Werdiger Says Living Jewishly is Good Biz

The Atlanta Scholars Kollel (ASK) highlighted their Sept. 2 meeting as an expanded event at The Dupree beginning with a business and Jewish law conference featuring Rabbis Dovid Schoen and Menashe Kestenbaum, addressing “How Halacha Guides Our Business Practices.”

With a 6 p.m. ending, this segued into the main event, “Success Without Sacrifice,” featuring Sol Werdiger, founder and CEO of Outerstuff, a leading sports apparel company with partnerships in the NFL, MLB, NHL, and MLS and 200 colleges. Werdiger, who joked that players sometimes mistake him for a rabbi since he wears a kippah or carries his tallis bag, charmed the audience of 230-plus with tales of how Jewish practice done with openness and sincerity results in magnified nachas.

Known for landing a major investment from Blackstone, Werdiger came off as a hybrid uncle, standup comedian, and nothing of short of “a self-made, genuinely good guy.” Before his talk, the Kollel rabbis, as is their annual custom, were announced one by one dressed in sports jerseys, each mapped to a position that captured their role: a point guard for the rabbi who sets up plays behind the scenes, a quarterback for one who calls the shots, a goalkeeper for one who holds the line.

The evening turned to its heart: whether success in business requires compromising Judaism. The answer is “no.” As the son of Holocaust survivors, Werdiger relayed the values his parents instilled: emunah — resilience and responsibility, which shaped major decisions in his career, including ones made under significant commercial pressure. His talk, organized around the theme, “success without sacrifice,” was built around a string of personal anecdotes, each confirming that visible religious observance, rather than costing high-stakes business environments, repeatedly earns trust and respect.

One example involved the Super Bowl where Werdiger recounted walking rather than driving on Shabbat to a Super Bowl brunch because it fell on Saturday. The gesture caught the attention of the NFL commissioner, and accommodating him, the league held future meetings at the brunch location’s hotel. He described a similar dynamic at the NBA, where support for an employee who chose to wear a yarmulke at work helped shape the league’s HR approach to religious garb.

Werdiger also traced a long financial relationship back to a moment of crisis early in his career. Two unusually warm winters had hurt his then-coat business. Rather than “gin up” the numbers for his bank, he and his CFO presented an unflinchingly bleak projection. The banker was struck by the honesty and extended the loan, a decision Werdiger credited with saving the business. “[Something] paid back in spades,” is how he described the long-term return on that early honesty which came a decade later when that same banker had risen to a senior role at Blackstone, as Outerstuff went through an acquisition process. Werdiger said the banker recognized him and instructed his teams to waive standard due diligence “that produced the fastest deal in Blackstone’s history.”

He said he also used the negotiation to secure a contractual commitment tying corporate charitable giving into the terms of the acquisition, ensuring the company’s philanthropic practices.

Werdiger described smaller moments of kindness and integrity carrying weight by helping a stranger find kosher food at the Super Bowl (Werdiger had a private kosher deli suite for his family) or explaining to a child what made a hot dog kosher. He credited these small mitzvahs, over time, with helping fund a multimillion-dollar synagogue and drawing at least one family toward embracing Jewish tradition more fully.

He also pointed to how his company’s internal respectful culture influenced a Korean ambassador whose relative worked as an intern at Outerstuff, later influencing that country’s decision to abstain on a United Nations resolution censuring Israel.

ASK network founder Adrian Grant told the AJT, “This is the 23rd anniversary of this event. As a new addition for this year, we hosted two rabbinic scholars discussing Jewish ethics from 3 to 6 p.m. prior to the networking event. Our dinner event is always the ‘kickoff of the High Holiday Season,’ bringing together our diverse Jewish community to create Jewish solidarity which is so important in this day and time. Over the years, countless connections and reunions were created.”