ZFA, UIA executive reshuffle

THE top echelons of two community organisations have been rocked with news of senior executives departing.

In a week of landmark changes, Robbie Franco is exiting as executive director of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), while at United Israel Appeal (UIA) Victoria, campaign director Craig Woolf is packing up his office.

Franco will be replaced by Ginette Searle, who is currently executive director of the Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV).

Searle’s ZCV position, which she has held for almost 10 years, has been advertised, and there are hopes it will be filled by the time she takes up her new national position on June 1.

When contacted by The AJN this week, Franco would not comment on his departure, indicating he would give a detailed statement later this month.

But ZFA president Philip Chester said Franco, who had grown up in the Zionist movement, and had been in his role for some two years after arriving from New Zealand, “had decided he wanted to look for different things; my understanding is it may not be in the [Jewish] community”.

“He got a lot out of it and we got a lot out of what he contributed to us, but he made a decision that he wants to head off in different directions, and we respect that,” said Chester.

“Robbie added some important strategic aspects to the organisation. Being someone who had come in from the outside, he looked at it in a way that we insiders don’t always get to do,” Chester said.

On Searle’s appointment, Chester said the ZFA was “very excited to be able to secure Ginette. She’s a very highly regarded and experienced member of the team, of the Zionist family.”

Searle, who was involved in the Betar youth organisation and has worked in the public sector, came to the ZCV in 2001.

In her new role, she hopes to “foster communication and coordination between the states”.

Meanwhile, UIA Victoria announced Woolf had “resigned” as campaign director with UIA Victoria.

The organisation issued a brief statement thanking him “for his commitment to the work of UIA, and, in particular, to his contribution to the successful launch of the 2011 campaign, and we wish him well for the future”

Although his title was campaign director, a role he held since last year, Woolf unofficially filled a wider role after the departure of Miriam Suss as executive director.

David Metzler, recently arrived executive director of UIA Victoria, and one of its two shlichim, said that although he and Woolf had only been colleagues for a matter of weeks, mainly over the period of the UIA campaign, “we were happy to work together”.

PETER KOHN

Image: Robbie Franco. Photo: AJN file