Millie Phillips made Masada Life Governor
Sydney’s Masada College has bestowed philanthropist and business woman Mrs Millie Phillips with Life Governorship.
Zac Lorge, Mrs Millie Phillips and Romy Milch
Mrs Phillips has become the sixth Life Governor for the College joining Dr Suzanne Sedgwick, Mr Hal Goldstein AM, Mr Harry Triguboff AO, Mr Rueben Pelerman and Mr Frank Lowy AC.
Spiritual Dean of the Montefiore Home, Rabbi David Rogut presented a Dvar Torah in which he emotionally recalled the early days of Masada College and the need for its existence on the North Shore. He said he had been a friend of Mrs Phillips for over forty years and praised the ‘committed philanthropist’ for her hard work and commitment to Jewish education
The new Life Governor was presented with her life story in the form of pictures and songs performed by Masada College Junior School children. Songs in Yiddish, Hebrew and English provoked lots of emotion in the packed hall named after Mrs Phillip’s daughter Lynette who tragically passed away as a young woman, as they reflected her life from leaving war-torn Poland to settling into anglicised Australia and raising three small children as a single mother, all the while being an extremely successful business woman.
The audience heard of Mrs Phillips’ business acumen as she grew from running a retail shop in Chatswood to become the first woman to launch a mineral exploration company with Mt Hope Minerals and the publicly listed International Mining Company.
The philanthropist has most recently supported Masada’s Leader in Me program which is central to their Leading Learning Educational Package along with their Culture of Thinking. Masada facilitates learning forums for other schools in NSW and abroad in their Culture of Thinking and as College Principal Mrs Wendy Barel said it has had huge benefits to the College; “Our playgrounds have become more respectful and our children more responsible since we launched The Leader in Me.”
Mrs Phillips accepted her Life Governorship with dignity and said that The Leader in Me at Masada is going to create caring, confident young leaders. “It will produce children with knowledge that they can change the world for the good”, she said. She added; “To the wonderful young people here let me say that the future is about putting one foot forward after the other. My foot forward is for the future of the Jewish community strengthened through education and pride in our background”.
She emphasized that the central need of the Jewish Community is the financial security to continue funding on every level. Referring to the victims of the Holocaust she said “Those communities that have no tombstones – we are their tombstones. We are their memories. Our only answer is education, Jewish exposure and the love of learning Yiddishkite. We are a community with very valuable assets. I gave to Masada because there is a need and I have an ability to fill the need”.
