At the moment, she’s a stone that’s gathering no moss. She’s busy.
The Goleta business owner is this year's president of the Legal Aid Foundation’s board and is a still-very-active past president of the Goleta Noontime Rotary.
To make time for all this, she has stepped down from the board of the Santa Barbara chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, or NAWBO. She helped start the chapter two years ago along with other co-founders such as Patty DeDominic, who once served as NAWBO national president.
“We felt we needed to start a group like that because there are so many women business owners in Santa Barbara,” Tzur said.
Tzur’s newest priority at the Legal Aid Foundation is to initiate a campaign to renovate the organization’s sagging building at the corner of Canon Perdido and Santa Barbara streets in Santa Barbara. She has served on the foundation’s board for seven years.
The old wood-frame building was transferred to the site from another location in the city some years ago, said foundation Executive Director and attorney Ellen M. Goodstein. It used to be a tea house among other things, she said, but no one knows for sure how old it is.
While walking inside the building, Goodstein pointed to the slated walls, uneven floors with holes in them, the leaky ceiling and other structural problems. The building lacks heating and air conditioning for the seven people who work there.
“We need to renovate and expand,” Goodstein said. The foundation also has other offices in Santa Maria and Lompoc.
The foundation only handles civil cases for the most vulnerable clients, Goodstein said. Many of them are domestic violence cases and evictions. “They are mostly loss of shelter and physical danger cases,” the executive director said.
Goldstein and Tzur admit it will be difficult to raise funds for a capital improvement project in this troubled economy. But the need is great, they said.
“They need a place to work in that’s beautiful,” said Tzur of the foundation staff. “It’s an historical building so we just can’t tear it down.”
Although she’s not an attorney, Tzur said she has a special feeling for the legal system because her late aunt, Ruth Ehrlich. Ehrlich was an attorney in Germany during the days of the Third Reich, which kicked her and her husband out of the country.
“In her memory, I stayed very much involved in the (Legal Aid Foundation) board,” Tzur said. Ehrlich passed away at the age of 99 in 2007.
“She made me feel very connected with the law and helping people who need access to the law," Tzur said. Her aunt practiced law until she was 92.
Tzur is the founder and president of Brylen Technologies in Santa Barbara, which was moved to Goleta in 11 years ago. The 25-year-old company calibrates measuring devices, inspects controlled environments and evaluates and certifies clean rooms, clean benches and fume hoods.
She is a founding member of an international committee that writes standards for manufacturing companies around the word. She also is a member of the National Conference of Standards Laboratories International, better know as NCSLI.