3 minute read
Fran Weisberg
from Women of Excellence
by jen
CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE Fran Weisberg
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BY MIKE COSTANZA
Down through the years, Fran Weisberg has headed major Rochester nonprofits and helped shape this region’s health care system.
“I’m a change agent,” Weisberg says. “I believe in helping a community to move the needle on the very daunting problems that we have.”
The Pittsford mother and grandmother also chaired the Monroe County Democratic Committee at one time and guided a successful campaign for the House of Representatives—and she’s not done yet.
Weisberg gained her first taste of community organizing as a University of Rochester student in the early 1970s. Back then, she led an effort to give Rochester youths the chance to spend time on the university’s campus, and university students the opportunity to visit city neighborhoods.
“We had a very radical notion of building a bridge to the community,” Weisberg explains.
The experience appears to have helped shape her career goals.
“I work across all kinds of barriers and lines to really get people to work together,” Weisberg says.
Health care issues and the care of senior citizens seem to be of particular concern to Weisberg. During four years with the Regional Council on Aging, she recruited and trained nursing home volunteers.
Weisberg then headed off to work for other nonprofits, but returned to the agency in 1994 as president and CEO of what had come to be named Lifespan of Greater Rochester Inc. By the time she left in 2004, Lifespan had grown from a $1.8 million to a nearly $4 million umbrella organization. The agency continues to serve seniors around the Rochester region, or help them obtain the services they need.
“Lifespan is the premier organization for older
adults in this community,” Weisberg asserts.
Weisberg took the helm of the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency (now Common Ground Health) in 2006, at a time when Rochester-area hospitals were stretched to capacity and clamoring to build more modern facilities—and add beds. The agency convened the 2020 Commission, a group of community, business and health care industry leaders and government representatives who sought to determine how many hospital beds were needed in the region, and where they should be placed.
“It was a bed study that got the community together to say ‘How many does the community need?’ not what each institution wanted,” explains Weisberg.
The 2020 Commission unanimously recommended that the area’s hospitals be allowed to add just over half of the beds that hospitals had requested.
“We got everybody to agree on a process to make the community better,” Weisberg says.
The state Department of Health approved the plan, which saved $126 million in capital costs.
After leaving Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency in 2013, Weisberg worked as an independent consultant on health and human services. Then in 2015, United Way of Greater Rochester Inc. hired her to take over as the agency’s first female chief.
Under Weisberg’s guidance, United Way’s annual fundraising campaign took in more than $25.4 million in 2017 alone, besting its goal by more than $200,000. In December, she handed the agency’s reins to its new president and CEO, Jaime Saunders. As Weisberg puts it, she just didn’t want to run a large organization anymore.
“I wanted to be more of a helper and a consultant for nonprofits,” she says. “I’m helping United Way with the transition.”
These days, Weisberg runs her own one-person consulting business, Weisberg Consulting. She also sits on the boards of The Children’s Agenda and Jewish Senior Life.
“I’m passionate about making a difference in the community, but I also don’t give up.”
That passion has drawn praise. Weisberg was a 2017 Rochester Business Journal ICON Honoree.
Mike Costanza is Rochester-area freelance writer.
