• Op-Ed Writing and Becoming a Thought Leader with Deborah Kolben, COO and Editorial Director of 70 Faces Media
• Co-creating Rituals for Resistance and Love with Beloved founder Rabbi Sara Luria
• Creating Safe Spaces Through Leadership with Jamie Allen Black, Executive Director of JWFNY (Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York)
• Leading Inspiring Meetings with Rebecca Youngerman
• Transforming the Culture of Gender Bias Within Jewish Organizations, with Sara Shapiro-Plevan
• Cracking the Interview, with Sara Garlick Lundberg, a professional recruiter
• Power Stances and Embodies Practices for Strength
• Coaching Sessions and Networking

Brunch and drinks provided.

The Avodah Women’s Leadership Retreat is generously sponsored by the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York.

*We welcome all transgender and cisgender women, and those who identify as women all or some of the time.

**For more information and/or questions on sliding scale tickets, please contact Kira Manso Brown at kmbrown@avodah.net.

Proudly funded by:

Sarra Alpert is the Program Director for Avodah having joined the staff in 2009. She has been the social justice educator for the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s Cornerstone Fellowship since 2008. Prior to her tenure at Avodah, Sarra taught expository writing at New York University and worked as an educator in a range of Hebrew schools and other programs. When not doing Jewish social justice, she can often be found cooking with and for friends, reading or listening to podcasts on the subway, or enjoying NYC’s parks, events and various surprises. Sarra is an alumna of the Avodah Jewish Service Corps (New York, 2002-2003).

Jamie Allen Black is the CEO of the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York and oversees all activities of the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York including grantmaking, development, advocacy and operations. She brings more than 25 years of nonprofit leadership experience to the Foundation, most recently as the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Big Tent Judaism. There, she worked to create inclusive Jewish communities throughout North America. Jamie also served as the Director of Strategic Planning, Communications and Training at Hadassah, where she mentored and trained professionals and Board members with development portfolios and created and implemented a multi-year strategic fundraising plan with innovative strategies for increasing donor participation. Jamie was a founding Board member of A More Perfect Union, an organization serving women recovering from domestic violence, drug addiction and homelessness in NYC and Westchester. Jamie graduated from New York University from which she was awarded the Dean’s Alumni Award for Humanitarianism. She is a Board Member of the Elizabeth A. MacDonald Foundation and sings in the Community Choir at Central Synagogue.

Deborah Kolben is the COO and Editorial Director at 70 Faces Media, the parent company to JTA, My Jewish Learning, the Nosher, Alma, and Kveller (which she founded after having her first child). Previously, Deborah was the city editor of The New York Sun, the managing editor of the Village Voice. and a reporter at the Daily News. She received a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and received an Arthur F. Burns fellowship to report in Germany, and has also written for The New York Times, Financial Times, and The Forward. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

Sara Garlick Lundberg’s experience includes working with nonprofit leadership in the areas of fundraising, executive leadership and research. Her practice focuses on searches in the areas of women’s empowerment & reproductive health, advocacy and international development. With more than 20 years of experience, Sara’s specialties are facilitating candid conversations with leaders about their organizational challenges and building confidence in their vision for growth. She has conducted searches for the Guttmacher Institute, Annie’s List and the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Sara got her start at The Wall Street Journal’s SmartMoney magazine. She later worked as a fundraiser at children’s organizations including Absolute Return for Kids US (ARKUS), Civic Builders, GenerationOn and The Children’s Aid Society. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College where she studied international development with a focus on women in rural India. Sara is a runner, proud immigrant and self-proclaimed podcast obsessive who enjoys finding new series for long runs. 

Rabbi Sara Luria is the founder of Beloved, a home-based experiment in Jewish life in Brooklyn. In the house she shares with her husband and three children, Rabbi Luria hosts Shabbat meals, creative rituals based on the Jewish calendar, meditation circles, learning for families with young children, and lots more. Prior to Beloved, Sara‘s experiences as a community organizer, birth doula, and hospital chaplain inspired her to found ImmerseNYC, a pluralistic, feminist, grassroots-energized community mikveh project. Sara has published poetry and essays on motherhood, Jewish innovation, and healing in various Jewish books and publications. Born and raised in Brooklyn, she was ordained as a rabbi from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 2013, and also served as the program director for HUC’s Tisch/Star Leadership Fellowship.

Danika Manso-Brown is a professional dancer, teaching-artist, and curriculum developer with experience in youth service and arts & education nonprofit organizations. Her work is informed by her dedication to activism through the arts and arts education as tools for social change and community reimagining. She holds an Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education in Education Policy and Management and is the Associate Director of Education at the ADL Boston.

 Shira Moss is a Certified Nurse Midwife and a graduate of Columbia University (BSN, M.A.) and Vassar College (B.A.). She is passionate about providing loving, respectful and empowering pregnancy and gynecological care to all women, and to people of all gender identities and sexual orientations. Since receiving her Master’s Degree in Midwifery, she has caught babies and provided prenatal care, gynecological care and fertility services in a variety of settings including hospitals, birth centers, and in people’s homes. She speaks Spanish fluently and is currently working at Bellevue Hospital within a strong public health midwifery model, providing care to patients from all over the world and feeling amazed and grateful every day for the opportunity to serve them, as well as in her private practice Frida Care where she provides preconception care and at-home IUIs to everyone but primarily to queer couples and single people. Shira lives in Brooklyn, NY and can provide at-home services to anyone in the larger NYC metro area or anywhere via video chat.

Lisa Rosman, a former labor organizer and child actress, has reviewed films for such publications as Marie Claire, Salon, Vulture, RogerEbert.com, Time Out New York, Premiere, indieWire, LA Weekly, iVillage, and Us Weekly. She has appeared on CBS News, ABC Radio, the Oxygen Channel, TNT, CUNY TV, the History Channel, the IFC, HuffPost Live, AOL Build, and Wisconsin and Cape Cod Public Radio. She has moderated panels on film and feminism in such venues as the Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and AOL Build. From 2003-2005, she served as the Brooklyn Rail’s film editor and, from 2005-2009, as Flavorwire’s film editor. She also ran the film blog The Broad View from 2005-2008. In 2012 she was honored as one of Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year for her relief work in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. From 2012-2017 she appeared weekly on the NY1/Time Warner national film review show Talking Pictures. She is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Society of LGTBQ Entertainment Critics, and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. A Boston-bred Brooklyn denizen with a degree in literature and feminist/gender studies from Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, she also is a creative intuitive. Currently, she is working on her first book.

Sara Shapiro-Plevan is all about relationships. Her essential focus: studying the way relationships influence the ability to improve our practice, understand our work, and engage effectively with others as we build sustainable communities and workplaces. Sara consults primarily with Jewish educational organizations, schools, congregations, and foundations to develop a networked, collaborative culture and approach to their practice in a variety of domains, supporting their alignment with vision and helping them to shift from hierarchy to flatter organizational structures. Sara is the founder of Rimonim Consulting and a doctoral candidate in the Davidson School at JTS, and her work and research aim to enable individuals, teams and communities to understand how they best work in relationship so that they might begin to shift their capacity to work in a productive, connected way to realize their hopes and dreams. Sara is part of the founding team behind the Gender Equity in Hiring in the Jewish Community Project, which is working to transform the endemic culture of gender bias that continues to keep women from senior staff positions within Jewish organizations. The Project supports organizations in ensuring their systems, processes and hiring practices reflect the Jewish values of equality and fairness. By strengthening organizations’ awareness of gender bias and helping them to respond, the Project hopes to see more women rise to positions of leadership. 

Rebecca Youngerman is an independent consultant who works primarily with nonprofit organizations through her practice, RGY Consulting. Her passion lies in partnering with organizations and individuals who wish to make bold change through their organizational culture. Rebecca brings over 20 years of experience working with nonprofit organizations, including 10 years in the Jewish professional sector with local, national and international organizations. Throughout her career, she has built, trained, and managed multiple boards, as well as served in a volunteer capacity on more than a dozen local and national boards. Rebecca currently serves on the advisory council for the Center for Jewish Living at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan.