Susan Segal Rai

Susan Segal Rai died on September 21, 2026 at her home in Great Neck, NY. She died peacefully, surrounded by her family. She was 85. The daughter of Martin E. Segal and Edith L. Segal and the wife of Dr. Kanti R. Rai, Susan was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1941, and attended Brooklyn Friends School before continuing on to Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School. Susan worked at the National Labor Relations Board, and then went on to the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal-justice research organization in New York, where she worked from 1975 to 2015, serving as its Special Counsel and Secretary of the Corporation. Like her parents, she was a lover and supporter of education and the arts. She served on the board of the Mary McDowell Center for Learning in Brooklyn. She also served on the boards of the Marlboro Music Festival and the New York Youth Symphony. Susan was a person of deep and genuine commitments to her values and to her family. Her own family was close-knit, and this level of devotion was as evident in the way she integrated herself into the family of her beloved husband, Kanti. Their cross-cultural marriage was unusual for 1968, but Susan showed such interest in and commitment to Kanti's large extended family in India that she almost immediately became not just accepted but treasured and revered. In New York from the 1960s through the 2020s she served as the gateway for countless relatives coming from India to the US to study or visit, weaving tours of New York City, Broadway shows, and home-cooked dinners for these new arrivals into her already busy professional and home life. These bonds remained to the very end. In 2021, Brooklyn Friends School awarded Susan Rai the George Fox award for a life exemplifying Quaker values. She always regarded the value of service to others as sacred, and as compatible with her own Jewish heritage. Susan is survived by her devoted husband, Kanti; her brother, Paul Segal; her daughter and son-in-law, Samantha Rai and Jay Zaslow; her son and daughter-in-law, Joshua Rai and Catherine Malin; and her grandchildren, Ella, Mira, Isaiah and Deva. Services will be held on Sunday, September 27, 2026 at 10:30am at Riverside Memorial Chapel, 180 West 76th Street, NY, NY 10023. In lieu of flowers, please make a contribution to the New York Youth Symphony or the Marlboro Music Festival.