Soroptimist International is an international women's organization that is devoted to providing social and economic empowerment opportunities to women and girls throughout the world. It provides various activities and grants that help women and girls gain access to education and training to improve their lives. Regional chapters such as the Henderson/Green Valley chapter work to provide opportunities at the local level.
Oral history interview with Rabbi Shea Harlig conducted by Barbara Tabach on March 05, 2014 for West Charleston Neighborhoods: An Oral History Project of Ward 1. In his interview Rabbi Harlig discusses creating a Chabad movement in Southern Nevada. Rabbi Harlig also discusses the story of the moving to Las Vegas, founding the Chabad school, and the current Chabad expansion in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In 1984, with the advice of his father ringing in his ears, Brad Nelson uprooted his wife and two children from their Denver home and moved them to Henderson, Nevada, where he would begin a new adventure in shaping the new master-planned community of Green Valley with Mark Fine and American Nevada Corporation (ANC). Nelson, lifelong Nebraskan and only child of his parents, arrived armed with a Bachelor's degree in landscape architecture with urban planning option, a Master's degree in urban planning, and fifteen years of planning and executive experience with the national firm of Harmon, O'Donnell and Henniger Planning Consultants. He arrived in time to plan Green Valley's first village, the Village of Silver Spring. By the time he left ANC for Lake Las Vegas in 1999, his work was done and most large parcels had been sold. As Nelson puts it, by 1999 ANC was "out of land, and I'm a land guy." Lake Las Vegas had plenty of undeveloped land, so "land guy" Nelson a chief operating officer
Rabbi Mendy Harlig was born and raised in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. He was ordained as a rabbi in 1996. He moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1998. Rabbi Mendy Harlig is the spiritual leader of the Chabad of Green Valley, later renamed Chabad of Henderson. He was introduced to the Las Vegas community in 1990 by his brother Rabbi Shea Harlig. Hasidic Judaism has surrounded Mendy since his youth in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. He seemed destined to become a Chabad rabbi.