Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Partner and Chief Marketing Officer at the national defence technology firm Shield AI. She is author of New York Times bestsellers Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield (2015) and The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (2011), about a young entrepreneur who supported her community under the Taliban. Lemmon led public policy analysis during the 2008 financial crisis for the global investment firm PIMCO. Her work from Syria, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Liberia, and beyond has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, and The Atlantic, among others. A board member of the NGO Mercy Corps and a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, she speaks Spanish, German, French, and is conversant in Dari and basic Kurmanji.

 

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Rhoda Spielman Tzemach was a writer from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, who published poetry until she left school. She studied at Boston University for three years and wrote poetry and loved books, reading them voraciously until her passing. Active in our community and in our synagogue, she was the best friend anyone could want and many claimed her as their best friend. A single mom, she worked at the telephone company and sold Tupperware to make sure that her daughter had every opportunity imaginable. She taught Gayle everything, including the power of strength, grace, courage and never, ever giving up a fight or giving in to doubt. She died of cancer at age 36 in 1987.