Meet Sisterhood’s Woman of Valor for 2016: Cindy Scott

Posted on November 5, 2016

The Sisterhood is excited to announce that our Woman of Valor for 2016 is Cindy Scott, a former two-term Sisterhood president, as well as Temple Beth-El board member and College Connection coordinator. Most of us have seen Cindy doing many different things around temple, without adding up everything she actually does for us. For example, together with Caren Bateman, Cindy has been making the fourth grade religious school family quilts since their (now 30-year-old) children were in fourth grade themselves. Cindy has also often done some gardening on the temple grounds.

One of her most visible roles recently has been the Purim bag project that Sisterhood initiates every year. Cindy is especially proud that each Temple Beth-El family and staff member receive one of the exquisite Purim bags that she and Laura Miller lovingly design and assemble. She is also proud to have the honor of coordinating the many volunteers who help deliver the hundreds of Purim bags every year. Other programs that have benefited from Cindy’s talents and energy are the Sisterhood Thanksgiving food drive, in which volunteers help purchase, assemble and deliver dinners and groceries to families in need; the Giving Network; the Somerset Resource Center; and Women of the Wall.

Talent for project management appears to be a recurring theme for Cindy, both at Temple Beth-El and throughout her 34-year career with Johnson & Johnson, beginning in 1974 after earning her bachelor’s degree in biology from Douglas College. Cindy has much she could brag about from her time at J & J, including earning her PhD in pharmacology while working full-time in a variety of positions in biochemical research and managing several laboratories. She could easily take pride in the variety of management positions she held after earning her PhD – positions in research and development, information and document management support services, project management, and corporate reporting. However, the aspect of her professional career in which she takes particular pride is her role in the women’s leadership initiative, which she spearheaded for several years.

Cindy and her husband David have been members of the temple for 24 years. She is emphatic that Temple Beth-El has been and continues to be a spiritual beacon and Jewish “home base” for her family and for her, noting especially her conversion to Judaism in 1999 (with Rabbi Gluck) before her eldest daughter Maddie’s bat mitzvah that year. By far, her family is what she points to as her greatest source of pride: her 32-year marriage to her husband, David; her three children Maddie, Leah and Adam; and her new son-in-law, Dan. She says she is so proud of their many accomplishments and, more importantly, of the wonderful, caring, thoughtful people they are.

We are proud to call Cindy a fellow Sisterhood member and our extremely deserving Woman of Valor for 2016.

Originally published in the November-December 2016 issue of the Shofar. For more issues of the Shofar, visit the Shofar archives.