“Philanthropy is all in the Family”

Ariel Roitman is one of Mount Sinai Hospital’s youngest donors. 

At age 9, she came up with a big idea to help others.  Specifically, Ariel wanted to help babies and Mount Sinai Hospital – the place where she was born and where her mom, Rosalie Steinberg, is Administrative Director in the Department of Psychiatry. 

“I aim to be an avid volunteer, and I have really tried to teach Ariel how important it is to give back to her community,” explains Rosalie.  This is a lesson Ariel seems to have learned quickly.

Instead of buying toys or games like many children do, Ariel decided to use her birthday money to buy beads.  With them, she made and sold jewelry and donated the money back to the Perinatal Mental Health Program at Mount Sinai.  “I wanted to raise money to give money,” Ariel explains.

Rosalie oversees the Perinatal Mental Health Program, which provides psychiatric health care to mothers during pregnancy and after the birth of their child.  “I thought donating money to this program would be a good way to help babies and moms and Mount Sinai,” Ariel said. 

Both Ariel and Rosalie come by their sense of civic duty honestly – the family’s matriarch, Sylvia Steinberg, is a volunteer in Mount Sinai’s Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre.  A breast cancer survivor herself, Sylvia donates her time to ease the apprehension and fear many patients experience.  “I just want to give patients hope,” Sylvia says.  “I am pleased that my daughter and granddaughter are doing the same.”

But Ariel couldn’t have made all the jewelry by herself. That’s where Julia Zinman – Ariel’s best friend – stepped in to help.  Julia and Ariel sold over $230 worth of beaded jewelry and gave every penny back to the program. “It was a lot of hard work, but it was fun, too. And we could help people,” Julia said. 

Julia is not the first person from her family to contribute to the Mount Sinai community, either.  Her mother, Dr. Beverley Young, is the physician in charge of the Perinatal Mental Health Program, and her grandfather, Dr. Bernie Zinman, is head of the Leadership Sinai Diabetes Centre and Principal Investigator at Mount Sinai’s Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute. 

“We are all so proud of our girls. Proud that they, too, are now joining the Mount Sinai Family,” Rosalie says.