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Susanne Billitzer Wolkenfeld

Suzanne Billitzer Wolkenfeld died on July 27, 2017. We heard from David Gibson, her partner of 37 years. Suzanne’s son Daniel lives in South Korea. The class presidents have sent condolence letters. Feel free to add your own remembrance as well.

Suzanne with David Gibson behind her.

Suzanne Wolkenfeld, 76, passed away in her Manhattan apartment on the morning of Thursday, July 27, 2017. She succumbed to heart failure, after having managed high blood pressure and cardiac disease for several years. David Gibson, seen above sitting behind Suzanne, provided this obituary.

Suzanne was born May 10, 1941 in the Bronx to Charlotte Friedman Billitzer and Raphael Billitzer. With her gentle and loving ways, Suzanne cherished family and friends, who were constant in returning her affection. She is survived by her son Daniel, of Seoul, South Korea, by her sister Carol Mansbach, of Dearfield Beach, Florida, and by David W. Gibson, her companion of 37 years.

After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science in 1958, Suzanne studied liberal arts and majored in English at Barnard College, from which she graduated in 1962. Friends from her Barnard days attest that she was active in student activities and was both studious and well-read, in accord with her aspiration to teach literature.

Suzanne’s professional life fell into two complementary careers: the academy and Wall Street. In 1970 she earned a Ph.D. in 17th Century Literature from Columbia University, after which she served as Assistant Professor of English at Fordham University until 1979.

During her Fordham years Suzanne was an active scholar, publishing learned studies of Franz Kafka and D.H. Lawrence; and her article in the Norton Critical Edition of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening garnered wide scholarly attention.

With her continuing interest in issues of high school literacy, she then accepted a position teaching English to upper-level students at the Fieldston School, in the Riverdale section of her native Bronx. For three years at Fieldston, she taught eager young learners how reading and writing about fiction may illuminate the larger world.

Over this first phase of her teaching career, Suzanne’s professional range gradually broadened to include an interest in financial markets. She began taking an ever more active role in managing her own investment portfolio, which led her to consider a second career in finance. To that end, in 1983 she joined Moody’s Investors Service, editing corporate credit reports and press releases. She soon found she had a knack for corporate communications and industry analysis. But realizing she needed a business degree to advance – and while continuing her day job at Moody’s – she enrolled in the evening program at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where in 1987 she attained an M.B.A. in finance.

Even before completing the M.B.A., Suzanne was promoted to associate analyst (1985), which involved her researching and writing about the market forces driving bond rating trends. So well did she succeed that from 1988 to 1994, she served as senior analyst, recommending ratings on corporate public debt to fellow members of the Moody’s ratings committee; and then communicating the committee’s decisions through her published reports.

By the mid-1990s, now with over 25 years of work experience, Suzanne decided to slow down from the daily grind to consult in professional writing, choosing assignments that appealed to her financial and academic interests. She wrote and edited reports and white papers for marquee Wall Street firms, including (among others) Goldman Sachs, CAP Gemini Ernst & Young, Deloitte, and McKinsey & Company. Her writing and editing for business schools included professional development projects for the University of Pennsylvania, Emory University, New York University, and Baruch College.

Suzanne’s immersion in business school writing rekindled her love of teaching in real time—of the give and take of the classroom—whether standing in front of students or in online interaction. So in the fall of 2003 until her passing, she taught Great Works of World Literature as Adjunct Associate Professor at Baruch College. To honor her contribution to student betterment, her Baruch colleagues set up a memorial fund in support of two student organizations.

Apart from her work life and her community of family and friends, Suzanne enjoyed collecting antiques. Hers was a keen eye for quilted and knitted fabrics, furniture, hooked rugs, and brass fixtures, with a special love of artifacts from the Piedmont region of the American South. And as everyone knew whose lives she touched, Suzanne was a confident doer of whatever she set out to accomplish.