Dan Kurt Singer

Dan Kurt Singer, a consultant and entrepreneur, died on Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at the Miriam Boyd Parlin Hospice House in Wayland, MA. He was 92.

Dan (originally named Kurt) was born to Edith (Stern) and Franz Singer on June 12, 1930, in Brno, Czechoslovakia. His father owned a knitwear firm that manufactured children’s clothes. Dan spent his childhood winters skiing in the Tatras mountains and his summers swimming and playing with his younger brother in the Czech countryside. He was eight years old when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia. Fortunately, his father was able to obtain entrance permits for Palestine, and in early 1940 he and his family sailed from Trieste to Haifa. Fewer than half a dozen members of his family escaped.

From 1946 to 1949, Dan studied textile engineering at the Leicester Institute of Technology in England, after which he returned to Israel where he served in the elite naval commando unit, Shayetet (Flotilla) 13. In 1952, he left Israel to pursue graduate studies in Philadelphia, where he wrote articles for the knitwear trade press. After moving to Boston, he spent more than 30 years working as a consultant for Arthur D. Little, Inc., traveling around the world advising governments and corporations on business strategy, growth, and innovation. He was also an entrepreneur: in the late 1960s, with inventor Yitzhak Ben-Tov, he co-founded a medical instruments company, Meditech, which he sold to a startup that later became Boston Scientific. In the 1980s, he owned an interest in an art gallery (Gallery Henoch) in New York. He was a revered mentor, collaborator, and partner with businesses around the world.

In 1955, Dan was introduced by Israeli friends in Boston to Barbara (Nemon) of Portland, ME. “You look like the girl I always wanted to marry,” he declared at first sight. After marrying in 1956, Dan and Barbara embarked on a two-year honeymoon, traveling widely across Europe and Israel, including two seasons skiing in Kitzbuhel, Austria.

Dan often proudly said that he never worked for more than nine months out of every year. He loved good wine, cheese, and traveling, but he was never happier than when he was skiing. On a powder day, he could be heard whooping from the chairlift above his favorite slopes in Stowe, VT; Alta, UT; or Vail, CO. He hung up his skis, reluctantly, only at the age of 88.

Dan leaves his wife of 67 years, Barbara; his daughter Margot (Timothy DeGenero) of Granville, OH; his son Michael (Lauren Fine) of West Hartford, CT; and his beloved grandchildren Micaela DeGenero, Raphael DeGenero, Hailey Singer, and Lucas Singer. Predeceased by his brother (Benjamin “Bambi” Singer), he leaves his sister-in-law Rina and his nephews Tomer, Ori, and Nadav Singer and their families in Haifa, Israel.

In lieu of flowers, gifts can be made to Jewish Family Service of Metrowest (https://jfsmw.org/).