As her skill grew, skiing in the Northeast was no longer challenging enough for her, and her desire to master the sport propelled her out west. We once prevailed upon her to go with her sister Tzivi and us to a local ski area. When we saw how talented she was on the slopes, we understood very well what it was that drove her to ski only in the deep powder of the Rockies. Nancy’s dedication to excellence would have guaranteed her success in travel or any other profession that she would have put her mind to. Her job at Tzell allowed her tremendous latitude to travel and ski out west. Nancy’s credit card statements bore witness to the frequency and extent of her travels. Vail, Beaver Creek, Aspen, and Copper Mountain were just a few of her destinations. She especially liked to ski in Snowmass, Colorado and stay at The Crestwood lodge where some of the Backroads Biking tour guides were working.

She worked for seven years as a travel agent for Tzell Travel, doing bookings for Cantor Fitzgerald, a large securities firm. Even after Cantor moved its account to another agency, many of its executives continued to use Nancy for their personal travel arrangements. A fellow employee at Tzell noted how incredibly hard Nancy worked in the travel office. Whereas her colleague would quote a rate for a flight to a client and say, “This is the price, take it or leave it,” Nancy would bend over backward, make a hundred phone calls and spend the next three days trying to get that client’s airfare down. A friend from Colorado wrote “Nancy would often be calling Tzell Travel while on vacation to make sure everything was going smoothly and all was taken care of.”

In the winter of 2000, the chief operating officer of Cantor Fitzgerald’s institutional equities department, impressed with Nancy’s competence, dedication, and personality, asked her to work for him as his administrative assistant. She was amazed by this offer, telling him that she didn’t know the difference between a stock and a bond. The closest she had ever gotten to finance was writing personal checks. Besides that, she didn’t work on Jewish holidays and had to leave early on Fridays for the Sabbath. Oh, yeah, and she occasionally needed days off to pursue personal interests. “I don’t care,” he said. “I want you to work for me.” He made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. She asked a number of other people from Cantor about working for him and the general response was: “He asked you to work for him? He’s the greatest guy to work for. It’s a job you cannot refuse.”

What did the chief operating officer of Cantor’s institutional equities department see in Nancy? He saw a person who had tremendous personal integrity, always wanting to do the right thing. He saw a person who cared. A person who would sacrifice her own personal time, even when on vacation, to make sure that any arrangements she made were executed properly. She was a person whose passion for doing the right thing permeated her entire being.