Miriam Katowitz ’74

CFO for Nonprofit Organizations

A lifelong volunteer, Miriam Katowitz has always enjoyed touching people’s lives. Now the CFO for Safe Horizon, a not-for-profit agency whose mission is to provide support for, prevent violence against and promote justice for victims of crime and abuse, Katowitz has an opportunity to apply her 20 years of expertise in the private sector to a not-for-profit organization and to see others benefit every day, right outside her office.

Katowitz graduated from Goucher College during a time when, as she recalls, “Wall Street was not hiring women.” Realizing she would need to further her education to get ahead, she arrived at Columbia Business School in 1973 seeking an MBA in accounting. “Quite simply,” she says, “I was told to major in one of the three functional areas of accounting, marketing or finance. I liked accounting, and there were a lot of jobs in accounting firms then.” After six years at an international accounting firm, Katowitz joined Republic Bank of New York, where she worked for 20 years, ultimately becoming a managing director in the finance division, responsible for management and performance reporting, as well as enterprise-wide budgeting.

Prior to joining Safe Horizon, Katowitz was CFO and director of operations and strategic planning at the 92nd Street Y in New York. Her behind-the-scenes work at the noted global Jewish community and cultural center kept things running smoothly, allowing patrons of all ages to “enrich their minds and their lives” through courses, activities and workshops. “It was absolutely the most wonderful thing to see all the different ages wandering through the building,” she says.

Katowitz currently serves on a number of boards, including those of the Brooklyn Public Library Foundation and the Alliance for Nonprofit Governance (ANG).