Wesley LePatner, board member for UJA-Federation of New York and The Abraham Joshua Heschel School, mourned by loved ones as ‘uniquely brilliant’

US Jewish institutions in New York City are in mourning after a well-known and beloved communal figure was one of the victims of a mass shooting Monday in Midtown Manhattan.

Wesley LePatner, 43, was a board member for UJA-Federation of New York and The Abraham Joshua Heschel School, where her name is now inscribed with the Hebrew acronym for “may her memory be a blessing” in memoriam. She also was the recipient of UJA’s Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award in 2023.

A few weeks ago, LePatner went to lunch with her synagogue’s co-founder and rebbetzin, who on social media wrote they were catching up about “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 imagined that LePatner would be gunned down, in a mass shooting at the office building in Manhattan where she had climbed to one of the city’s most elite investment firms.

The office building and shooting target was home to the headquarters of the NFL and Blackstone. The alleged shooter, identified by authorities as Shane Tamura of Las Vegas, killed four people, including a LePatner and a New York City police officer, and wounded a fifth before killing himself.

While a motive has not been officially announced, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said police were investigating a note from the suspected gunman that reportedly referred to potential links to the NFL and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease associated with head trauma.

“We’re still investigating, this is relatively new,” Adams said. “There’s no more than just a note at this time and as you indicated he talked about CTE.”

In the aftermath of LePatner’s murder on Monday, many who knew her are mourning the loss of a Jewish leader who had demonstrated care for everything she and her luncheon companion had been discussing.

“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 continued. “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 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 led the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust.

“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 roots in New York’s Jewish community, where she grew up and returned after college to make an impact on religious, educational and charitable organizations.

In December 2023, shortly after she led a solidarity mission to Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks, UJA honored her with the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award at its annual Wall Street Dinner. The award recognized 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 at the time that UJA had been central in her development 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 2023 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.”

First responders gather on 52nd Street outside a Manhattan office building where four people were killed in a shooting, including a New York police officer, July 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis) 
Born Wesley Meredith Mittman, LePatner was an alumna of the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, where she remained engaged in various fundraising campaigns after graduating.

She went to Yale, graduating in 2003 with a degree in history and working as head of tour guides for the admissions office while 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.

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.