Ben Adler

WEST HARTFORD — Bronx native Ben Adler credits two early influences for his lifelong involvement in the Jewish community. His mother was president of the Bronx Jewish Community Council, and he attended Westchester Day School and Ramaz.
“These schools don’t only educate, but they go out of their way to let students ‘peek behind the curtain,’ and share in an appropriate way the challenges to the Jewish community and organizations,” he explains. Adler and his fellow students were involved in the movement to free Soviet Jews, often protesting in front of the UN in New York and lobbying on Capitol Hill.
After earning a BA from SUNY Albany in 1985, he relocated to West Hartford to work with insurance companies on various aspects of their technology. Since then, his professional life has incorporated the two fields.
Adler holds designations as a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter and Certified Insurance Counselor. In 2004, Adler and partner Michael Christiana started Wellstone Insurance, a general insurance agency providing property and casualty insurance to families and businesses. With a specialty in technology companies, Adler is also the endorsed agent of the Connecticut Technology Council. Wellstone recently formed a business cluster with two veteran insurance agencies in Greater Hartford.
Adler has been married to Marcia, a school nurse, for 19 years. He is past president of Beth David Synagogue in West Hartford. He serves on the boards of the Bess and Paul Sigel Hebrew Academy, where his son Zachary is a student, and Hebrew High School of New England, where daughters Talia and Arielle attend.
“My heart is in the day school movement, and day schools are the heart of the Jewish community,” he says. “If a day school closes, God forbid, other Jewish communal organizations and institutions are in danger.”