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“By focusing on families, you strengthen the individual, community and world.”

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Lois and George Stark live in ways which demonstrate their devotion to Houston, to making the world a better place, to facilitating the training of professionals who support those in need and to strengthening Jewish family life.

Lois Farfel Stark is a native Houstonian, the daughter of Aaron and Esther Farfel. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, earning a BA in Liberal Arts and obtained MAs in Education from Boston University and Communications from American University.

She worked as a producer/writer of award-winning documentary films for NBC Network News, in Washington, D.C. and New York City, filming in Israel, Liberia, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Trusial Oman States and Cuba. After she and George married, they moved to Houston, where she continued to produce films on medical research, artists, architecture and civic issues. She now gives presentations on ‘The Web and The Ladder,’ her worldviews from migratory to modern times.

George is an investment advisor whose parents were Holocaust survivors who fled Austria and settled in Cuba, where he was born. When the Cuban revolution repeated inhumanities his family witnessed during WWII, the Starks resettled in Paris, where George finished high school. He went on to graduate from Cornell University and returned to France to receive an MBA in international finance from INSEAD.

Though they could live anywhere and support any community, the Starks have focused their philanthropic efforts and volunteer commitments primarily in Houston. George, a former ADL chair, has been active with ADL for over 35 years. He and Lois were honored to receive the ADL’s prestigious Torch of Liberty Award in 2012. Additionally, George has served on the boards of, or volunteered with the United Way, Houston Ballet Foundation, The St. John’s School, the Menil Foundation, the University of Houston Hilton School and the Jewish Federation. He served as the President of Alexander Jewish Family Service between 1983-1985.

Lois has served on the boards of Texas Children’s Hospital, the Alley Theater, the St. John’s School, Sarah Lawrence College, Humanities Texas, the Texas Commission on the Arts, Houston Cinema Arts Society, George and Lois Stark Center for Performing Arts Medicine and the Women’s Leadership Board of the Harvard Kennedy School.

The Starks were blessed with two sons, Ben and Daniel, who in life and in memory bring joy. As part of their ongoing commitment to the Alexander JFS and the Houston community, the couple has strengthened the agency’s ability to help families through the Farfel-Stark Fund for Professional Continuing Education for agency staff. The fund also sponsors the Ruth Hutton Fred Annual Symposium, a clinical presentation made in conjunction with Baylor College of Medicine.

“The Farfel-Stark Fund has been instrumental in helping Alexander JFS grow professionally, and has provided our staff with ongoing training and knowledge to perform their difficult work,” shares Executive Director Linda Burger. “We are grateful to Lois and George for reminding us of the need to provide support for the professional staff, whose daily skills and expertise strengthens the lives of our grandparents, parents and children at every stage of life.”

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