Hella Hershson with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees and last year’s recipient of the Women’s Guild Music Icon Award, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil
Brentwood, CA (LA ELEMENTS) 9/20/2016- Cedars- Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has long enjoyed national and international recognition for the exceptional quality of its medical care. By offering an array of specialized services including heart transplants and a Level 1 trauma center, and conducting groundbreaking medical research, such as their study utilizing stem cells to reduce the traumatic affects of a heart attack, this non-profit hospital and teaching facility is constantly evolving to meet the demands that healing during a time of crisis presents. Innovative medical treatments and research comes at a price and that is where the Women’s Guild steps in. Founded in 1957, this organization is dedicated to raising the funds needed so that Cedars Sinai may continue to accomplish their goal of providing optimum health care.
I had the chance to interview former Women’s Guild president, Hella Hershson, several weeks ago at Divino Restaurant in Brentwood where she shared her thoughts on the accomplishments of the Women’s Guild, reflections on her early career and revealed who would be her dream dinner date.
I would love to know a little bit about your early years. You mentioned you’re from Brooklyn.
“I wasn’t born there, I was born in Munich, but I grew up there. My family moved to New York when I was about five. I went to high school there and then I went to Brooklyn College and then I went to graduate school at Hunter, where I majored in Communications, I was majoring in English as an undergrad. Brooklyn College is one of the five campuses of the city college of New York. It cost practically nothing to go there when I was young. To see what has happened to the city college and the state college systems is really kind of tragic because it offered people in the community a free education and a very good education by the way. We live in a different world now.”
“After graduation, I made a brief stop at an ad agency and then I went to work for a PR agency in New York, the Rowland Company, which was later acquired by Saatchi. I became head of their television department and I worked there for five years. I was very young. It was an amazing job and I had a wonderful time. Because of that job I began to travel to California a lot because what we used to do was book spokespeople on behalf of various clients. In those days, in the 70’s, there was a lot more of that and a lot of the talk shows were done in LA. So I started coming to Los Angeles and then I changed jobs, ending up at Disney where I was head of public relations for the Disney Chanel, and then I semi-retired. That was many years ago.”
“Anyway, I became involved in a number of charities in Los Angeles although Cedars Sinai has always been very close to me. It’s the hospital in which I have been a patient, my parents are patients, my sister gave birth to her son there, and on and on and on. My husband’s had surgeries there.”
Your personal experience and your family’s experience in terms of the quality of care that they received, is that what drew you to Cedars Sinai? Why Cedars Sinai?
“You know sometimes things happen by accident or they happen for a reason. My parents lived in New York and they moved here when my father retired and they lived not far from Cedars. Their doctors happened to be affiliated with Cedars so that’s where they received most of their care as they aged. So, I developed a relationship with these doctors and being that my parents lived to a ripe old age and in their old age they were hospitalized quite a few times at Cedars, the quality of care was incredible. And then about 15 years ago, for the first time in my life, I had a surgery and I was there. The nursing care was so extraordinary that I was shocked actually. It was such a warm, high quality experience that I didn’t expect. We had a very good friend who was a big donor who said, ‘you know you could afford to do something for Cedars, you might want to get involved.’ My husband joined the Board of Governors at that point and so we’ve been involved ever since.”
How many years ago was it when you first became involved with the fundraising efforts of Cedars Sinai?
“I’m going to say about a dozen years ago.”
At what point did you become president of the Women’s Guild?
“I was president for two years. It was a two-year term from 2014 to 2016. Our terms are spring terms, April to April.”
So is it usually a two-year term that each president serves?
“Each president has a two- year term and they at their discretion can serve for another two years. I opted not to because my husband and I decided we wanted to do more traveling and serving as president of the Women’s Guild is really a full time job, you have to be there. A year prior to becoming president, I chaired the strategic planning committee which selected the Women’s Guild Simulation Center For Advanced Clinical Skills as our next project. That took about a year. So I feel like I was president for three years since I was heavily involved for the year prior to becoming president. It was a three-year chunk of my life let’s put it that way with heavy involvement like a full time job.”
During your presidency what would you say has been the goal that was achieved?
“The amazing thing about it was this: We made a ten million dollar pledge for this facility, the Women’s Guild Simulation Center. Our goal was 10 million dollars and in five years by the end of my term we were over six million. And by the way, having to do with the fact that Women’s Guild is really hands on and all the members really actively fundraise… everyone goes to their, let me use an old fashioned term, rolodex, their contacts, and invites them to our events and tries to get them to donate funds for what we’re doing.”
In your own words, how would you define the Women’s Guild?
“I would say that Women’s Guild is an important legacy at Cedars Sinai. It’s been in existence for almost 60 years, next year will be the 60th anniversary. It’s a dynamic group of community activists dedicated to the future of Cedars Sinai and helping it grow and we’ve raised close to 50 million dollars since 1957. The way that it works is every few years, the leadership selects a project at Cedars Sinai which is presented by the Cedars Sinai leadership as being a necessary step forward in the evolution of the hospital. The way we did it the last time is several doctors came to Women’s Guild and made a presentation and from that presentation we selected the project we would fund. The one we did before was a seven-year project, where we raised 20 million dollars for the Women’s Guild Lung Institute. When this project is finished I don’t know what project will be next. Things change from a technological and a medical point of view so you never know what’s coming down the pipe that might be of interest, although it’s usually something that’s high tech, cutting edge, as we like to move forward.”
Women’s Guild President Gina Furth with Billy Bush at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Women’s Guild Annual Spring Luncheon
Honoring Jaclyn Smith 4-14-16
Beverly Wilshire Hotel
I understand that with the Simulation Center you utilize…I don’t know if ‘mannequins’ are the best way to describe it…
“We call them mannequins but they’re called ‘human life simulators’ and they blink, they breathe, you can program them to have a disease, you can program them to have cardiac arrest, and then the surgical teams, the nursing teams, they come in and they simulate how they would save that life. Let’s say that there was a glass wall here, behind this wall would be people operating remote control on a computer just like an airplane simulation, and the human life simulator, or mannequin, would be given let’s say a temperature or be given a heart attack and then the nurses in the room and the doctors would have to figure out, ‘how do we help this person, what do we do?’ and that’s the training. Plus, some of these human simulators are made for surgical purposes and they have actual simulated organs and you can practice surgeries on them. It is amazing to see.”
That’s incredible practice for the interns and the residents.
“A lot of the more advanced surgeons use it too when they have an unusual surgery. One of our pediatric surgeons literally had a simulator created to mimic a heart problem in an infant and they worked on this simulated infant for twenty hours before they actually did the surgery the next day. And we have a 3D printer, which can print out an exact replica of that damaged heart.”
What are the fundraising events that Women’s Guild sponsors throughout the year?
“We do a luncheon every year and then we do a gala. The gala’s the big fundraising event. At our last luncheon we honored Jaclyn Smith who is mostly known as an actress but she’s also a very smart businesswoman, she has a line of clothing, she’s got a line of furniture. What she talked about which was so impressive to us was her bout with cancer and she made a point of talking about how when she was recovering and going through chemotherapy, her biggest support system, besides having great doctors, was the sisterhood of friends who went with her to the chemo, who were there to help her and that really made the luncheon so meaningful. The year before we had Judge Judy as our honoree, it was an incredible event. She was a riot but what she talked about was the empowerment of women and this idea that a woman could do anything she wants.
“Our upcoming gala is November 9th; and it’s going to be at the Hilton. Billy Crystal is our honoree and Rita Wilson is going to perform. Billy Crystal performed at out 50th anniversary and he was so hilarious and so fabulous people just absolutely loved him and we’re thrilled that he’s coming back.”
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Women’s Guild Annual Spring Luncheon
Honoring Jaclyn Smith 4-14-16
Beverly Wilshire Hotel
How many board members currently serve on the Women’s Guild?
“We have 65 board members right now. One of the things that Women’s Guild does a lot for their board members is private events so that the board members can get to know each other. We recently went down to the Broad Museum as a group, and had lunch at a local restaurant so that board members could get to know each other. We are growing, in a small way, but so that we have a more cohesive group of people who know each other and enjoy working together so that’s been an interesting part of being part of this group and getting to know these women.”
“Do you know that we have three women in the group who have been in for 50 years? That’s how dedicated they are. They have given their own personal money and fundraised for Cedars Sinai for 50 years. Now that’s an incredible legacy I think and it tells you a lot about how meaningful this group becomes to the people who are in it and the work we do.”
Now for my final question and hopefully it’s a fun one for you. If you could have dinner with any historical figure who would it be and why?
“That’s easy, Thomas Jefferson. Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by Thomas Jefferson. The wide range of his knowledge in that age. I mean, he could speak so many foreign languages, he had an incredible library, which became the basis for the Library of Congress and his talent, he was an architect, and he was an agriculturist. I’ve been to his home in Virginia and just touching the things he invented and created and reading about his view on democracy and then of course this incredible dichotomy about him that he was also a slave owner and you can’t forget that. You look at the heritage and legacy of this man and he had to have been one of the most fascinating people that you could ever imagine. I’ve always been fascinated by him and of course, creating the University of Virginia, these beautiful buildings that were built on a Palladian model. You have to imagine that in those days, America was a pretty rough place and he came back with these incredible ideas for how to build buildings and create this life.”
For more information on the Women’s Guild including how to purchase tickets for the November 9th gala please visit their website.
All photos courtesy of Hella Hershson
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