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Class of 2024

Lev BenEzra

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Class of 2024

Executive Director, Amherst Survival Center: Age 39

The levels of food insecurity in this region rose dramatically during the pandemic, Lev BenEzra notes, and they continue to rise, for several reasons — from inflation, and the enormous toll it takes on families’ budgets, to the curtailment of many COVID-inspired relief initiatives.

BenEzra’s determined and imaginative efforts to tackle this critical issue certainly help to explain why she is not only a Forty Under 40 honoree, but why she tied for the highest score among the class of 2024.

In short, she has provided the leadership and vision needed to not only see the Amherst Survival Center through the upheaval of the pandemic, when it had to meet soaring needs and find new and different ways to do things, but chart a course for the next several years through strategic planning and anticipation of future challenges.

In doing so, she is continuing a two-decade-long track record of working for nonprofits, dating back to when she served as an academic coordinator for Girls Inc. of the Valley and then a curriculum specialist for the Hasbro Summer Learning Initiative in Springfield. Later, she spent more than a decade with Community Action Pioneer Valley in Greenfield, first as program manager of Youth Programs and then as director of Youth and Workforce Development, before coming to the Amherst Survival Center just months before the pandemic arrived, bringing challenge, but also opportunity, with it.

“There is something about a crisis that clarifies what it is that you’re supposed to be doing or what is truly important,” she said. “And I think that was very true, especially in the early days of leadership at the Survival Center; we provide a daily, essential service to people and, thus, did not have the option of closing or limiting access to our programs.”

During her tenure, BenEzra and her team have doubled the agency’s annual revenue; launched a successful grocery-delivery program; improved access for people from all cultures and backgrounds, while also increasing availability of food to meet different dietary needs and cultural styles of cooking; and spearheaded major HR improvements to better support the staff.

Active in the community, she is also a board member of the Community Health Center of Franklin County and has served Franklin County Pride, the Communities that Care Coalition, the Strategic Planning Initiative for Families & Youth, and the Regional Employment Board Youth Career Connections Council, among other nonprofits.

—George O’Brien

Shirley Arriaga

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Class of 2024

State Representative, 8th Hampden District: Age 34

Shirley ArriagaShirley Arriaga says her life and career have gone pretty much according to plan. Or the plan, to be more precise.

It was one she started conceiving when she was young, one that had her moving into public service and helping to write laws that would positively impact people, something she long aspired to do, and is now doing as state representative for the 8th Hampden District — her hometown of Chicopee.

To get there, though, she knew she needed an education, and she needed to develop skills, especially leadership, and this put her on a path to the military, specifically the U.S. Air Force, serving as a loadmaster in the 337th Airlift Squadron at Westover. She would take part in deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, eventually earning the rank of staff sergeant and becoming part of the Women in Aviation initiative.

Arriaga’s service helped her continue her education — an associate degree in liberal arts from Springfield Technical Community College; a bachelor’s degree in legal studies and a paralegal certificate from Elms College; a master of law degree from Western New England University; and an associate degree in aerospace, aeronautical, and astronomical engineering from the Community College of the Air Force.

After serving in the Air Force for a decade, she worked as veterans director for U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, assisting veterans with a wide range of issues, and it was this work that crystalized her desire to run for public office.

After an unsuccessful run for City Council, she set her sights much higher — filling the very large shoes of retiring, long-time state Rep. Joseph Wagner, in what everyone but her saw as a longshot bid.

“I personally knocked on 21,000 doors myself,” she said, often with her daughter, Winter, in tow. “I ended up getting some folks to volunteer, and they knocked on 5,000 more — so that’s 26,000 doors. It was a lot of hard work, sunup to sundown.”

That hard work was rewarded with victory in November 2022, followed by a year of hard learning.

“When they say it’s like drinking from a firehose, that’s exactly what it was like; there’s no manual, and you learn these things as you go,” she said, adding that she has settled in and is focused on priorities ranging from veterans to education; from small business to transportation. “It’s fast-paced, and you’re always learning, but it has been the experience of a lifetime.”

And the fulfillment of a plan she made a long time ago.

—George O’Brien