Good sport Former athlete now on team at chamber

BARBARA YOST
Special to Jewish News

Dan Stoneman

While attending Thunderbird High School in the 1970s, Dan Stoneman was a member of the school's swim team and astronomy club. Many years later, swimming would help lead him to the girl of his dreams - through a chance encounter that surely was "in the stars."

A swimmer in high school and later at Arizona State University, Stoneman formed a water polo club after graduating from ASU in 1987. In the summer of 1993, he participated in the Maccabiah Games in Israel as a member of the United States water polo team.

"It was a fascinating experience," he says. "Most of us went for the sport, but learned once we went there, that the games are about cultural and religious interaction."

More than 6,000 Jewish athletes from all over the world competed. When the games were over, and Stoneman's team had captured second place among a field of 10, he and several teammates vacationed in the south of Israel, where he met a beautiful tour guide name Alessandra, a native of Venice, Italy. It was love at first sight.

After courting through e-mail and frequent visits between Phoenix and Venice, the couple were married three years ago at the Ritz Carlton in Phoenix, then celebrated all over again with a reception on the Palazzo Pizani Morreta on Venice's Grand Canal.

Besides being "stunning" - Stoneman proves that love is not blind with a photograph of an exquisite face framed by blond hair - he says his wife is "extremely civilized, extremely intelligent. She is among the smartest people I've ever known."

Alessandra Stoneman speaks flawless English, as well as Italian, French, German and some Spanish. Now she's learning Southwestern lingo, as a tour guide transplanted to Arizona.

She also helps out at Stoneman Software Inc., the Phoenix computer company her husband founded in 1985. Growing at a rate of 39 percent annually, Stoneman's firm employs a staff of 11 and is looking to expand even further.

"Our goal is to integrate technology into businesses to increase their productivity and improve the bottom line," he says.

Stoneman Software offers such services as networking with personal computers, installing servers, connecting clients to the Internet and setting up Web sites.

Another kind of network
Eager to share his expertise, as well as expand his own business network, Stoneman joined the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce two years ago and, at the young age of 36, was recently elected to its board of directors.

He hosts the chamber's monthly Technology Roundtable - workshops at which community business people discuss how advancing technology can improve their companies' productivity.

Guiding his personal and professional life are the principles of Orthodox Judaism. Stoneman, raised in the Conservative and Reformed traditions, embraced Orthodoxy when he married his Orthodox Jewish wife. The couple now attend Beth Joseph Congregation in Phoenix.

"The Jewish religion houses such a vast history and knowledge base. It's difficult to forge ahead (without it)," he says.

"It's comforting to know that that form of Judaism is observed in many other places in the world. They're millennia-old traditions," he adds.

Stoneman says teachings in books such as the Talmud provide him with a foundation for his business and personal life, drawing from "hundreds of years of understanding how people should act with a definition of right and wrong."

The Stonemans are eager to have children, but first they want to ground themselves well in Judaic teachings, so they can pass along that knowledge, he explains. A religious education is a lifelong process, Stoneman says. And as with technology, the student never stops learning.

"You always study Judaism," he says. "The quest for knowledge is never-ending."

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Good sport Former athlete now on team at chamber

BARBARA YOST Special to Jewish News

BARBARA YOST
Special to Jewish News