The Art of Giving: Ami Becker Aronson On Healing, Adventure, and Our Collective Potential To ‘Give Differently’
BY MONIKA SAMTANI, CO-FOUNDER, AND EMILY MONTAGUE, SENIOR EDITOR, THE FEM WORD
This is part one of a two-part series featuring the artistic partnership and collective work of Philanthropist Ami Becker-Aronson and Artist Aida Murad.
The Fem Word is all about women’s stories, and women’s stories are often about change. Changing values, worlds, and bodies…womanhood is inherently dynamic. That dynamism gets reflected in billions of different ways every time we stand up and talk about the things that matter to us.
Ami Becker Aronson embodies motion. Even when she’s sitting in front of you, you can’t help but feel she’s in motion – and you’ve joined her for the ride. We had the honor of interviewing Ami about her life and work as a woman, a change-maker, a philanthropist, and a dedicated patron of the arts. You can find a transcript of our interview here.
There’s so much to be learned from Ami’s story, and it’s impossible to do her vibrant life philosophy justice with just one article. Of particular note is her partnership with artist Aida Murad, which has changed the face of the Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Center and added color to countless patients’ lives.
But Ami’s story starts long before the Lombardi Arts and Humanities program, and we decided to dive in at the very beginning. Like so many influential people in this world, Ami’s unique story begins at home: with her family.
On Family, Values, And Daring To Depart – How Redefining A Legacy Can Honor The Ones Who Formed It
Ami comes from an illustrious background. Her grandfather, Leo M. Bernstein, established the influential Bernstein Family Foundation, of which Ami is now Executive Director.
Her family’s foundation has long been a champion of positive social change, community modeling through cultural exchange and collaboration, and vibrant philanthropy through a diverse array of channels.
Her goals often revolve around redefining how her family’s legacy continues to operate on an increasingly global stage. She’s confronted our collective assumptions about things like tradition and has renegotiated how her work defines these ideals over the long term.
Her grandfather once told her, “Ami, I hope this lasts.” Her response to this statement has evolved along with her consciousness, and one of the first things she discussed with us was the concept of “lasting” itself.
“I think it’s actually a really significant principle for me, because, you know, I’ve spent the last fifteen years running a patriarchal foundation,” she explains. “And [that] patriarchy, as we know it, was purely because my grandfather was quite iconic in our nation’s capital. You can read about his story, but, he was this extraordinary man, and he had a huge robust career and impact on the city. [...] So, it’s not lost on me, that even though he has left this earth, his legacy continues.”
It’s a serious thing to carry a torch like the one her grandfather passed down, and when Ami talks about his influence and work, you can feel how seriously she takes the deeper values behind it.
“But,” she goes on, “to run a patriarchal foundation no longer serves the community or me, personally. I think there are so many different ways to kind of claim this investment and portfolio opportunity to include the [concept of] matriarchy.”
In practice, this concept of matriarchy revolves around questions. Ami views her family’s financial influence as something dynamic. It isn’t static, and any given action is open for redefinition down the line. The values and core principles of the foundation might be stable, but to really make a difference, Ami believes we must embrace the art of the ephemeral.
“You’re getting me at this wonderful lifespace of complete vulnerability, but also believing that anything is possible,” she says. “The theme for our board meeting this year was about challenging the notion that patriarchy is in perpetuity, and rather framing it as an invitation to explore ‘imagination in impermanence.’ That principle alone is very much at the root, for me, of feminine design strategy.”
Ami Becker Aronson
This term – feminine design – is a central one for Ami. It encapsulates a philosophy regarding how families like hers operate within their communities and beyond them. It’s about shifting our work from the masculine-eternal toward the feminine-ephemeral. It takes an assumed, stable dichotomy and opens it up to new ideas about what it means to create lasting change.
“It isn’t about just ensuring that we’re here for eternity; it’s about what we do today. How do we work together in more of a horizontal leadership [system] as opposed to a vertical leadership [system], so we are collaboratively and responsibly disrupting systems?”
Ami’s grandfather envisioned a world where existing systems work for diverse groups of people. Ami honors that vision but also takes it further.
What if the capitol wasn’t merely a stable, symbolic emblem of the nation’s values, but a true testing ground for them? A laboratory of sorts, where different people can come together and perform experiments in what it means to be an American and a global citizen.
“We’re getting out of our [own] shadow and moving into the light in terms of how we address these issues. Which means framing it from a different perspective,” Ami explains. “In 2023, we will start to be designing a stem-down [approach], and we’ll be thinking about how we have an impact today. We will think about how to do it in a way that has integrity, diplomacy, elegance, and a little bit of friction, as we have some issues that need to be addressed in our democracy.”
While many organizations and public figures do whatever they can to avoid that “friction,” as she put it, Ami believes it’s important for her foundation to face it head-on. In the end, it’s that daring that will allow their work to truly take root and make steady progress within our changing modern context.
“I think that if we can contribute just a little bit [every day], those small investments and small contributions do add up to make for a more stable society – and I want to be part of the solution.”
On Active Principles And Embracing The Descent – Redefining Personal Philanthropy One Climb At A Time
Giving is about more than money. This is true even if you’re a philanthropist, and Ami has always sought a deeper connection to the act of giving, even when her surface-level contributions appear purely financial.
If you walk into the Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Center, you can’t fail to notice the art hanging on the walls. The exhibitions shift every 12 months, but each collection carries a little of Ami’s giving spirit within it. She’s the one who founded the Lombardi Arts & Humanities Program (AHP), after all, and her connection to one of the artists, Aida Murad, has been central to the program’s profound success.
The path to the Lombardi AHP was not an easy one for Ami to tread. She first encountered Georgetown Hospital’s Lombardi Center as a patient struggling with a stage three melanoma diagnosis. Her road to recovery was uncertain, even unlikely, but the art in the lobby was able to soothe some of the anxiety Ami felt when she came in for her experimental immunotherapy treatments.
“When you enter Georgetown’s Cancer Lombardi Center, the exhibit allows you to feel this sense of wellness, introspection, security, warmth, kindness…you are embraced by the art,” she says. “[...] In such a difficult time, it is about faith. It’s art, science, and faith. It made so much sense to be there.”
Ami views her experiences with cancer, her subsequent recovery, and her philanthropy as intimately connected elements of a wider set of beliefs about the world. Things seem to align for her – or maybe her presence aligns things.
When her health began to improve, she began craving a more active approach to her life. Just as she entered remission, she found herself presented with the opportunity to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
To an outsider, this opportunity might appear random, but things are never truly coincidental for Ami. She sees connections everywhere, and this climb was one part of a bigger picture that was growing clearer the more she considered it.
“I’m inherently a physical person. I’m driven, [and] since I was a little girl I was sort of born with this kinetic energy.I always played sports, baseball with the boys from a young age, I played soccer, I ran cross-country and rode horses,” she laughs. “I love to hike and do yoga and pilates. And, when I think about cancer, one of the things that inherent [to the experience] was the amount of responsibility I have for myself, and taking good care [of my body].”
“And really, I felt like I had regenerated myself in partnership with these doctors at Georgetown. And of course, with the unbelievable outpouring of love from my community and family. It was overwhelming; I had never felt more love in my entire life. Through that receiving of love, I felt compelled to give back.”
Plenty of people with Ami’s resources might have simply made a donation and left it at that. As always, she craved a deeper connection to the act of giving. For her, giving back was an expression of life itself – renewed, regenerated life. A life that was newly minted thanks to the uncertainty of her diagnosis and subsequent treatment.
“I decided I wanted to go climb Mount Kilimanjaro,” she tells us. “And within twenty-four hours, one of my very dear friends said ‘Hey, I’m planning a trip, an all-women’s climb to Mount Kilimanjaro’. So, it was just part of that divinity and divine timing, and a call to action.”
Serendipity, or something more? Either way, Ami was keen on making these events align on an even larger stage than that of her own individual life. Her perspectives are always cosmic; Ami was born with stars in her eyes. Her trip to Tanzania and the results it brought about only highlight this fact.
Ami Becker Aronson, Mt. Kilimanjaro
“When we are clear in our life with what we want, and when we have conviction, the skies open and these opportunities happen.”
“When we are clear in our life, with what we want, and when we have conviction, the skies open and these opportunities happen,” she reflects. “It just so happened that it was in those two weeks that I was clear [of cancer]. Around the end of January and the beginning of February. So, I didn’t have a long time to train, but climbing Kilimanjaro is not a technical climb. However, it is a climb of will, and of drive and desire.”
She turned every step of that climb into a testament, transforming each mile into a witness and a source of inspiration as she pushed herself to her limits and made the summit. A new kind of giving took shape in her mind and heart. It has come to define Ami’s philanthropy and has changed the face of the Bernstein Family Foundation forever.
“This [was] not just an ‘Ami Adventure,’” she says. “I’m in the world of philanthropy, and [I asked myself] how I could use this [experience] to shine a light and give back to all those people that had given me a second chance. And so, I call it ‘Adventure Philanthropy,’ because I really set out to raise the amount of money in the steps that I was going to climb; 90,341 feet in elevation, and within the first week, I had surpassed that, and it had actually grown five and a half times. So I ended up raising over 107,000 dollars, which I thought was pretty incredible.”
In typical serendipitous fashion, this brings us to Ami’s work with Aida.
Painting The Walls With Life – The Lombardi Arts & Humanities Program Is Born
Ami used the money she raised from her climb to start the AHP program at Georgetown. Every year, the hospital hosts an Artisan Resident who exhibits their work in the lobby of the center.
The pieces displayed so far have been poignant, moving, and incredibly unique, and each one is a testament not only to the individual artists’ visions but also to Ami’s philosophy of visceral giving in a world that desperately needs it. It all began with Aida Murad. We’ll talk more about her and her work in part two of this series, but Ami’s place in that story is a vital one.
“The entire goal was to imagine if the art that had served me [could go even further] – if we could uplevel it and find an artist such as Aida Murad [to take it there],” she explains. “She has her own extraordinary story of overcoming her paralysis and using her hands as her paintbrushes. There was this magic, this chemistry [between us], and it [was] also the divine timing of meeting her at this moment where I said, ‘Look, I can raise money to support you as the first ever Artisan Resident [at Lombardi],’ and it was just…that’s what it was, at first. And it grew.”
The art Aida created was ethereal, evoking a kaleidoscope of emotions that range from contemplative to ecstatic. Working with Ami, Murad captured the essence of fighting, climbing, and healing from adversity in breathtaking detail. Her exhibition was the seminal point of what would quickly become an incredibly successful program.
Ami Becker Aronson with artist Aida Murad
“During COVID, people want[ed] to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And so knowing that I had over 135 donors, [that] I had over seven sponsors ranging from 36 dollars from my kids to getting sponsored by 25,000 dollar grants – you know it really felt incredible,” she recalls. “So, I was able to fund the entire exhibit. It’s a one-year Artisan Residen[cy].”
Of course, Ami didn’t stop there. She wanted to bring even more meaning to the work of Aida, and to her own efforts on Kilimanjaro and beyond. “I was [also] able to fund an entire research program for Dr. Atkins, and then I’m also funding – with the remaining dollars – medical students going to Africa to do their fieldwork. And it just feels right. I would love to devote the rest of my life to doing adventure philanthropy.”
The Ephemeral Future
As Ami’s philanthropic vision continues to unfold, the power of art as both a healing agent and a vehicle for change remains central. Collaborations like the one she has with Aida Murad and the Lombardi Arts and Humanities program seem likely.
Ami’s work will continue to go beyond money, though. Her ideals have the potential to change the way we view the art of giving. And as our views change, so too will our collective potential to make a difference in the world — one climb at a time.
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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the interviewee, and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Fem Word organization. Any content provided by the author are based on their opinions and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.