14 | SEPTEMBER 12 • 2019
DIANA SCHOENBRUN
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DETROIT BEGINNINGS
Three decades ago, Adam was
a child growing up in Jewish
Detroit. He’
d get immersed in
“We Didn’
t Start the Fire” by
Billy Joel, be featured in the
April 17, 1989, issue of the
Detroit Free Press about his pas-
sion for Nintendo, and attend
Camp Tamarack and Camp
Tanuga, where he says he discov-
ered a love of water skiing and
tennis, which complemented an
early passion for reading, soccer
and trivia.
Just two decades ago, Adam
graduated from West Bloomfield
High School, where he dove
competitively all four years and
was ranked 47th nationally. He
was team captain, an academic
All-American and a scholarship
winner at the 1999 Michigan
Jewish Sports Foundation dinner.
He graduated from Harvard
University, and then received
his Ph.D. from the University
of Michigan in three years. He
and Allison married at Tam-O-
Shanter when he was in graduate
school.
When Facebook COO Sheryl
Sandberg went to Israel last
month, she made an early visit
to meet Israeli President Reuven
Rivlin, still mourning the loss
of his wife two months before.
Sandberg gave him Option
B, a book she co-wrote about
building resilience in the face of
adversity after she had to face the
sudden loss of her own husband.
The co-author was Adam
Grant, who Sandberg has
referred to as “one of the most
important influences in my life.”
Adam, 38, has already amassed
millions of fans who listen to his
podcasts (WorkLife). Millions
have read his bestselling books
and heard him speak at govern-
ment, corporate and nonprofit
events around the world.
His first two books, Give and
T
ake: Why Helping Others Drives
Our Success and Originals: How
Non-Conformists Move the World,
quickly rocketed to top slots on
the New York Times bestsellers list
and have been translated to 35 or
so languages.
He has had academic ten-
ure for a decade, when, at
29, he became the youngest
professor ever to be tenured
at the Wharton School at the
University of Pennsylvania. He
often teaches 300 students across
four sections each semester —
and they have rated him one of
Wharton’
s top educators going
back years.
Allison earned three degrees
from the school of nursing at
the University of Michigan — a
bachelor’
s in nursing, a master’
s
as a psychiatric-mental health
nurse practitioner, and a master’
s
in nursing business and health
care administration. She gradu-
ated with a perfect GPA and is a
member of the Sigma Theta Tau
International Honors Society.
The Grants both grew up as
members of local synagogues,
with extended families today at
Temple Kol Ami and Temple
Shir Shalom, both in West
Bloomfield. They had their b’
nai
mitzvahs in the Detroit area in
the early 1990s. In later years,
Allison became very active in the
BBYO Michigan region (Ahavah
chapter), where she served a lead-
ership role as regional N’
siah.
For the pair, participation in
social action and community
service was emphasized through
BBYO and their temples.
They started instilling these
same values in their children at
a very young age. The first thing
they did was to encourage gener-
osity around the holiday season.
At Chanukah, instead of just
receiving gifts, the Grant kids
picked out presents for under-
privileged children and delivered
them to local hospitals and
shelters. As they grew, they were
actively involved in choosing
items to donate to local temples
and charities.
Now that they’
re older, they
focus less on gift giving and
more on the ways they can give
daily with their time, knowl-
edge, skills and compassion. To
“catch them doing good” and
remind them to be grateful for
the kindness of others, they
have a weekly dinner table tra-
dition of asking them who they
helped this week — and who
helped them.
LIFE IN PHILADELPHIA
When asked about the con-
trasts between the Philadelphia
and Detroit Jewish communi-
ties, they start with a big dif-
ference: Detroit has more delis
“We believe the responsibility of
parents is to encourage kids to
take pride in excellence, but also
nurture virtues like generosity,
curiosity and integrity.”
Jews in the D
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