Page 7 - PresidentReport2024Portrait

At the end of June 2024, Prof. Bertold Fridlender, or “Tolo” as everyone calls him,
is completing his 12-year term as President of HAC. Before becoming President
of the College, Prof. Fridlender founded and then served as Chair of HAC’s
Department of Biotechnology (offering the first undergraduate program of its kind
in Israel), from 2004-2012 while working as a volunteer and commuting between
New Jersey and Israel. Simultaneously, he served as a Visiting Professor at Rutgers
University from 2005-2012.

Prof. Fridlender earned his M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Chile,
and a Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology and Immunology from UCLA. Prior to his
appointment as a Visiting Professor in the Virology Department of The Hebrew
University Faculty of Medicine, he pursued research for four years under the
guidance of Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry Prof. Luis Federico Leloir, in
Argentina. Over the years, Tolo has also served as CEO, president, and consultant
for a number of biotechnology startups in Israel and abroad.

In 2012, you came to the position of HAC President with a clear vision of where you
wanted to lead the college. Today, this vision is deeply rooted in HAC’s DNA. How did
you achieve this?

When I began my term as President, I had already been at the College for 8 years and
felt that we needed a clearer vision. We were a small, unknown College at the time
with only 2,000 students compared to our student body of 5,000 today. There was
almost no interaction or collaboration between the different departments. I realized that
bringing everyone on board with a shared goal was critical to our success, and I leave
this Presidency deeply satisfied that we have achieved this objective. Today our faculty
interact and connect, and there is a profound sense of engagement; “HAC belongs to all
of us,” so to speak. The second thing that was important for me was to create a spirit of
diversity and inclusion. It was critical that everyone understand the implications of having
such a diverse student body. HAC is a unique campus in comparison to other colleges that
usually cater to one specific population.

“It was important for me to create a spirit of diversity
and inclusion. It was critical that everyone understand
the implications of having such a diverse student body.
HAC is a unique campus in comparison to other colleges
that usually cater to one specific population.”

With such a distinct and well-established vision and mission, why did the College feel the
need to undergo its recent strategic planning process?

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled us to change our teaching strategies overnight, and
also underscored the fact that the world of academia is changing rapidly. We realized
that what we have today is not what we are going to need tomorrow. Where do we
want to go? What do we want to teach? How do we want to teach? How do we bring
this together with all the changes that are happening, including AI that is revolutionizing

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