Second Read on the Alzheimer’s Association Chapter

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When the Alzheimer’s Association California Southland Chapter asked Bettina Kurowski to serve as its chief executive, at first she said no.

“I was very busy with my volunteer activities. And I had just wound down my consulting company the prior year,” said Kurowski, 62, who had operated Kurowski and Co. Inc. in West Los Angeles for 11 years.

But it was the valuable services that the Miracle Mile-based non-profit organization provides to Alzheimer’s patients and their families that made her change her mind.

“It got me out of retirement, basically,” she said. “Leaving every evening is the toughest part. I wish I could clone myself. I have high expectations for myself and those around me.”

Kurowski acknowledges that fundraising in today’s economic climate can be a challenge, but she considers the prospect of scaling back the organization’s services a “terrible shame.”

She hopes to transfer her successful fundraising experience for the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. She is wrapping up a two-year run as general campaign chairwoman for the organization. The federation raised more than $50 million in 2008 and is expecting to hit that mark again this year.

The L.A. native has spent 30 years in the health care industry. After graduating from USC in 1967 she attended the University of Colorado at Denver where she earned a master’s degree in public finance in 1975 and a doctorate in health care policy and research in 1980. Kurowski took a teaching job at the university after graduation and stayed for seven years before deciding to move back to Southern California and work in the health care industry. She said it was her lack of real-world experience that made her give up the role of instructor.

“I became increasingly uncomfortable teaching students who wanted to be hospital administrators without having been one myself,” she said.

Kurowski lives in Encino with her husband, Dennis Rose. In her spare time, she remains active in the Jewish community, and likes to visit with her grandchildren. The couple has four grown children between them.

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