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Jill Rich is originally from Rock Island, Illinois. She moved to Tucson in 1965 to attend the University of Arizona, where she received her BA in psychology and sociology in 1970. Jill is a Realtor at Long Realty Company and a former small business owner, but her real passion is social action. She and her husband Jim are the adoptive parents of two now-grown former Vietnamese orphans adopted in their adolescent years. Jill and Jim are also the de facto parents of 54 “lost boys” of Sudan. Jill is the founder of a foundation created to support the lost boys, the Sudanese Promise Fund. Jill first became involved in refugee resettlement at Jewish Family and Children’s Services when she was actively involved in the resettlement of Soviet Jewish refugees in Tucson as a founding member of the JFCS refugee resettlement program. Jill has received awards and recognition in many forms. Among the more notable, she was selected as one of President George Bush’s “Points of Light” in 1991, she was named Volunteer of the Year by the American Red Cross in 1992 and 1995, she was named the Tucson Citizen’s Citizen of the Year in 1999, and the National Association of Social Workers named her Public Citizen of the Year in 2001. At Temple Emanu-El, Jill is the chair of the Social Action committee and Fundraising committee, and she has been the coordinator of the Temple’s participation in Operation Deep Freeze for nearly a decade. |
