Meet the Anglo-Israeli mom providing support for journalists in Israel

• Author: ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN
• Published date: 23 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"Most friends at my age have started traveling with their spouses. Part of me would like to be with them and the other part says, 'I already did that.' Now I do a lot of things so that my kids will have fun. On Yom Kippur we went for a bike ride for a few hours with friends. We love hosting people for barbecues and jumping on our trampoline."

The Jerusalem resident is coming up on two years as director of MediaCentral, a nonprofit media liaison service center providing professional support for journalists based in or visiting Israel and/or the Palestinian territories.

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She began her own career in journalism only six months after making aliyah in January 1986. Arriving with a BA in communications from the University of Wisconsin, Laura took a job at Israel Television after completing Ulpan Etzion. Her salary for the first year was provided by the Ministry of Absorption in the hope that it would become a permanent position, and it did – partly due to Laura often filling in for coworkers on maternity leave.

Jumping into the deep end, she began working in Hebrew news and then two years later switched to the sports department. One of her assignments was covering the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, where Israel earned its first two Olympic medals.

Among her colleagues was Merav Michaeli, then a sports anchor and now Minister of Transportation – and a new mother, at 54, of a child carried by a surrogate.

"Recently I sent her a congrats WhatsApp about her new baby and offered 'late in life' mothering tips," says Laura, the single mom of Matan, almost 12, and 10-year-old twins Hila and Tal.

"I had Matan in my mid-40s after my father passed away and then after my mother died, I had the girls," she explains. "I have the maturity – maybe – and knowledge that I wouldn't have had as a young mom but sometimes not the stamina, although they do keep me young!"

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Laura went to high school at Ida Crown Jewish Academy outside Chicago and then studied English literature for a year and a half at Bar-Ilan University.

"When I was my kids' age, when you asked me at the end of the school year what I wanted to do I always said, 'A radio announcer in Israel,'" she says.

"I come from a very Zionistic family, so it was kind of a given that we would go to Israel. And we four siblings all lived here at some point." Her parents...