Ida Schmertz, an influential behind-the-scenes feminist and corporate executive, who was a founding director of the first academic research center devoted to American women and politics, and who helped women advance in workplaces as varied as the dockyard and the corporate suite, died on July 28 in Manhattan. She was 91.

Ida Frederika was born to upper-middle-class Jewish parents in Amsterdam. The family fled Europe at the beginning of WWII, moving to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in 1939, and then to the United States. They settled near Philadelphia.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed her as the founding chair of the Romanian-American Enterprise Fund to assist the former Communist nation in adopting a market economy.

Of particular interest to New Yorkers, Mrs. Schmertz testified and wrote in support of legislation in New York State that would allow terminally ill patients to end their lives with a lethal prescription. New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the Medical Aid in Dying Act into law in February 2026, effective August 5.