From Service Corps to Board Chair: A Conversation with Ilana Zafran Walden, Avodah’s First Alum Board Chair
Avodah is built on a foundation of developing lifelong Jewish leaders for social change. That cycle of leadership is perfectly embodied by Ilana Zafran Walden, a Service Corps alum who recently completed her tenure as Avodah’s first-ever alumni Board Chair. In this conversation, CEO Cheryl Cook reflects with Ilana on her journey, her leadership, and her hopes for Avodah’s future.
Cheryl: You came to Avodah originally as a Service Corps Member many years ago. Why did you decide to do the Service Corps, and what impact did it have on you?
Ilana: I came to the Service Corps because I had been on a journey to understand my Jewish identity. I grew up very secular and grappled with how to find Jewish community. Simultaneously, I discovered sociology in college, loved thinking about social issues, and was a little stuck on what I was going to do after I graduated.
One night, I was googling and came across Avodah, and it felt like this magical answer. It brought together the threads I had been searching for: what is my place in the Jewish world, and how do I get my foot in the door doing work that relates to social justice?
I ended up doing Avodah in Chicago. Eighteen years later, it continues to give me a community and a touchpoint for my Jewish identity. And, it positioned me to understand what social change is and connected me directly with an organization that allowed me to grow my career in social justice work.
Ilana Zafran Walden in her Avodah year of service with fellow Corps Members.
Cheryl: You actually stayed at your placement organization for quite a while, didn’t you?
Ilana: Yes, after my Avodah year, my placement, a youth development organization then called Umoja, invited me to stay on staff to grow and develop their student and restorative justice programming. I was there for 12 years and ultimately became COO and acting CEO. I also had the pleasure of supervising an Avodah Corps Member, which was very cool to see how Avodah sets up Corps Members to continue to grow as leaders.
Cheryl: It’s phenomenal. We recently found that 22% of our alumni have served in senior leadership, and you are a perfect example of that. So what motivated you to later join the Avodah board and then to say yes to being our first-ever alumni Board Chair?
Ilana: I had reached a place in my career where serving on a board felt like a great professional development opportunity that simultaneously allowed me to volunteer and give back. Avodah seemed like such a natural fit because I had stayed connected to the community every year since my service year. I would interview prospective corps members or speak at events.
I kept giving back for two reasons. One, I believed in the work because the program had had such a profound impact on me. And two, part of that profound impact was creating a lifelong community. When you feel like you’re part of a community, you feel responsible for it. When that community calls on you to serve, you say yes because you genuinely want to help sustain what has sustained you.
In terms of the chair role, I became chair after about six years on the board, and there was a need. I had also seen such tremendous evolution in the organization. I was so impressed by how Avodah was thinking about expanding programming and being a thought leader around issues such as racial justice and economic accessibility. When you see an organization that’s not just doing the same thing, but really pushing itself to be responsive to what the world needs, that’s inspiring.
Cheryl: I’m curious how your experience as a Corps Member influenced your board leadership.
Ilana: It certainly reinforced for me the importance of being able to hold conflict and disagreement; a skill which is always important but especially in these times. Anyone who has participated in the Service Corps probably has a joke about the long house meetings where housemates spent hours working to reach consensus or hear each other out on an issue. Part of what I took to the chair role was, how do we hold space for true reflection and true disagreement?. That dialogue is how people continue to grow as leaders and innovate to lead social justice work.
I also believe that growth happens when we feel discomfort. From my perspective, it’s good that participants aren’t happy all the time in our programs. We’re here to provide an experience that’s going to be a catalyst to set people up for a lifelong role in leadership and that means challenging ourselves out of our comfort zone (and of course balancing that challenge with joy, support, and care).
Cheryl: What are you taking away from your tenure as Board Chair?
Ilana: First, immense gratitude. I’ve realized just how much I was able to support and guide the organization, simply because the duties of being a board chair call on you to be involved in a very deep way.
I also learned how much of the chair’s role is really about building culture and cultivating other board members. One of the main vehicles for supporting the organization is leveraging the gifts and talents of other board members.
Finally, it’s a constant relearning that in organizational leadership, there is never one right answer. You’re never going to have a magic 8-ball with a clear answer. The best you can do is be diligent and thoughtful, get all the information you can, and then make the best decision you know how, recognizing it will be imperfect.
Avodah CEO Cheryl Cook and Board Chair Ilana Zafran Walden together attending the White House Hannukah Party in 2024.
Cheryl: What are you most proud of from your time as board chair?
Ilana: I am proud that I was able to hold the role as an alum. I think that says a lot about Avodah’s ability to develop participants as leaders and about the commitment people have to give back. I’m also proud of bringing that idea of facilitation and creating space for different perspectives to our board culture, and of supporting Avodah in asking important questions around data, measurement, and impact.
Cheryl: What is your greatest hope for Avodah going forward?
Ilana: My greatest hope is that the organization can hold true to its core values—training and equipping the Jewish community to be leaders in social justice—while also being innovative and adaptive to meet this moment.
Specifically, I hope we continue to think about how the alumni community can be organized for collective action. We have people working in everything from direct service to policy, across a number of issue areas, and as a community, we are positioned to make real change. And second, I hope Avodah continues to think about how its programs and teachings can reach people who don’t live in our current program cities, especially those in places without robust Jewish infrastructure who would most need and benefit from our work.
