Heather Rossi

Builder. Mentor.
Lifelong learner.

Finance strategy, operations, and AI transformation at McMaster-Carr. Torah teaching, Jewish women's communal life, and history scholarship.

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About

I'm a builder, a mentor, and a lifelong learner.

After starting my career in investment banking at JPMorgan, I joined McMaster-Carr, where over the past 20 years I've grown into my current role leading a 70-person finance operations organization and running AI transformation across our payment processes. Beyond that, I teach Torah to women, organize Shabbatons and Jewish heritage tours for groups of over a hundred women, serve on the board of L'Chaim Center, and lead BE IN Binah, a project I founded where my love of building, Jewish history, and women's stories comes together. I'm also pursuing a master's in Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University, with a focus on Modern Jewish History.

The work looks different in each room. The craft is the same.

In finance and AI, I ask the questions that reframe the problem. We've automated most of the work and realized significant productivity savings, but we still have too many people dedicated to the small portion that remains. What process are we still defending that we shouldn't be? What are the real hurdles to automating the rest? In Torah teaching, the practice runs the other way: I take complex texts and distill them into something meaningful and relatable, nuggets of Torah that can actually inform and shape a modern woman's life. In mentoring, both practices are needed. I help new leaders trust the questions they're already asking with beginner's mind, and I show them how to turn those observations into tangible results.

This way of working came from the women in my family. My mother kept her own identity while building our Jewish home with care and intention. My parents started a small business together and showed me what it takes to build something from scratch.

If any of this is useful to your organization, board, or community, I'd like to hear from you.

Get in touch ↓

What I do

Four kinds of work, one craft.

Finance strategy & operations at McMaster-Carr

At McMaster-Carr, I lead a 70-person finance organization across accounts payable, banking, payment processing, and inbound payments. The scope is strategy, operations, and AI transformation. Twenty years in. The AI work has converted seven production processes into AI-human systems, reducing headcount requirements by 20%. The current work is asking the questions that reframe the problem, getting the team to ask them too, and mentoring early- and mid-career managers as they grow into leadership.

Teaching Torah to women

I teach Torah to women learners in Deerfield and beyond: Parsha, classic sources, and Jewish history. The practice runs the other way from the AI work. I take a complex text and distill it into something meaningful and relatable for a modern woman's life.

Building programs that gather women

I serve on the board of L'Chaim Center in Deerfield, build educational programming and gatherings for women learners, and lead BE IN Binah, a project I founded where building, Jewish history, and women's stories come together.

Researching Eastern European Jewish life

I'm pursuing a master's in Modern Jewish History at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University. The questions: what Eastern European Jewish life looked like before destruction, who built it and rebuilt it, and what documentation survived. A recent paper on the Jewish community of Suwalki examines the mechanisms of its erasure during the Holocaust.

How I teach

Different forms, same instinct.

I teach Torah and Jewish history to women learners: taking complex texts and stories, distilling them into something meaningful and relatable for a modern woman's life. The sheets and the Between Deck below are samples of how I do that in practice.

Heather Rossi teaching Talmud at Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin in Poland, arms raised in front of a room of women learners. — Teaching Talmud at Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, on the bench of one of the great prewar Polish yeshivot.

Heather Rossi giving an opening orientation at POLIN Museum in Warsaw to a group of women. — Opening orientation at POLIN Museum, Warsaw, at the entrance to a thousand years of Polish Jewish life.

Shabbat 31a: Hillel and the Wings of the Divine

A Talmud session on patience, conversion, and the dignity of the searching question. Includes a participant handout and a facilitator script for chavruta study.

Participant handout (PDF) Facilitator script (PDF)

Taanit 23a: Honi and the carob tree

A Talmud session on the seventy-year dream, the planter who knows he won't taste the fruit, and what our grandmothers planted in hundreds of towns we now travel through. Includes a participant handout and a facilitator script for chavruta study.

Participant handout (PDF) Facilitator script (PDF)

POLIN Museum tour orientation

Four minutes spoken aloud at the entrance to a thousand years of Polish Jewish life. Reframes the Jewish heritage trip from rupture to continuity.

Read the orientation (PDF)

The Parsha & you: five nuggets at a time

My signature teaching format for women learners. Five nuggets per sheet: a primary text, one good question, one clear takeaway. Distilled into something a modern woman can carry into a regular week.

Yitro (PDF) Mishpatim, long (PDF) Mishpatim, short (PDF) Pesach Day 7 (PDF)

The Between Deck

"You're not lost. You're between. BE IN."

Jewish wisdom for modern women.

Front of the Bruriah card from the Between Deck.

118 Jewish women, 118 cards. Each card holds one woman's story: her struggle on the front, her choice and what she came to understand on the back. Pull a card when you're between. Sit with her. Ask what she'd say to your situation. Use the deck solo, with a chavruta partner, or in a BE IN Binah workshop.

Inside the name

ביןBEIN — between

The struggle. The space between who you were and who you're becoming. Not a waiting room. Where it begins.

BE IN — the choice

The turning point. You stop hovering and choose in. You name what you want before you know how.

בינהBINAH — understanding

The clarity that follows the choice. Commit first; everything else follows.

View the full deck →

Selected work & writing

Projects in motion.

Front of the Bruriah card from the Between Deck, depicting Bruriah, a Talmudic-era scholar.

Back of the Bruriah card from the Between Deck, showing context and reflection prompts.

BE IN Binah

A 90-minute guided experience for Jewish women in transition. Built on a 118-card deck of Jewish women across history (Tanakh to today) and the framework hidden in the word בינה: BEIN, the between. BE IN, the choice. BINAH, understanding revealed.

beinbinah.com →

Observation to Innovation

A recurring workshop I run for new leaders. The premise: the questions you're already asking with beginner's mind have real value. Most leaders just don't know how to convert observations into outcomes. The workshop teaches that path. It draws on twenty years of mentoring early and mid-career professionals at McMaster-Carr, including the "how to mentor" sessions I lead for new managers stepping into the role themselves.

Erased from the Map: a Suwalki paper

A 14-page paper on the Jewish community of Suwalki, a Polish border town annexed into East Prussia at the start of the war. The argument: Suwalki's annexation produced a Holocaust that compressed into weeks rather than years, with consequences for how communities on the Reich/General Government fault line are remembered. Sources: Yizkor Books, USHMM testimonies, the Bland film, JDC memoranda, JTA dispatches, oral histories. Written for my master's in Modern Jewish History at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University, degree in progress.

Read the paper (PDF)

L'Chaim Center board

Board service at L'Chaim Center in Deerfield. Where the finance-operations work crosses into volunteer governance: vetting the new membership platform's UI and information security, advising on revised bylaws, executing contracts and onboarding new educators, leading logistics for two community trips (Europe and Israel), and organizing the organization's first Shabbaton (100 women). Plus regular teaching: Parsha classes, Rosh Chodesh, and holiday drashim.

What's next

Two threads, two timelines.

Now: exploring board or advisory roles at institutions in service to the Jewish community.

Down the road: a senior administrative role where operations leadership, strategy, and program building serve a Jewish institutional mission: a museum, foundation, or community organization. Not on the calendar, but on the horizon.

If you're shaping a board, or thinking about institutional leadership down the road, I'd like to start the conversation: heather@beinbinah.com.