32 | OCTOBER 12 • 2023 J
N

OUR COMMUNITY

F

rom mortgage broker to 
Broadway producer, Bloomfield 
Hills resident Nicole Eisenberg 
has lived a life she never could have 
planned. “It’s absolutely, totally and 
completely not what I envisioned,” 
she told Sam Dubin and Beverly Liss, 
co-hosts of the FedRadio Detroit 
podcast on its latest episode, done in 
partnership with the Jewish News.
Eisenberg is a Broadway producer, 
co-producer and investor. Her credits 
include Just for Us and Into the Woods. 
She was named one of the Detroiters 
of the Year by Hour Magazine. She’s 
married to Steven and has two sons, 
Noah and Evan. 
As a girl, she had dreams of moving 
to New York, becoming a writer and 
creating the next great novel. She 
attended Northwestern University, 
where “in my first day I found out that I 
was not going to be a writer. Absolutely 
not. I did not have a story to tell,” she 
said.
Encouraged by her father — and her 
own desire not to work at a low-paying 
job — Eisenberg pursued a career as a 
mortgage broker at Rock Financial. Her 
career went international and during 
that time, she met and married her 
husband, Steven, and lived in Chicago, 
where she had her son Noah and began 
her nine-year struggle with infertility. 
“My life was totally different again. 
Steven did not want me to go back 
to working mortgages because it was 
evenings and weekends and all the 
things that would take me away from 
him and our home life,” she said. 
After a year-long process of “being 
put through the ringer,” she joined the 
board at the Detroit Institute of Arts. 
“That was a defining moment in my 

life, and it made me feel like I had a 
purpose,” she said. She also learned she 
was really good at development and 
raising money for the DIA.
Her son, Noah, fell in love with 
theater as he grew up. Eventually, 
Eisenberg began investing in theater, 
which led to her producing career on 
Broadway. She’s been Tony-nominated 
twice (and lost both times).
“I think I’ve just sort of gone along 
with what’s in front of my face and 
opened my mind and my ears and my 
networking skills and my development 
skills, and I found my place,” she said. 

JEWISH VALUES IN ACTION
“Tikkun olam is what I feel is the most 
important thing in life. You have to give 
back. You have to do it in a meaningful 
way,” she said. “I find that even on my 
charitable endeavors, my Broadway 
producing, co-producing, investing — 
anything that I do — I feel in my heart 
is good for other people.”

Something that’s very important 
to her is the LGBTQ community and 
achieving equal rights. And things are 
moving in the right direction, said 
Eisenberg, a member of Congregation 
Shaarey Zedek. “Conservative rabbis 
who once said they would never marry 
an LGBTQ couple have now done so. 
I know my (gay) son will be able to be 
married in my own congregation where 
I had my bat mitzvah.” 
Eisenberg is a board member of 
GLAD, which advocates for the LGBTQ 
community and works to increase 
representation of gay people in the arts 
and media. “Everyone should be allowed 
to see themselves represented,” she said.
During the podcast, Eisenberg also 
shares her long heartbreaking journey 
through infertility that ended with the 
birth of her second son, Evan, through 
surrogacy. “We call him Evan from 
Heaven,” she said.
Eisenberg, who suffers from anxiety, 
is also an advocate for mental health. 
“The older and, hopefully, the wiser I 
get, I am being a little bit more open 
with my life,” she said. “Until recently, 
nobody really knew of all of the 
different things that I was doing. Not 
everybody knows about my story with 
Evan. Not everybody knows that I was a 
caretaker for my dad and made a lot of 
decisions that I didn’t think I’d have to 
make over 12 years. I’m putting this out 
there because we do have the EIsenberg 
Depression Center and mental health is 
one of my biggest platforms.” 

Hear more about Eisenberg’s Broadway career, 

her advocacy work and her infertility journey on 

the podcast available at myjewishdetroit.org. The 

episode also features an interview with Katie 

Schulman from the Fiber Club, who was recently 

highlighted in the Jewish News.

Broadway producer speaks to FedRadio Detroit about 
her career, her advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community 
and her journey through infertility.

Meet Nicole Eisenberg

JACKIE HEADAPOHL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Nicole 
Eisenberg

