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 
 
 
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DANNY SCHWARTZ SENIOR STAFF REPORTER

NEXT DOR

Rachel Fine

