28 | NOVEMBER 7 • 2024 J
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achel Fine of Oak Park
has been part of the Metro
Detroit Jewish community
for as long as she can remember. She
grew up in Southfield and attended
Temple Beth El until graduation,
where she served as youth group
president.
One of Fine’s most formative
Jewish experiences is her Tamarack
Camps journey, starting as a camper
when she was 8 years old. In 2006,
she spent her first summer at Charles
N. Agree Outpost camp, where she
fell in love with wilderness camping.
After that, she spent every sum-
mer until 2014 at Agree or Camp
Kennedy. She was a staff member on
the Eastern Appalachia travel trip
in 2015 and returned full-time to
Tamarack, working in development.
She eventually served as the com-
munity engagement and outpost
director where she oversaw both
Agree and Kennedy, did grant writing
and worked with other community
organizations.
Having spent half the summers
of her life there, Fine’s Tamarack
journey ending with a communi-
ty engagement role was especially
meaningful.
“It was a culminating experience —
camp has been so important to me,”
Fine said.
Fine attended Kalamazoo College,
and when all of her friends were
deciding where they were going after
graduation, she was drawn back to
Detroit.
Growing up in Southfield, she
didn’t have much of a connection to
the city of Detroit. Fine wanted to
change that. She arrived in Detroit at
a pivotal time, with tons of positive
change happening.
She spent five years living and
working in Southwest Detroit,
embedding herself in the neighbor-
hood and doing community work
through a Jewish lens with Repair the
World. She managed the PeerCorps
Detroit program for three years,
which connects Jewish teens from the
suburbs to the city of Detroit through
service work.
“
As a Jewish teen who didn’t have a
relationship to Detroit, to see myself
in so many of these teens and being
able to bring them to the city to do
service work, and immersing them
into the food justice and education
justice world in the city, it was amaz-
ing,” Fine said. “It was an incredibly
formative time.”
On Oct. 1, 2023, Fine became the
community engagement manager
for the Michigan Israel Business
Accelerator (MIBA). MIBA is the
lead for economic development and
job creation between the state of
Michigan and Israel.
The horrors of Oct. 7 occurred
a few days later, so the past year of
working in an organization with
Israel in the title and connecting with
Israeli community members ended
up a bit different in practice than
when she took the role.
Fine has helped expand MIBA
’s
community engagement work in
many different ways, including a
series launched in February with the
goal of identifying state of Michigan
challenges and bringing in Israeli
innovation to solve those challenges.
Fine assists with delegations, mar-
keting and social media, and oversees
MIBA
’s fund development as well.
A big focus of MIBA
’s work prior
to Oct. 7 was outbound delegations
— Michigan business leaders going
to Israel and building connections
between the two regions.
Since that day, the opposite direc-
tion has been emphasized.
“We haven’t been able to focus on
our outbound delegations as much,
but that’s meant we’ve been able to
really push our resources toward
inbound delegations and bringing
Israeli leaders to Michigan,” Fine said.
Another piece of the work has been
providing education about what is
happening in the business commu-
nity in Israel, as well as bringing in
Israeli speakers via Zoom to share
with the Michigan community how
they’re doing in this post-Oct. 7
world and how it’s impacted busi-
nesses.
Fine also sits on the board of the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL),
which she says is a big part of her
identity.
Fine’s favorite part of the work she
does is how connected it is to her
identity.
“Really all three of my professional
roles post-college have been about
relationship-building, and I wouldn’t
have that without my connection to
the Jewish community,” she said.
“Being able to evolve with what
Jewish Detroit is now, even the little
things, like it being called Jewish
Federation of Detroit instead of
Metro Detroit now, and the ways our
Jewish community is reconnecting
with the city and everything that’s
happening in Detroit proper, is some-
thing I’m really passionate about.”
Rachel Fine heads community engagement
for the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator.
A
Community
Builder
DANNY SCHWARTZ SENIOR STAFF REPORTER
NEXT DOR
Rachel Fine