civic, and charitable positions, including Senior Executive Vice President and Senior Advisor to the CEO at Comcast NBCUniversal, Chair of law firm Ballard Spahr, and Chief of Staff to Mayor Edward G. Rendell. Since retiring from a 20-year law career, Rhonda has been an active philanthropist and volunteer, sitting on the boards of Delaware Valley Friends School, Swarthmore College, and the Community College of Philadelphia, among others.  She also chairs the board of The Glenmede Trust Company. They are true leaders in Philadelphia—and now on the global stage—and their commitment to education and service is extraordinary.

 

The Cohens recently established the Cohen Family Scholarship endowed fund at Germantown Friends School through the Huron Foundation, with the input of their children, Joshua Cohen ’08 and Benjamin Cohen. This newly endowed fund will increase financial aid and access at GFS, one of the key pillars of the Picture This campaign. Henderson and Foley traveled to Lornado to meet and thank the Cohens in-person. They also enjoyed the privilege of sitting down with David and Rhonda for a discussion on the couple’s perspectives on access to education and what drives the family’s philanthropic work.  

Hannah Caldwell Henderson ’91: What about GFS has stayed with you since Josh graduated?

Ambassador David L. Cohen: Josh was a GFS lifer, and even after college, law school, and being out in the real world, his closest friends remain GFSers; their bond is truly unique. GFS is more than just a school, it’s a real community. And I think that the kids feel that, too. 

Rhonda R. Cohen: We liked the school’s approach to learning, to community, and to being kind. Also, our experiences with the teachers were really wonderful, especially in Lower School. Josh had Susan Shechtman; she was amazing. He had Babo Stern and Margaret Fleisher, too.

HCH: You’ve both given so generously to educational institutions with your time, energy, and resources. Why is that where you’ve chosen to focus your efforts?

DC: I don't mean to sound trite, but I do think education is the ultimate leveler of the playing field, and provides absolutely essential tools for our young people to shape the future of our world.

In the Jewish religion, there’s this important concept of tikkun olam, which very loosely translates to “repair the world.” That is one of the central roles of charity in the Jewish religion, and we’ve adopted it as one of the obligations that we as leaders have. I believe that one of the most important roles that educational institutions have is to train and inculcate young people in the ways in which they can repair the world. That’s been a theme that’s tied together a lot of my life, and it runs through our philanthropy.  I can't think of more leverage that our charitable dollars can produce than supporting quality educational institutions.  And the better the institution—including places like GFS, Swarthmore, and Penn—there is a special importance to make sure that there is access to the institution for all, regardless of income level, race, or the neighborhood where you grow up.

 

RC: David’s frame is right, but for me, my passion was amplified by our having a child with learning issues [Ed. note: The Cohens’ older son Ben, attended Delaware Valley Friends School]. Sending him to the right school helped him to overcome his obstacles and put him on the right path. We saw, in a very personal way, the positive impact that a quality education can have on your child.  It’s not a direct comparison, but for some kids, it’s not learning obstacles, but economic obstacles. And if you can get them into a place and help to remove those obstacles so that they can then learn and become very productive citizens, that's something you want to support.  It's really about removing obstacles, and money is too often a big one.

HCH: What inspired your support of financial aid and access at GFS?

DC: I don't think there's a finer elementary or secondary education institution that I've ever come in contact with: GFS has the whole package—highest quality education, faculty, community, and student body. 

When you have an institution like GFS that very intentionally and with purpose goes out and says, ‘We have to raise money and make sure that this opportunity is available to everyone,’ I think people like us have an obligation to support that.

If we actually believe in the importance of education, the value of repairing the world, and how young people with an education can grow up to actually change the world—and you’ve got an institution that wants to make sure that opportunity is available to everyone—the only way to do that is to raise money. We need to step up and support that, and to make sure that GFS can be successful in raising the financial support necessary to provide that extraordinary education to everyone, regardless of their income level.

HCH: Has your role as U.S. Ambassador to Canada changed any of your philosophies about education?

DC: This job has really expanded the way I think about the role of education, which I thought I understood.  My views have expanded beyond Philadelphia and the United States to a more global perspective. Now, I’m even more focused on arming kids with the tools to be able to be active participants in society defined in a much larger context—that could be an active participant in building a nursing corp in Philadelphia; that could mean arming our GFS graduates to go to college where they get trained and come back to teach the next generation of kids at GFS who will benefit from this incredible Friends education; or you could have someone that says, “I’m going to take on climate change as an issue and be armed to guide my vocation to do that.” You could even have a GFS student who wants to go into the foreign service and work to promote American values and become a diplomat around the world.  

I’m more focused now on the role of educational institutions in building skill sets and transferring values [through education]. It’s building a community where values are important and are practiced. If you’re constantly interacting with a community where your values are inculcated and part of your life, that’s how you transfer values to the next generation.