Several weeks ago, Wesley LePatner had lunch with her synagogue’s co-founder and rebbetzin, who recalled on social media that they discussed “the future, our children, women’s leadership, Torah, our love for Israel and all of the uncertainty of this moment in time.”
No one could have known that LePatner would soon be gunned down, in a mass shooting at the office building in Manhattan where she had ascended at one of the city’s most prestigious investment firms. But in the wake of her murder on Monday, many of those who knew her are mourning the loss of a Jewish leader who demonstrated her care for all that she discussed at that lunch.
“There are no right words for this unfathomable moment of pain and loss,” head of school Ariela Dubler and board president Ben Archibald wrote in an email to the community of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, the Upper West Side school where LePatner was a parent and a board member.
“It was a rare z’chut, a rare privilege, to know Wesley and to learn from her,” they went on. “She was a uniquely brilliant and modest leader and parent, filled with wisdom, empathy, vision, and appreciation. Quite simply, Wesley made the world — and all of the institutions that she touched, including the Heschel School — a better place.”
LePatner, 43, was also a board member for UJA-Federation of New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as one of the highest-ranking women at Blackstone, where she ran the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust.
She was killed, along with three others, when a gunman opened fire at her office building, 345 Park Ave., which houses Blackstone as well as the NFL. The alleged shooter, who shot himself to death, may have been targeting the NFL, city officials said on Tuesday.
“She was the most loving wife, mother, daughter, sister and relative, who enriched our lives in every way imaginable,” her family said in a statement. “To so many others, she was a beloved, fiercely loyal and caring friend, and a driven and extraordinarily talented professional and colleague. At this unbearably painful time, we are experiencing an enormous, gaping hole in our hearts that will never be filled, yet we will carry on the remarkable legacy Wesley created.”
LePatner had deep ties in New York’s Jewish community, where she grew and returned after college to make a mark on religious, educational and charitable organizations.
In December 2023, soon after she led a solidarity mission to Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, UJA honored her with the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award at its annual Wall Street Dinner. The award honored LePatner for her commitment to the Jewish community “and her remarkable achievements, all the more notable as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field,” the organization said in a statement.
“She lived with courage and conviction, instilling in her two children a deep love for Judaism and the Jewish people,” UJA added.
For her part, LePatner said UJA had been integral in her growth as a business executive with a thriving Jewish identity.
“As one of the only female analysts in my investment banking group at Goldman Sachs and as a liberal arts major who studied the Ming and Qing dynasties of China in college and Pre-Raphaelite art in Great Britain, rather than complex accounting and excel models like the rest of my adult class, I felt different and alone in the early months of my career,” she said in her comments at the dinner. “UJA stepped in early and fixed my feeling out of place by connecting me with senior Goldman Sachs women who were further along in their careers and personal lives, but equally committed to their Jewish community and identity.”
Born Wesley Meredith Mittman, LePatner was an alumna of the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, where she remained involved in various fundraising campaigns after graduating.
She graduated from Yale in 2003 with a degree in history, and worked as a head of tour guides for the admissions office while she was a student. She met her husband, Evan, on the first day of student orientation at Yale, according to the couple’s 2006 wedding announcement in The New York Times.
LePatner remained involved with her alma mater after graduating. She served on the Yale University Library Council, which fundraises for the library, along with writer Bruce Feiler, who mourned her loss in a post on Facebook.
“At 43, she was the most effortless and impressive person — you wanted to follow her wherever she went,” Feiler wrote. “A mentor to young women and generous friend to everyone who knew her, she was on the board of her children’s Jewish day school, recently joined the board of The Met, and just felt in every way like the kind of leader we all want and need in these unsettling times. I howled when I heard the news and haven’t stopped shaking since. Godspeed to her family. God helps us all.”
Upon graduating from Yale, LePatner became an investment banker working at Goldman Sachs, where she remained for 11 years before heading to Blackstone in 2014. There, in addition to rising in the real estate division, she became the chair of Blackstone’s Women’s Initiative.
“Words cannot express the devastation we feel,” the company said in an emailed statement to NBC News New York. “Wesley was a beloved member of the Blackstone family and will be sorely missed. She was brilliant, passionate, warm, generous, and deeply respected within our firm and beyond. She embodied the best of Blackstone. “Our prayers are with her husband, children and family. We are also saddened by the loss of the other innocent victims as well, including brave security personnel and NYPD.”
LePatner and her husband settled on the Upper East Side, where they had two children. Benny Rogosnitzky, cantor at Park East Synagogue, recalled in an interview that she was “a very active, very involved parent” when her children attended the school affiliated with his congregation. In 2019, the congregation and school bestowed their annual “Youth Enrichment Center Award” on the couple.
“She was very practical, down to earth, very much wanted to make a difference, not just in giving ideas, but to actually realize them,” Rogosnitzky said. “She was someone we could rely on. She was someone that we could call even when the children graduated.”
Rogosnitzky recalled that LePatner once told him she felt at home when she came into the Park East Day School building.
“This is where she took her kids every day, and she dropped them off on the way to work,” he said. “And it was just — it was home. It was a second home. And we’ll miss her terribly.”
More recently, LePatner was involved in launching the Altneu synagogue on the Upper East Side, according to co-founder Avital Chizik-Goldschmidt, who described the recent lunch and called her a “dear friend, mentor, community member & builder” on social media.
“Daughter, wife, mother, leader in so many ways,” Chizik-Goldschmidt added. “The kindest & sharpest human being. A nightmare that we can’t wake up from. No words. Holding her family in our aching hearts.”
The family remained members at Park East, Rogosnitzky said, as well as at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, which announced that it would dedicate a week of learning in her honor. Since 2020, they were also involved in the Great Barrington, Massachusetts, congregation Hevreh, where they celebrated their daughter’s bat mitzvah last year.
“Whenever she was here with us at Hevreh, her warmth and love for her family shone through,” Rabbi Jodie Gordon said in a message to the Hevreh community on Tuesday.
LePatner also brought her children with her to volunteer locally, said David Greenfield, CEO of the Met Council, a Jewish social services nonprofit.
“Wesley was an amazing person who was also [a] tremendously talented leader,” Greenfield shared on X. “She volunteered with her kids @MetCouncil to feed those in need. Heartbroken that she was murdered yesterday in the midtown shooting rampage. Thoughts and prayers with her family. Baruch Dayan HaEmes.”
LePatner is survived by her husband, Evan, their two young children, and her parents, attorneys Ellyn and Lawrence Mittman.
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