Alena Akselrod

Alena Akselrod is Vice President, Outreach and Engagement at Leading Edge, where she strengthens connections across the Jewish nonprofit sector and expands access to the organization’s resources, insights, and partnerships. Alena has been at Leading Edge since 2016 and has brought a unique blend of strategic relationship-building, data expertise, and systems thinking to her work—previously serving as Senior Director of Data Strategy, where she led the organization’s fieldwide surveys and data initiatives.

Her portfolio is rooted in problem solving, data storytelling, and thoughtful collaboration. She has overseen the sector’s largest employee engagement surveys, providing actionable insights to hundreds of organizations and thousands of professionals. In her current role, she builds on these relationships to foster deeper engagement and more responsive support across the field.

Alena grew up in Brooklyn after emigrating from the Former Soviet Union in the mid-1990s. Her passion for working with youth launched her Jewish nonprofit career, spending 13 years supporting Russian-speaking Jewish (RSJ) immigrant families at a JCC in South Brooklyn.

She holds an M.B.A. in Nonprofit Management and an M.A. in Jewish Professional Leadership from Brandeis University. Alena is an MBTI certified practitioner, a proud Wexner Graduate Fellow & Davidson Scholar, and a JCC Association Merrin Teen Professional Fellow.