By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Marni Flagel, who founded County Corp and served as its president for 25 years, was installed as the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton’s president at its annual meeting Aug. 16.

Described by the Dayton Business Journal as a “local economic development pioneer,” Flagel was also the first woman to hold a seat on Trotwood’s city council.

County Corp is a private nonprofit development corporation for Montgomery County. It provides affordable housing, and during Flagel’s tenure, economic development programs.

Flagel has also been a teacher, a real estate agent, a stay-at-home mom, and even wrote a column in the early 1970s for the Dayton Jewish Chronicle — Marni’s Musings.

A longtime member of Temple Beth Or’s board, she just completed raising $1.1 million for the congregation’s Future Fund. With her late husband, Richard, and Dr. Michael Albert, she led Temple Beth Or’s campus expansion fundraising project nearly 20 years ago.

“I grew up in Newton Falls, a small town in northeast Ohio,” Flagel told the audience at the annual meeting. “I was the only Jewish person in my high school. I did go to Sunday school and was confirmed in Warren, but it wasn’t until I moved to Cincinnati at 16 that I actually lived among Jews. And too, it was only when I married my husband and moved to Dayton that I really lived a Jewish life.”

Her highest priorities as Federation president are to foster a safe space for civil discourse among Jews, involve younger people and families, reinstitute young leadership and career training programs, and obtain a clear picture of Jewish community needs and wants.

“We’re now in the middle of a community survey to find out what people really want,” she told The Observer. “I’d like to see real outreach to younger people and younger families to get them involved.

“What I’m finding in the Jewish community is that there are people who have very different points of view, both about Jews in the United States and about Israel.”

Flagel said she sees this especially with young people coming out of college. She aims to bring a program to the Federation that will train people to dialogue in a civil, nonthreatening environment.

“We need an atmosphere here that is very welcoming and egalitarian, so Jews with diverse ideas can come here and talk to one another in a civilized discourse. I think that’s really important, that people feel comfortable coming here.”

She said her parents would be shocked that the girl from “this little town with no Jewish anything” is now the president of a Jewish Federation. It’s probably not a shock to anyone who knows Flagel.

In one of her columns from 1972 in the Dayton Jewish Chronicle, she wrote, “Yet in spite of the many deterrents, I emerged into young womanhood with a sense of pride in being Jewish and a great respect for my religion…I have never regretted being so often the only Jew. This position forced me to question continually the concepts and ethics of my religion…Hopefully our children will grow up not only with a sense of pride in being Jewish, but also with warm feelings for the beauty of the Jewish family life.”

To read the complete September 2026 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.