Andre Krug, the president and CEO of KleinLife for the last 17 years, will step aside from his role in January 2027.

Krug announced the news to the Northeast Philadelphia Jewish community on July 9. He plans to stay on for the next six months as KleinLife searches for its next leader.

Krug will be part of the search for his replacement, but he will not lead the process. The CEO also referred to his decision as “semi-retiring,” as he plans to stay on with the community center and social service agency for special projects and strategic guidance.

In his time as CEO, the Ukrainian immigrant took KleinLife, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, from a position of “creditors lining up outside the door,” as he described it, to financial security and an essential role in the Northeast Philadelphia Jewish community. More than 35,000 residents and 200 Holocaust survivors use KleinLife’s services each year, and 90% of them live below the poverty line. Those services include home-delivered meals, Russian-speaking programming, summer camp, gym access and Shabbat gatherings.

“I think Andre has done an amazing job. He is an excellent leader. And he runs a very strong organization,” said Steve Klein, the organization’s board chair.

Krug said he’s stepping aside because “it’s a 24-7 kind of job” and because the organization needs a new type of leader. Krug, who has an MBA and focuses on problem solving, was the right man to lead KleinLife through a period of revitalization and crises, like COVID, inflation and the war in Ukraine that brought Ukrainian refugees to Northeast Philadelphia.

Now that it’s on solid financial and communal footing, KleinLife needs a visionary, according to Krug.

“At some point, you get to the realization that 24-7 is not your thing anymore. You need to step back and let other people jump in,” Krug said. “Moreover, I think the agency needs to grow into bigger and better things. It needs fresh blood, and somebody who can look at it from a different perspective.”

When Krug took over at KleinLife – then called the Raymond and Miriam Klein Jewish Community Center – the organization was about six months away from closing its doors. His job was to raise money.

Fortunately, he found a donor, Steve Klein, the son of the JCC’s founders, Raymond and Miriam Klein. The son stepped in to save the center by making a personal donation and raising an additional $400,000 to $500,000 from friends. The JCC was later rebranded to KleinLife to fit its growing social service mission.

Unfortunately, Krug also had to cut staff, as the organization’s roster of more than 200 employees was “bloated,” as the CEO described it.

“We had to make some tough decisions,” he said.

Today, KleinLife has 14 full-time employees and 35 part-time staff members. The CEO has built a small, nimble team that can adjust quickly to developing situations.

The outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022 was just that type of scenario. Thousands of Ukrainian refugees ended up in Northeast Philadelphia, a heavily Ukrainian section of the city.

In a matter of weeks, KleinLife set up camp, after-school and English-language programs for the refugees. It also offered food and clothing services, employment support and cultural orientation sessions. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia contributed to this effort with an emergency allocation of $65,000 out of its $1.5 million Ukraine Emergency Fund.

“I believe if you’re doing the right thing, and it’s easy to explain to people what you’re doing, the money’s going to follow, and it always did,” Krug said.

The CEO always wanted his team to keep its mission in mind while operating like a tech startup. He even quoted the famous Mark Zuckerberg slogan for Facebook employees from the company’s early days: “Move fast and break things.”

“People who are more process-oriented tend not to stay here. It’s a different environment. We don’t penalize for mistakes. We learn from them,” he said.

Growing up in Ukraine, Krug dealt with a version of antisemitism that had less to do with incidents than culture. It was just in the air.

“You feel bad about being a Jew. You didn’t do anything. You’re ostracized for something you’re not responsible for,” he recalled.

But when he came to the U.S., he “embraced Jewish identity,” he said. The CEO has spent his entire 35-year career working for Jewish organizations, first the Jewish Federation in the 1990s, then the Klein JCC (now KleinLife) in other roles in the 2000s, and finally as CEO and president of the Klein JCC and KleinLife since 2009.

“My entire career has been giving back to the Jewish community,” he said.

In February, KleinLife sent out a survey to solicit feedback on its “next 50 years.” About 250 people responded. After the responses came in, Krug told Philadelphia Jewish Exponent that he hoped to conduct follow-up interviews and work with a consultant “to design what the next step is going to be like.”

Now, that step will likely be taken by the new CEO.

“I want it to be a completely open [search] process, and ideas should be considered. The next person should not be Andre 2.0,” Krug said.

jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com