A woman with curly hair wearing glasses and a blue turtleneck sweater smiling and leaning against a stone wall.

About Stephanie

Raised along with her brothers by a union schoolteacher and salesman of industrial food service equipment, she spent her early life at 50 West 97th Street — a Mitchell-Lama building just steps from Central Park — and then her adolescence upstate in Mahopac. Stephanie learned early the value of public service and strong neighborhoods. She graduated from the List College Joint Program of the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University’s School of General Studies.

Stephanie has committed her entire career to serving her community. From teaching in the Jewish community in Bulgaria with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to leadership positions at the American Jewish World Service, Auburn Theological Seminary, AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, and JOIN for Justice, her laser-focus on improving the lives of people around her is abundantly clear.

For the last decade, she has been the Associate Dean of the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Executive Director of the Hendel Center for Ethics and Justice.

At JTS, she played a leading role in advocating for, designing, and eventually implementing their first paid parental leave policy. Ruskay also created Ruchot, a program to train Conservative movement Jewish teens on civic engagement, where they learned how to advocate for causes dear to their heart.

All of these roles aimed to help engage individuals and larger communities, in impactful efforts at realizing the world as we wish it could be. Her vision has always been crystal clear: address current challenges, knit together a broader narrative, and address systemic issues. 

She’s done that for the Jewish community her whole life. She does that with her students every day. And she’ll do it for the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights as their next Assemblymember.

Stephanie lives on the Upper West Side with her twin boys and her husband Darone, who is the Managing Director of Queens Hillel. Their sons are in ninth grade at HSMSE at City College and Essex Street Academy.

A woman and two young men sitting on a park bench outdoors, with trees and a cityscape in the background, on a sunny day.