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Mostly Cloudy Woodmere's Cal Nathan is the Nassau Herald's Person of the Year
A successful entrepreneur who has built five businesses since he left a prosperous career as a trader on the floor of the American Stock Exchange, Cal Nathan dived into volunteer community involvement over a dozen years ago, and has made his mark.
Nathan, 51, has made the most of his business prowess, helping a number of organizations, especially Community Chest South Shore, formerly Five Towns Community Chest, a 91-year-old charitable group that aims to help neighbors in need.
The president of Community Chest for the past five years, Nathan, who lives in Woodmere, has helped the organization navigate the changing Five Towns landscape and build relationships with local groups and schools, both public and private. For all of his efforts, the Herald is proud to name Nathan its 2022 Person of the Year.
“I became president, when the organization’s board members’ kids had moved out and there was no more connection with the kids on the Youth Board or going to high school,” Nathan said. “Ibecame president to keep the organization relevant. If you aren’t relevant, there’s no attention, no support.”
Community Chest has given more than $1.2 million to its community partners over the past three years, he noted. The Five Towns Community Center, in Lawrence; the Five Towns Early Learning Center, in Inwood; the Domestic Harmony Foundation, in Hicksville; and the Marion & Aaron Gural JCC, in Cedarhurst, receive financial support from Nathan’s organization. Chest’s in-house program Neighbors Helping Neighbors aids individuals and families in need.
“Big or small needs, we know that help is always a phone call away,” Early Learning Center Director Pepper Robinson wrote in an email. “(Community) Chest, for over 50 years, has supported the center and is a safety net for the center, the children and their families. Under Cal’s leadership, through the pandemic, that support has continued.”
Under Nathan’s watch, Community Chest launched Vision 2020 — a program that supports nonprofits — just before the pandemic struck in March 2020. The program did not take a backseat to the virus, as Community Chest distributed grants totaling $500,000 to several nonprofits, and between 2020 and 2021 it loaned out another half-million dollars.
In March 2021, Community Chest partnered with the Manhattan-based Hebrew Free Loan Society on a $1 million loan program that offered small businesses in the Five Towns and surrounding communities interest-free, no-fee loans of up to $50,000. The goal was to keep existing small businesses operating and help new ones with strong business plans.
“I have a deep understanding that we’re in this world for a purpose, to serve others,” Nathan said. “It was taught in my home when someone reaches out, you should extend a hand to help. I saw my dad write out checks.”
Nathan grew up in Oceanside, and attended high school in Forest Hills. He earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in marketing and management from the Stern School of Business at New York University. He and his wife, Janine, have four children: Brian, 24, and Matthew, 20, and Elie, 17, and Erin, 13.
In 1998, Nathan’s entrepreneurial spirit moved him to leave the stock exchange’s trading floor, and he bought a small special-events company, NYFF. Starting with birthday parties and social affairs, he built the business into a company that served national and global clients.
Through the years he has founded other businesses, including All Seated, an online event platform that connects thousands of hosts, vendors and venues, and StringBean Technologies, a corporate real estate tech software platform that supports facility maintenance and site operations.
Nathan also founded the first pay-out-of-pocket rehabilitation center in New York City, which opened in 2019. His most recent endeavor is iDEKOgov, a strategic consulting group that specializes in government relations, municipal filings and regulatory consulting.
His business skills aren’t his only attributes, according to Jackie Kaminer, who heads Community Chest’s Youth Board and has been involved with the organization as long as Nathan.
“He’s open to ideas that are within both communities,” Kaminer said, explaining that Nathan has built bridges between the Orthodox Jewish community and the secular population. Community Chest has partnered with the Gural JCC and others to hold a two-day Sukkot Fair in Andrew J. Parise Cedarhurst Park. Chest expanded its high school senior scholarship program to include yeshiva high schools such as the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, in Cedarhurst, and Davis Renov Stahler Yeshiva High School for Boys, in Woodmere.
“He is extremely warm and philanthropic and very giving of himself and his time for everything,” Kaminer added. “He makes the time to be invested in everything. By being that way, he encourages us. Showing by example.”
Nathan has also been involved in Teach NYS, a division of the Teach Advocacy Network, since its inception in 2013. Teach NYS advocates for equitable government finding for the state’s 430,000 nonpublic school students.
Earlier this year, Nathan, a Teach NYS co-chair, was recognized by City and State, a New York city-based media organization that covers government and politics in New York, as an Above and Beyond Innovator. “One day I received a call from a guy I barely knew,” Maury Litwack, the Teach NYS executive director tweeted in his congratulations.
“He asked me why I was passionate about getting relief for parents. How I was going to pull it off … and most critically, what he could do. This is Cal Nathan. He went above and beyond volunteering, giving and leading our cause.”
Community Chest Treasurer Steven Liebman wrote in an email: “In the past few years with a new name, Community Chest South Shore, and a vibrant executive committee, which included Trudi Haberman leading the Neighbors Helping Neighbors program as well as Jackie Kaminer with the Community Chest Youth Board, Cal has coordinated their effort and expanded our reach to the community.”
