By Cindy Mindell

It’s been nearly 120 years since the Hebrew Ladies’ Sick Benefit Association first started collecting nickels to create the Hebrew Ladies’ Old People’s Home. The facility would open in 1901 on Wooster Street in Hartford, the first of its kind in Connecticut.

Over the next half-century, the home would expand and relocate to accommodate more elderly Jews, opening its current location off Bloomfield Avenue in West Hartford in 1986 and now operating as Hebrew HealthCare (HHC).

The quotas and restrictions that once necessitated Jewish institutions like the Hebrew Ladies’ Old People’s Home have eased, and today, Hebrew HealthCare’s population is as diverse as other eldercare facilities in the Greater Hartford area. With the election of its new chair, Jerry W. Long, the board now reflects the changing face of the organization.

“A lot of people who work in the home and come for care look like me; I’m a black man,” Long says. “We want to be able to reflect a little bit more of the character of our workforce and our patients.”

Long first became involved at Hebrew HealthCare in 2011 at the urging of friend and then-board president Ross Hollander, who sought to create a more diverse board and valued Long’s business experience.

A native of Tennessee, Long earned an MBA from the University of Tennessee before relocating to Connecticut 35 years ago. He began his career with General Electric, moving after 13 years to Connecticut General Company (now CIGNA) for two years, followed by a four-year assignment with The Hartford Insurance Group.

Long founded PCC Technology Group, LLC in 1994, where he serves as president and CEO. The company received the Deloitte and Touche “Technology Fast 50” award in 2001, 2002, and 2003, and the Fleet Development Ventures Business Development Grant.

Long has served on several boards in Greater Hartford. He is the former vice chairman of the Charter Oak State College Board of Trustees, past chairman of the MetroHartford Chamber of Commerce, past president of the Bloomfield Chamber of Commerce, and past member of the board of directors of the Hartford Youth Scholars Foundation. He is currently a Simsbury Bank board director and chairman of the Bloomfield Economic Development Commission, and a member of the Rotary Club of Bloomfield.

By spring 2015, Long had taken on the position of HHC’s first vice chairperson. When vice chairperson Deborah Kleinman declined the chairmanship Hollander approached Long, who was elected to the chair position in October.

Long’s appointment signals a change in direction for Hebrew HealthCare, whose board has historically reflected the organization’s Jewish roots and demographics. Long recruited Desmond Ebanks, a black physician in West Hartford, and Hollander recruited Christopher Cloud, a black lobbyist in the Greater Hartford area.

“Now I think we reflect a little better the demographics of the organization. I’m trying to understand what diversity means for myself,” says Long, whose own global software company employs people all over the world. “I’ve got a United Nations of folks: I’ve got Irish folks, Indian folks, Japanese folks, Russian folks – a full plethora of people who don’t look like me. Not that we hired them just because of the way they look – they’ve got the skill sets and the things we want in terms of employees – but it reflects the thinking of senior management to do things like that. I think it reflected the senior leadership at Hebrew HealthCare for Ross to begin to think like that as well.”

Long is a member of Tumble Brook Country Club in Bloomfield, founded in the ‘20s by a group of Jews who were barred from the Hartford Golf Club. “Now, it is primarily a Jewish club, but it’s not only a Jewish club,” Long says. “I live in a primarily Jewish neighborhood, but it’s not only a Jewish neighborhood. I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I like people, all kinds of people – be they black, brown, green, or yellow, it doesn’t really matter; they’re just people.”

Long saw that philosophy already taking root when he joined the Hebrew HealthCare board. “I get so much respect when I enter the building and everybody introduces me as the chair of the board,” he says. “A lot of employees and patients really beam at that, knowing that they’ve got somebody who looks like them who’s the chair now. It’s all about people and I think that if we look at it in this way, we’ll be a lot better off moving forward.”

Long says that his vision for Hebrew HealthCare is to continue working in the community on behalf of the elderly, but on a more manageable scale. “One of the significant issues in healthcare now is reimbursement, a lot of which comes from the government,” he says. “The government dictates how much they’re going to pay you, no matter what your costs are, and there’s something wrong with that picture: if your cost is a dollar, the payer organization may only reimburse you 68 cents, so that’s a model for disaster and a model that cannot be sustained.”

In order to succeed, Hebrew HealthCare must be recognized and managed as the business it already is, Long says, with revenue and expenses, marketing, sales, and other necessary components of a functional business. “The question is, how can we govern our agency best to serve the community? That’s the most important thing,” he says. “We’ve got to be able to do the things that we do to serve the community and if we can’t do that, we need to be doing something else.”

Bonnie Gauthier, president and CEO of Hebrew HealthCare, praises Long for being “so deeply rooted in the principles of community service and ‘giving back.’”

“Jerry has been formally recognized for his long-standing commitment to serving others,” she says. “And at Hebrew HealthCare, we are grateful that he will lead our organization as we work to bring our future vision of aging services to reality.”