Jean Nidetch


Jean Evelyn Nidetch was an American business entrepreneur who was the founder of the Weight Watchers organization.

Early life

Nidetch was born to an American Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, to David Slutsky, a cab driver, and Mae Slutsky, a manicurist. A graduate of Girls' High School, Nidetch received a partial scholarship to Long Island University but was unable to attend due to a lack of financial resources. Instead, she enrolled in a business course at City College of New York. When her father died in 1942, Nidetch dropped out and started working.

Career

Nidetch's first job was at the Mullin Furniture Company in Jamaica, New York. She later worked for Man O'War Publishing Company and the Internal Revenue Service. Nidetch met her husband at the IRS.
An overweight stay-at-home mom with a self-confessed obsession for eating cookies, Nidetch had experimented with numerous fad diets before she followed a regimen prescribed by a diet clinic sponsored by the New York City Board of Health in 1961. After losing 20 pounds, and finding her resolve weakening, she contacted several overweight friends and founded a support group which developed into weekly classes, and incorporated on May 15, 1963 into the Weight Watchers organization.
In 1978, Weight Watchers was sold to the H. J. Heinz Company. Nidetch, who remained a consultant to the organization, established scholarship programs at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Personal life and death

She was married to Mortimer "Marty" Nidetch; they had two children, David and Richard. Richard died in 2006. Jean and Mortimer divorced in 1971. She later married and divorced Frank Schifano.
She died on April 29, 2015, at her home in Parkland, Florida at the age of 91.