(Wo)man Plans and God Laughs

An Interview with Marna Becker

By Penina Taylor

Today, it’s not uncommon to hear about an Observant Jewish woman breaking the mold and challenging the long-held beliefs that the only jobs available for her was a teacher or a day-care provider. Within these pages we’ve met a boudoir photographer, an activist for women’s rights within the greater Orthodox community, a leader in environmental issues, a leader in the world kindness movement, accomplished musicians, a Jewish Woman of Color, a clothing designer of modest activewear, and a contestant on American Ninja Warrior. This month we are featuring Marna Becker, a powerhouse sales development team manager, mentor, part-time career counselor and incredible mom to her four-year-old son.

Although Marna has been in Israel for 15 years and traveled a bit before arriving in the country, she grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. She talks about being one of those people who made Aliyah with nothing but two duffel bags and two college degrees. But she’s managed to do pretty well for herself anyway.

Marna went to college at the University of Delaware, where she started as an undeclared major, hoping to study international relations. One summer she got a job working at the College of Arts and Sciences where she met a woman who told her there was a program where she could create her own major. To anyone who knows Marna personally, it would come as no surprise that she was interested in several different areas of study. At the time, though, she was particularly interested in the immigrant populations coming into the US from Guatemala, Mexico, and elsewhere in Central America.

Growing up in the US and attending public school meant that Marna was required to study a second language. Her language of choice had been Spanish, which explains her affinity for Spanish-speaking immigrants. In the end, the degree she put together was in Immigrant and Immigration Advocacy, but to make it happen, she had to get three professors to sign off on her program of study. The end result was a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies with a specialization in Immigrant and Immigration Advocacy, focusing

on Central and South America. She also has a minor in Spanish as well as Jewish studies. During the summer before her last year of undergrad, Marna did an internship at the University of South Florida where she decided she wanted to focus on international student advising and welcoming new students into the country. This influenced her decision on where to go for her advanced degree. Marna chose McGill University in Montreal partly because it was more affordable than the US universities she was accepted into, but also being considered an “international student” appealed to her since that is the population she hoped to serve.

When I mentioned that she’s not working in anything even remotely related to what she has her degrees in, she laughed and said, “Man plans, and God laughs. And God thinks I’m the funniest thing out there.”  She says that every plan she’s ever made has been changed, and she feels that that’s one of the things that she brings to the conversation – she tells people you can plan till you’re blue in the face but sometimes you just have to roll with the punches – and make the most of wherever you are. She likes to tell her team – “Let’s work on the things we can control and not on the things we can’t”. Marna says that she doesn’t think she would have been able to do the things she’s done and accomplish the things she’s accomplished had she not made the choices that she’s made, even though those choices have strayed from the original path she was on.

Now, Marna works for a small start-up out of Tel Aviv called Gaviti, where she manages a sales development team, which deals with both marketing and sales. But she quickly mentions that she also does a lot of mentoring for religious women who would like to get into this field, so if anyone is interested, they should be in touch with her.  But again, it comes as no surprise that she was quick to offer herself as a mentor. She’s always ready to help someone in need. Marna’s side business has been helping people in Israel find jobs. As a person who truly cares about others and gets to know people, she’s one of those unique people we call “connectors”.  Marna has helped nearly 200 people find employment over the past few years, which is a huge accomplishment.

How does one go from a degree in immigration advocacy and working on college campuses to leading a sales development team? At one point Marna was working in marketing and social media and she had been sending leads to a particular company. When she was told that all the leads she had sent to them were closing, she thought, “OK”, and they said, “We don’t know what you have, but that’s not normal.” That conversation turned into a job opportunity in sales development. It turns out that although Marna loves working and communicating with people online, she really prefers talking to live people. Talking with people on the telephone just “clicked” for her and that’s how she ended up where she is now.

Marna noted that although she comes across as a big “talker” it’s not through talking that connections are made, it’s through listening. And it’s the fact that she’s a good listener that she credits with her success. In fact, Marna feels that listening is the key to being successful in pretty much every area of our lives.

So how did she get involved with helping people find jobs? Marna tells the story of a close friend who unfortunately got sick with an aggressive form of cancer. During the five weeks that her friend was sick, until her passing, Marna had been working with a woman named Samantha Robinson who works for the Jewish Agency to raise money for the family of her friend. After she had passed, Samantha and Marna realized that they both had something in common – they were both connectors. Friends would approach each of them asking them to take a look at their resumes or offer job hunting advice. 

So, they started a business together, which has had different iterations over the years, but has primarily focused on career consulting, helping people navigate through the job search process. At this point, although Marna still does a little bit of the career consulting, she’s pretty much focused on her full-time role now.

It may sound like Marna has had a charmed life, but that’s not the case at all. Both Marna and her husband have had a lot of health challenges which meant that they waited a while before they could start their family. Since their son Aryeh Bentzion was born 7 weeks early he has also had some health challenges of his own. On top of that, Marna experienced some issues post-partum that hit them out of the blue and have really just taken a lot of her “spare” time, if a full-time working mom who also has a side gig doing career counseling and mentoring could even have spare time in the first place. And as if all that isn’t enough, because of her experience as a first-time mom with a premature child in NICU, Marna ended up helping admin a Facebook support group for NICU moms.

For such a warm and forthcoming person, Marna does hesitate to share all the details of her life, being more private than one might assume when meeting her. And it’s important, she says, to never judge another person because we never know what’s going on behind the scenes. You never know what another person is going through, and that’s okay because it’s none of your business.

 It’s not through talking that connections are made, it’s through listening.

– Marna Becker

 

When asked about advice she’d give for women experiencing these kinds of challenges, Marna says that you have to learn how to ask for and accept help. But it starts by finding the right community and building connections. When you do that, you will find a support network when you need it the most. Many people don’t have genetic family available for a variety of reasons – location, religion, or dynamics, but family doesn’t have to be blood related. When you create good relationships, you create a family.

Marna suspects that part of the reason that we are afraid to ask for help, that we are afraid to appear weak or damaged may be related to the fact that social media only shows the “perfect” side of life, and that people subconsciously feel pressured to look like those images they see online. But that’s not real life. We need to stop pretending to be perfect and show that life is not perfect, it’s real. And it’s not only important for our own mental health but for everyone else as well. When all we show of our own life is those little, rare, perfect moments, we contribute to the problem.

When asked for one last word of wisdom Marna reiterated that everyone has a challenge they are dealing with, some you can see and some you can’t, so the most important thing is to just be kind always.

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