Rania Kfuri
Vice President for Philanthropy, Sales, and Marketing, Glenmeadow
She Brings Energy, Positivity to Everything She Does
When asked about her basic approach to life and work — and, later, about her best advice to young people, and especially women — Rania Kfuri said that, in both cases, it comes down to the same two-word phrase: show up.
By that, she meant being ambitious, giving back, supporting others, effectively balancing work and life in a way that would yield success at both, and always reaching higher.
She also meant following a tradition of community involvement set by several generations of her family — on both sides, and especially the women, something we’ll hear more about in a bit.
And she also meant literally showing up, as she does, at gatherings of all kinds, including BusinessWest’s events. Indeed, Kfuri, a proud former introvert, spoke early and often about the power of networking and connectivity, and how, because of that, she counts many of BusinessWest’s Women of Impact, including several from this year’s class, as friends.
She’s joining their ranks … well, because she does show up, and always has, whether while working for the mayor of Chicago; or as an entrepreneur who developed a unique travel bag for young parents; or while working at Smith College, which she served in several roles; or as a Philanthropy officer for Baystate Health; or as a board member for nonprofits that include the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts, Stanley Park, Revitalize CDC, and Girls on the Run.
Or in her current role as vice president of Philanthropy, Sales, and Marketing at the Glenmeadow senior living in facility in Longmeadow.
That’s a broad title with many responsibilities that are all connected and represent some of her passions, especially philanthropy, she explained.
“There’s such an intersectionality between these three areas — I wish more organizations would see it that way,” said Kfuri, a first-generation Lebanese-American whose parents came to this country when her father, a physician, did his residency here, and stayed as war continued to rage in Lebanon. “Collaboration and communication are so important for an organization, and all three of these areas are very closely related.
“Sales, marketing, and philanthropy should all be communicating together, using the same streamlined language, and communicating the same mission,” she went on, adding that it’s her job to make sure they do.
But it’s not so much what she does within that broad job title that makes her a Woman of Impact, but how she does it — and what else she does.
“Her energy and positivity are contagious and help us all to see the benefits of collaboration and connectivity,” wrote Kathy Martin, president and CEO of Glenmeadow as she nominated Kfuri for this award. “She puts community first and is a quiet but impactful leader. From her service to a great many organizations and causes, she is often the nexus of an impressive web of overlapping relationships that, taken as a whole, move Western Mass. forward.”
“She puts community first and is a quiet but impactful leader.”
Dawn Creighton, a community outreach officer with Liberty Bank, who also nominated Kfuri, agreed, calling her an inspiration on many fronts.
“She is a beacon of positivity no matter what is happening in the world,” Creighton wrote. “I admire her tremendous balance of work and family life. Rania embodies engaging her girls in all she does so they understand what being a good steward to the community looks like. She is a walking judgment-free zone and will help anyone without explanation, requiring just a smile of gratitude. I love her passion for family, life, and our community.”
She’s far from alone in that sentiment, and this helps explain why Kfuri has been named a Woman of Impact.
Root Causes
Kfuri says she can thank family members for many of the traits she exhibits today.
Indeed, she said it was her brother, Kerim, a successful entrepreneur, who helped her overcome shyness and eventually become a dynamic networker and collaborator.
Rania Kfuri, right, counts Revitalize CDC as one of the many area agencies and causes to which she has donated time and talent.
“This is an acquired skill; I was not like this naturally … I was almost afraid of people when I was younger,” she recalled. “And my brother, who’s an extrovert, said, ‘you’re never going to have any fun, you’ve never going to get anything done if you don’t just go talk to people.’ He made me fearless to be social.”
Meanwhile, she said her parents and other members of her extended family going back several generations have served as effective role models when it comes to everything from giving back and helping others to being entrepreneurial.
“My parents’ home became a community hub for people who were also immigrating to the United States from Lebanon,” she explained. “And the nature of my parents being that way is because of the families they were raised by in Lebanon.
“He really instilled in my mom, who instilled it in me, the importance of being present in your community — being a doer.”
“My great-grandmother on my mother’s side was the head of the women’s group of the Greek Orthodox Church in Beirut,” Kfuri went on. “She was a very strong woman, a community-oriented woman who helped a lot of women who were widowed with employment opportunities and things of that nature. And that is how she identified my grandfather, my mom’s dad, who was also a family medicine physician, to be a great partner for my grandmother — because he also really believed in being a participant in community.
“He really instilled in my mom, who instilled it in me, the importance of being present in your community — being a doer,” she continued. “That’s in the fabric of my family, and the same goes for my father’s side, where my grandmother, in her earlier years in Lebanon … if you didn’t have a table to sit at and have dinner at, you were welcome at her table.”
These qualities, which she is now passing down to her children, helped shaped Kfuri as she grew up in Baltimore, and she eventually graduated from American University in Washington, D.C. with a political science degree and dreams of working in the State Department overseas.
Rania Kfuri continues a long tradition among several generations of her extended family when it comes to getting involved and giving back.
Photo by Bob Zemba, Simple Truth Imaging
She entered law school at Marquette University in Milwaukee, but didn’t enjoy that experience and returned to American University to earn a master’s degree in ethics, peace, and global affairs and forge new dreams of returning to Lebanon and doing peace building.
All that changed when she met her husband, then doing his residency at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, not through a dating website, as she recalled, but a ‘finding your roots in Lebanon’ website.
But that’s another story. Fast-forwarding this one, Rania and her husband eventually came to Western Mass. as he joined Baystate Health (he’s now chief of Gastroenterology there), and she starting writing new chapters in an intriguing career.
One of the first involved entrepreneurship, developing travel bags for parents with young children under the name Free Like Birdie, with Birdie being a nickname for her older daughter. The bags were a huge success — they were sold through Kohl’s, diapers.com, Amazon, and other outlets — but she eventually reached a critical crossroads.
“My younger daughter was about to start preschool five days a week, and my company was in a place where I was talking to QVC, and it either needed to grow, meaning I needed to build out a team, or it should close,” she recalled. “I decided that it had been a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it, but it was the right time to close.”
She then took a part-time position as an administrative assistant at the Solidago Foundation in Northampton and later worked at Smith College, first as assistant director of the Annual Fund and then as assistant director of International Alumni Relations.
She enjoyed her time at Smith, but was drawn to healthcare — many family members work in that broad realm — and took a job as a Philanthropy officer with Baystate Health in 2022.
“I wanted to help support the healthcare system because my dad used to teach public health at Johns Hopkins, and I know that regions can become healthcare deserts, and I don’t want that to happen to Western Mass.,” she said. “I’m always a cheerleader for Baystate.”
Connecting the Dots
Kfuri joined Glenmeadow a year ago, taking on a role that makes each day different and presents myriad opportunities to do what she perhaps does best — promoting and building community in all its forms.
“Community grows here, and in many different ways,” she explained, listing everything from the relationships between residents and staff to community gatherings (she calls them cocktail parties), to regular ‘town hall gatherings’ where residents can ask Martin questions and get answers.
Community also refers to connecting residents to the larger community, she went on, be it through trips to area attractions and institutions — there was one recently to the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne — to programs with partners such as the Community Music School and Square One. “We’re always looking to create spaces of joy,” she explained.
Reflecting on her approach to life and work, Kfuri summoned a phrase she attributes to an English teacher at the McDonogh School in Maryland: ‘you should care, you should dare, and you should share.’
“She would say that all the time,” Kfuri said. “And it re-emphasized that you shouldn’t be waiting for someone else to do the thing; you should be doing the thing. And that’s such an important part of whom I am as a person. Between my family and school, the culture was, ‘you have to show up.’
She continues to do so, and thus, there are many parts to who Kfuri is, starting with a strong work ethic and drive to succeed, a collaborative approach to her work, and a willingness to get involved in the community.
“In her work at Glenmeadow, she champions a person-centered approach to the functions she oversees and has transformed our organization by the outcomes and approaches to her work,” Martin wrote. “It’s about more than filling apartments; it’s about welcoming new members of our community in ways that honor the lives they’ve lived already and creating pathways for them to continue to thrive. She has made us better on every level.”
In the community, meanwhile, Kfuri has become involved with a wide range of groups and causes, from Revitalize CDC to Girls on the Run to the city of Westfield, where she served on a master plan committee.
But beyond that, she serves as a convener and a motivator, always seeking to broaden and strengthen the core of women leaders in the region. She hosts an annual dinner at her home, inviting those women leaders to gather and discuss ways to be empowered — and utilize that power to better the region.
“I don’t think that calling yourself an ambitious woman is a bad thing — ambition is not a dirty word,” she told BusinessWest. “I do, though, also believe that, as women, we need to support other women, and I would love to see more women genuinely support other women.”
With those efforts, as with other aspects of her life, it all comes back to where she started this conversation — with showing up … and being a Woman of Impact.
