This summer, we're shining a light on alumni of Leading Executives. Designed for the senior-most leaders of their organizations, Leading Executives offers a transformative experience rooted in dynamic learning, personalized feedback, and peer support. Participants gain tools to lead more effectively, build self-awareness, and navigate the complexities of leadership with greater clarity, confidence, and resilience.


Through these spotlights, we’re celebrating the leaders who have completed the program and continue to shape the Jewish nonprofit sector in powerful ways. Their stories reflect the deep impact of the program — not just on individual leaders, but on the organizations and communities they serve.


Meet SooJi Min-Maranda, Executive Director at ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. She is an alum of the CEO Onboarding program, the predecessor to Leading Executives. Sooji brings a deep commitment to justice, inclusion, and community to her leadership in the Jewish nonprofit sector. In this spotlight, she shares how leading in this space allows her to fully live her values and how her experience with Leading Edge helped her strengthen the relationships and support systems essential to bold, values-driven leadership.


Alumni Spotlight conversations may be edited and condensed.


What inspired you to step into a leadership role in the Jewish nonprofit sector?

I had been running secular nonprofits for about eight years when I decided to make the move to the Jewish nonprofit sector. This is because as an adult convert to Judaism with a non-Jewish partner, I soon realized that it is extremely difficult to be Jewish alone. When I discovered that there is a parallel nonprofit universe in the Jewish sector, I realized that I could live my faith and values proudly and boldly and still do what I enjoy most, which is helping individuals and communities thrive through servant leadership.

How do you see the future of Jewish nonprofit leadership evolving? How has your Leading Edge program experience influenced your perspective on this?

Jewish organizations need to focus on creating an environment where all who identify as Jews can thrive, feel secure, and safe. This is particularly crucial given the current climate of polarization, rising antisemitism, and growing threats to pluralism in the United States. However, our response shouldn't be to isolate ourselves. Instead, we need to embody and actively promote core Jewish values, especially those that emphasize the sanctity of all life and the imperative to heal the world. It's vital that we share the beauty and joy of Judaism with the broader world, fostering understanding and connection. Moreover, we must build partnerships with other marginalized communities, recognizing that our struggles and futures are interconnected. This involves working on overcoming our fears to engage more openly with the world around us. The future of Jewish organizations lies not just in preservation, but in active engagement and alliance-building towards a more just world.

How have your Leading Edge cohort connections helped you build stronger professional relationships and collaborations within the sector?

The Leading Edge community is invaluable to me on two levels. First, it's a network of peers navigating similar adaptive and technical challenges in our turbulent sector. This shared experience creates a powerful support system. Second, Leading Edge itself serves as a trusted, independent resource that nurtures and guides our sector. It's not just an organization or a program; it's a community of people committed to strengthening Jewish nonprofit leadership. For me, Leading Edge embodies both peer support and professional guidance, making it an essential part of my leadership journey.

What’s one piece of advice you would offer to someone who is considering joining a Leading Edge leadership program?

Say what you need! And say it again and again. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you truly need to thrive.

Meet SooJi Min-Maranda, Executive Director at ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. She is an alum of the CEO Onboarding program, the predecessor to Leading Executives.

Leading Edge Alumni Spotlight, SooJi Min-Maranda

Meet some of the dynamic leaders engaging with Leading Edge and transforming the community.

Alumni

Podcast: When Crisis is the Job – with Barry Finestone

What happens to Jewish leadership when crisis becomes the norm rather than the exception? In this episode of the Identity/Crisis podcast, Barry Finestone, President & CEO of Jim Joseph Foundation and Leading Edge Board Member (non-voting), joins Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute, to explore the emotional and organizational toll of leading through upheaval and discuss what it will take to build institutions that can thrive during times of uncertainty without losing sight of their long-term goals. 

Forbes: Ending Unlimited PTO Doesn’t Solve Underlying Workforce Issues

eJP: What personalized Jewish learning contributes to the service movement

SRE: Torah of Safety, Respect, and Equity

The Chronicle: Inside the Leadership Success of a Millennial and Boomer Who Share the CEO Seat

Egon Zehnder: The CHRO Voice: Inside Human Resources Leadership

HBR: What’s the Future of Middle Management?

The Chronicle: 8 Ways Your Board Can Drive Momentum in a Capital Campaign

BoardSource: How Board Chairs Foster Board Engagement

NonProfitPRO: Create a Nonprofit Memory Book to Establish Institutional Memory

Here's what the Leading Edge team is learning about culture, executives, and boards this month.

What We're Learning | July 2025

The best of what the Leading Edge team is learning about culture, executives, and boards.

What We're Learning

Mattering at work enhances self-esteem, strengthens self-efficacy, and leads to better performance and satisfaction. But 30% of people report feeling invisible, and 65% feel underappreciated. Research shows that mattering happens most reliably through everyday interactions — especially when leaders take time to notice others, listen for total meaning, respond with compassion, and follow up meaningfully. This article shows leaders how to apply this concept in the workplace, and includes three activities leaders can use to get started.

eJP: Reimagining Israel education: 6 recommendations for catalyzing a new era

MIT SMR: How Neuroinclusion Builds Organizational Capabilities

Allwork.Space: What Happens When Free Speech At Work Becomes Risky?

Culture Amp (Report): The Leadership Advantage: How great leaders elevate organizational performance

NYT: Opinion | I’m a LinkedIn Executive. I See the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder Breaking.

HBR: Employee Stress Is a Business Risk—Not an HR Problem

Chronicle of Philanthropy: 6 Steps to Turbocharge Your Board Recruitment

NonProfitPRO: Boardroom Archetypes: Is Your Board a Wolf Pack?

Allwork.Space: The Bard And The Boardroom: Why Today’s Best Leaders Read More Than Metrics

What We're Learning | June 2025

‘The Surge’ continues: JFNA survey finds a third of Jews more engaged now than pre-Oct. 7

A year and a half after October 7, Jewish engagement is still elevated — but the initial spike is easing. In Jewish Federations of North America’s new survey, 31% of Jews say they’re more involved in communal life than before the attacks. Mimi Kravetz (Chief Impact and Growth Officer for JFNA, and Leading Edge Board Member) stated, “The Surge has shown staying power... but the data carries an important reminder that the Surge is not going to last forever,” noting that the community must act now to meet people’s needs.

Gallup: Global Engagement Falls for the Second Time Since 2009

HBR: When You’re Asked to Meet Impossible Goals

WorkLife: For companies to fully integrate AI, their HR leaders are going to require more training

The Chronicle of Philanthropy (podcast): Two CEOs on How to Get Boards to Help With Fundraising and More

BoardSource: 5 Phases of Strategic Planning

NPQ: Nonprofit Boards Remain Overwhelmingly White

What We're Learning | May 2025

When we kicked off the Leading Edge feedback workshop series, I found myself haunted by the ghosts of feedback trainings from jobs long past. Well-meaning, formulaic, often a little too enthusiastic about acronyms. And, more often than not, preoccupied with the mechanics of feedback — how to give it, how to receive it, how to word it just right — while sidestepping the larger forces that determine whether it actually works.

Power dynamics, for example, tend to be the quiet, uninvited guest in these conversations. Most feedback trainings focus on peer-to-peer exchanges or manager-to-direct-report scenarios, both of which are relatively easy to navigate compared to the more fraught question of how to speak candidly to someone who holds more influence than you do. And then there’s the trickier cultural factor: the unwritten rules of a workplace. What happens when an organization values transparency in theory but, in practice, still favors harmony? What about when organizational appetite for feedback exceeds our supply? 

All of these thoughts flitted through my mind as we embarked on the training. But I reminded myself that discomfort is often a prerequisite for growth. If nothing else, the workshop would be an opportunity to understand my colleagues better and to let them understand me in turn. And if it made feedback even slightly less awkward, then it was probably worth it.

Beyond the Feedback Loop: What Actually Worked

The facilitators deftly walked us through best practices, and the exercises made feedback feel less like an event to be dreaded and more like a normal, inevitable part of collaboration. But as the seasons changed and the intensity of the training amped up, I started to feel like I was caught in a loop. We were giving feedback, then giving feedback on the way we gave feedback, and at times, reflecting on how we felt about giving feedback on the way we gave feedback. Could feedback actually create a self-sustaining ecosystem, where feedback exists only to reinforce itself? I wondered, as my brain struggled to keep the word from losing all meaning.

That’s not to say the workshops weren’t valuable. While thornier topics like power dynamics and implicit workplace rules were not unpacked in a way that would have made them truly useful to an individual contributor (perhaps inevitable, given how impossible it is for external facilitators to be precisely attuned to the nuances and undercurrents of this organization, in this moment), the workshops did help reframe feedback as a process rather than a personal indictment. 

There were no groundbreaking revelations, but the sheer act of repetition worked to build the feedback muscle, allowing the anxieties that often accompany these conversations to atrophy. And if nothing else, they made the prospect of performance reviews feel a little less like an ambush. (Still, I can’t help but wonder if we peaked at workshop three, when “feedback” still felt like a real word.)

By the time the training wrapped, I noticed that something else had shifted — not dramatically, but just enough to make a difference. As a communications professional, I’ve always been able to say what needed to be said (if this blog post is any indication), but I used to spend far too much energy making sure my words were wrapped in the right amount of careful phrasing, the right level of upbeat tone, the right signals of warmth. Now, with “feedback” as the buzzword du jour, I find myself trusting that people will take my words as they’re intended. 

With the workshop series behind us, the question becomes: What’s next? Because there’s a fine line between normalizing feedback and over-processing it, between creating a culture where people feel comfortable speaking up and creating one where feedback itself becomes an endless topic of discussion. Some organizations — especially ones that take culture-building seriously — can fall into the trap of making feedback its own recursive loop, a thing to be endlessly refined rather than simply practiced. It’s the workplace equivalent of those relationships where you spend more time analyzing the relationship than actually being in it. And we all know how those tend to end.

So while I do hope we revisit this in the future, I also think there’s value in stepping back for a moment. Leading Edge has just gone through a major organizational transition. Maybe what we need most right now isn’t another structured conversation about feedback, but the space to work together, observe one another, and build trust in a way that isn’t so prescribed. If we think back to the moments when feedback truly made a difference, chances are they didn’t happen in a scheduled session. They happened in the middle of real work, when it mattered most. If the best feedback happens organically, then perhaps the best thing we can do is make room for it. 

Written by our Senior Associate, Communications, this article is part of a series highlighting perspectives from various Leading Edge team members as we reflect on our journey through a feedback workshop series.

Feedback On Feedback On Feedback: An Individual Contributor’s Take

Culture

Outside the palace, the Ten Plagues rage. Pharaoh’s advisors urge him to compromise and send out just the men. Pharaoh agrees and makes the offer.

But Moses answers: “With our youth and with our elders we will go. With our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds, for it is a pilgrimage of God to us.”

Pharaoh scoffs. He can’t believe his generous offer is being rejected. He can’t fathom what it means to value every member of a community.

One of the central messages of Passover is that every single person matters. We all have a role to play. We all are part of the community. Young and old,  wise and wicked, simple and unsure, we all have to consider ourselves as if we personally came out of Egypt. Unlike with some sacrifices that are eaten only by the priestly class, every community member is to be nourished by the korban Pesah (Passover offering), just as in every generation we share the dangers, and the promise of rescue, that we sing about during the Seder. 

Getting the Jewish community out of Egypt is one thing; getting the Egypt out of the Jewish community is another. How deeply have we in the Jewish nonprofit sector internalized Moses’ message that everyone counts? How much “Pharaoh mentality” still remains in our field’s decision-making?

What would it look like if we valued people not like Pharaoh, but like Moses? Would we be more invested in things like onboarding, intensive professional development, and psychological safety? Would our compensation philosophies change? Would our approach to time and workload management evolve?

Recently, Prof. Joshua Margolis of Harvard Business School and I co-authored an article arguing that the Jewish nonprofit sector needs a mindset shift in how we think about talent. We need to stop thinking about talent as a cost and start thinking about it as an investment, we argued.

Creating actionable, tractable answers to these questions is not easy, and we are imperfect leaders of imperfect organizations during a hard time. The past year and a half have been a tremendously difficult and painful time for the Jewish people, and for all people, Jewish and otherwise, who work, lead, and serve in the Jewish communal field. 

But like Moses, facing off against Pharaoh with audacity, our job is not to despair in the face of obstacles, but to demand miracles — and work toward them.

May the Passover holiday bring a sense of rest from our labors, and a sense of hope against darkness and despair. As our community faces war, antisemitism, and increasing societal upheavals and divisions, let’s remember that it was at “about midnight” when the Exodus truly began. As we prepare this year for the hope and the respite that the Passover season may bring, let’s all recommit to valuing one another like Moses. Let’s recommit to investing in each other like partners in a shared covenant.

One of the central messages of Passover is that every single person matters. How deeply have we in the Jewish nonprofit sector internalized Moses’ message that everyone counts? And how much “Pharaoh mentality” still remains in our field’s decision-making? As we prepare this year for the hope and the respite that the Passover season may bring, let’s all recommit to valuing one another like Moses.

The Pharaoh Mindset: Passover 5785

News and Ideas | Leading Edge

News & Ideas

Why You Should Collaborate Across Boundaries

Today’s organizations are complex and deeply interconnected, making it essential for leaders to look beyond their own teams and functions. Those who span boundaries — across departments, levels, stakeholder groups, geographies, and identities — are better positioned to drive innovation, agility, and results. Still, while 86% of senior executives say this kind of collaboration is “extremely important,” only 7% feel very effective at it. Closing the gap starts with building the skills to manage difference, create alignment, and work toward shared purpose across divides.

Pew Research Center: Gender pay gap in U.S. has narrowed slightly over 2 decades

J.: OPINION | It’s getting harder for young professionals at Jewish nonprofits

WorkLife: Ex-government workers make for rich talent pool for private-sector employers

MIT SMR: Why Great Ideas Die on Managers’ Desks — and How to Save Them

HBR: The Pandemic Proved That Remote Leadership Works

Blue Avocado: From Crisis to Clarity: Five Steps to Demystify Succession Planning

eJP: Reaching our true potential: 7 ideas for investing in all of our talent 

NonProfit PRO: Why Your Nonprofit Should Hire an Interim Leader After an Executive Director Departs

SSIR: Mergers and Acquisitions as a Strategic Tool for Nonprofit Growth

What We're Learning | April 2025

When I first heard about the feedback workshop series we would be participating in at Leading Edge, I was excited, and maybe a little nervous. Feedback isn’t always an easy topic, and I’ve seen the mixed emotions it can bring up in a workplace. But the idea of learning alongside my colleagues and diving into practical exercises felt like the perfect way to tackle the challenge head on. I went in hoping for plenty of practice time, and the experience didn’t disappoint.


Before we started the workshops, feedback in our organization wasn’t fully normalized. The word itself often carried a negative connotation. When someone mentioned “feedback,” it usually meant constructive criticism, not praise or recognition. And we had a habit of waiting too long to give it. By the time feedback was shared, the moment or situation was in the rearview mirror, which only complicated things.

As a middle manager, I knew feedback could be leveraged to strengthen team dynamics and performance. Honest, timely feedback builds trust and creates opportunities for growth. But when it’s withheld, we lose the chance to reflect and improve. I was eager to help shift how our organization approached this vital practice.

As a middle manager, my role in feedback is multifaceted. Sometimes, I serve as a translator, listening to feedback and providing context that others might not see. Other times, I reflect on my own leadership and how my actions impact the team’s performance. I also often help my colleagues rehearse feedback conversations, fine-tuning their wording and tone to make the exchange as productive as possible.


But being in the middle comes with its challenges. I genuinely want feedback from my team, but I know my position might make them hesitant to share openly. At the same time, I have to weigh my words carefully, knowing the impact they carry. I hoped the workshops would help us all become more comfortable with feedback, and they did just that.


The workshops were eye-opening. One of the biggest takeaways for me was the importance of practice. Whether feedback is positive or constructive, the words we choose — and how we say them — matter deeply. Rehearsing ensures our communication is clear, and the felt impact of what we say aligns with our intentions: to support each other’s work and growth.

The case studies we explored were particularly helpful. They reminded me that feedback isn’t personal, it’s a universal part of working together in any organization. These exercises also reinforced the value of being specific, using clear examples to support praise or constructive feedback.


Since the workshops, I’ve seen shifts in how my team approaches feedback. We’re much more deliberate about building feedback loops into our projects. It’s become second nature to ask for input at different stages of program design, which has elevated our work.


I’ve also changed how I deliver feedback. I’m more urgent, sharing thoughts sooner rather than sitting on them. At the same time, I’m more intentional, thinking carefully about how to frame my feedback for the best impact. These two seemingly contradictory habits have made a big difference.


The ripple effects of the workshops have been noticeable across the organization. There’s a growing openness and trust, with people feeling more comfortable saying, “This isn’t working,” and pivoting when necessary. Embracing reality and adjusting course has made our work stronger — and I think our feedback culture has played a big role in this shift.


Personally, the workshops have helped me see feedback as a leadership tool, not just a task. I’m modeling how to give and request quality feedback, and we’re piloting new ways to incorporate it into our work, like rehearsing new learning experiences with test participants during program design.


If there’s one piece of advice I’d give to other middle managers, it’s this: Feedback training is a game-changer. It helps you navigate the complexities of giving, receiving, and mediating feedback while strengthening trust and collaboration. The key is to treat feedback as a skill — a muscle that needs regular exercise. Step away from the daily grind, practice in a safe space, and watch how it transforms your team and your leadership.


Feedback isn’t just about fixing what’s wrong; it’s about recognizing what’s right, fostering growth, and building a supportive culture. And that, in my book, is worth every minute of effort.

Written by our Vice President, Leadership Programs, this article is part of a series highlighting perspectives from various Leading Edge team members as we reflect on our journey through a feedback workshop series.

From Awkward to Awesome: A Middle Manager’s Journey with Feedback

A few years back, I wrote an internal concept paper that proposed a pseudo-census of the Jewish nonprofit sector. I wanted to do a rigorous, multi-phase research project that would not only tell us how many Jewish nonprofits exist in North America, but also how many people they employ, how many board members sit on their boards, and where they are. I dreamed of a map, a catalogue, a dataset with rows upon rows and columns upon columns of data. To those of you who are kindred spirits in data, who are reading this and can truly visualize that dream and are excited by it, I say to you: fingers crossed, one day! But not yet.

Honestly, I’ve wanted to do this for nearly a decade. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been part of every survey Leading Edge has launched to the field and to have supported hundreds of Jewish nonprofits through the survey tools we’ve built. In the early days of my tenure with Leading Edge, we were looking to understand what our “sandbox” looked like and today, over 85,000 survey responses later, I want to be able to contextualize our reach even more.

I first read Paul Burstein’s 2011 article “Jewish Nonprofit Organizations in the U.S.: A Preliminary Survey” in a graduate school class in 2015 (shoutout to the Hornstein program at Brandeis University!) and was intrigued by the methodology and the calculations — a third of our sector are synagogues, two-thirds fall under a national/umbrella entity, and there are more classifications of Jewish nonprofits than I was aware of at the time. A decade later, this study still sits at the center of the most-frequently-cited Jewish nonprofit sector estimates. Using IRS filings of 990s starting in 2009, Burstein provided a foundational analysis estimating around 9,500 Jewish nonprofits in the United States. 


In the early days of my tenure at Leading Edge, we used this number to help us get some sense of how many people are employed in the Jewish Nonprofit sector. First, we divided an estimate of total jobs in the US nonprofit sector (12.3 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2016) by an estimate of total nonprofit organizations in the US (1.6 million, according to The National Center for Charitable Statistics in 2016) to yield an average of 7.68 employees per nonprofit organization. Then we use Burstein’s 9,500 Jewish nonprofit organizations figure and assume that the Jewish nonprofit sector does not significantly deviate from the US national nonprofit average for average number of employees, with which we come up with an estimate of ~73,000 people working in the Jewish nonprofit sector.


In 2023, JPro (which, much more recently, joined together with Leading Edge) queried the field through national and umbrella organizations to get fresh counts for the number of organizations and employees in our field and calculated that there are 6,518 organizations and 121,178 employees. 


No estimate has been perfect for defining our “sandbox” but…

As large language models (LLMs) have become more powerful recently, I’ve wondered: could AI help test our estimates? As the fastest-growing technology to date (according to Forbes), it has experienced incredible diversification in its capabilities, which can sometimes feel overwhelming to keep up with. On Feb 2, 2025, ChatGPT added an exciting new feature — Deep Research — “an agent that uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and complete multi-step research tasks for you.” What fun!

When we first asked Deep Research to look into this, it returned an essay that relied heavily on… Leading Edge and JPro! It used our estimate, the one we were trying to test. But after some course correction, it made a new estimate, scrupulously excluding Leading Edge and JPro from its sources, and relying most on estimates of the component categories of organization types in our sector.

What was truly surprising, in this second round of results, was to see that we may not have been that far off all along! 


Here is a table that summarizes what Chat GPT - Deep Research was able to gather:

Assuming that there are uncategorized organizations and uncharacterized employees, we can conservatively estimate 10,000 orgs and 120,000 employees in the sector. ChatGPT is conservatively estimating an average of 12 board members per organization at 9,000 organizations which we adjusted for the 10,000 count to arrive at 120,000 board members, a cautious estimate. 


The journey of re-estimating the population of the Jewish nonprofit sector has not reached its conclusion. I still strongly believe that we need to conduct a rigorous, research-backed count of the sector as I dreamed it. After all, Deep Research can only base itself on the imperfect information publicly available to it on the internet. “Garbage in, garbage out,” goes the saying, and while the publicly available information isn’t “garbage,” it’s also quite far from comprehensive! We need more.

Still, this exercise of using AI to re-examine the sources we have can strengthen our confidence, to some degree, in some of our past assumptions. 

As we continue to gather data and refine our estimates, it is essential to contextualize our findings within the broader landscape of nonprofit organizations. A dual approach — leveraging research data while embracing innovative technology — can allow us to pave the way for a more informed, engaged, and impactful Jewish nonprofit sector. Imagine being able to know how large our tent truly is — and to know not only who they are, but where they are. 


One day, I hope to say that the sector is able to leverage resources and communal knowledge to enhance the lives of XXX,XXX of Jewish nonprofit professionals at XX,XXX organizations, as a fact and not an estimate. 


Until then, at least we have our robot friends.

Sometimes the simplest questions are the hardest to answer. For example: How many Jewish nonprofits are there, and how many people work in them?

Re-estimating the Jewish Nonprofit Sector: A Journey Through Data and AI

For so many of us right now, we need an escape. An escape from the news, from the problems and dangers of the world. An escape from our emotions, from our losses, from our fears. Perhaps even an escape from ourselves…

Luckily, Purim is coming, and with it, the chance to become someone new.

Wearing costumes is one of the most distinctive elements of Purim. Lots of holidays have feasts; lots of holidays have alcohol (four cups of wine at Passover, anyone?). But showing up to a prayer service at synagogue to pray while dressed like Taylor Swift, or a unicorn, or Raygun from the Paris Olympics? Only on Purim.

Here, in gratuitous cuteness, is my son Gavi last Purim, dressed as a chicken.

Kids are expert costume-wearers. Look at Gavi’s face: There’s no self-consciousness, no ironic detachment; he’s just there, in the moment. “Yeah, of course I’m a chicken — What are you? What will we be next?”

Did you know that the tradition of dressing up in masks and costumes at Purim is not original to the holiday? Sure, celebration in general goes back to the Book of Esther. The Megillah mentions “feasting and joy” (“mishteh vesimha”), “sending portions [of food]” (“mishloah manot”), and “gifts to the poor” (“matanot laevyonim”). But look at the text — there’s nothing there about costumes. 

In fact, the earliest textual evidence for dressing up on Purim is in rabbinic texts from the 14th Century. Some scholars speculate that dressing up on Purim may have originally developed as a tradition European Jews borrowed from their Christian neighbors, who would dress up for the carnival season in advance of Lent around the same time of year. According to this theory, the cultural borrowing happened first, organically, and all the elaborate rabbinic ideas about connections between masking/costumes and the ideas of Purim  — costumes as a reference to Esther hiding her Jewish identity at first; masks hiding the face as a reference to “Esther” sounding like “hester panim,” “hiding the face [of God],” in connection with the megillah’s lack of explicit reference to God and the idea of hidden miracles; and the connection between hiding identities behind costumes and “venahafoch hu,” “and it [the calamity] was overturned”, i.e., the idea of good possibilities hiding behind bad facts — all these connections between dressing up and Purim theology, beautiful though they are, were all developed later, as explanations (excuses, even?) after the fact. 

Yet, if this theory is correct, then I think the practice of dressing up on Purim becomes more appropriate, not less so. It embodies its own symbolic meaning in its history. Just as the megillah relates events that appeared random on the surface, but turned out to be masking a miraculous deliverance, dressing up for Purim is a practice that “randomly” developed and appeared on the surface to be a simple borrowing from the majority culture, but turned out to be masking deep and vital connections to Judaism. 

In this difficult year, I’m thinking about dressing up on Purim as a way to escape from limitations. For everyone, but especially for leaders, I wonder what would happen if just for one day we stepped outside our assumptions, our habits, our biases, our ideas, or even our identities? What if we tried looking at ourselves, and the world in both its beauty and ugliness, through the eyes of new “masks”? What if we looked around and saw the people and institutions around us as containing new possibilities we’d never considered before?

It’s not an easy time to think like that.

Little Ariel Bibas, of blessed memory, loved Batman. My heart, and the heart of the whole Jewish people, breaks that he isn’t here to dress up for Purim as Batman — and that his brother, his mother, so many other uprooted lives, aren’t here to celebrate Purim in 2025.

That grief deserves its space. And we could spend a lifetime mourning what has been lost. 

And yet, we must keep living, keep looking for hope. We must escape into light, into joy, into good, into new ways of thinking about how not to desist from the work in front of us.

The Purim story threatened genocide, but delivered reprieve. And even now, the world may yet surprise us with hidden possibilities. 

Great leaders don’t deny the realities around them. They channel their agency to respond to events they cannot control in new and creative ways. They step beyond their limitations, trying on new approaches or even new ways of being — with a child-like curiosity and sense of possibility, even about difficult things. 

What are you dressing up as for Purim this year? I hope to be like Gavi, trying on a new self with no self-consciousness, looking out toward the horizon with new eyes, and seeing, perhaps, new wonders in this world.

For so many of us right now, we need an escape. An escape from the news, from the problems and dangers of the world. An escape from our emotions, from our losses, from our fears. Perhaps even an escape from ourselves… Luckily, Purim is coming, and with it, the chance to become someone new.

Masks, Costumes, and Possibilities in Disguise: Purim 5785

Leading, impact and moving forward: Reflections from four pioneering Jewish community executives

Stepping away from leadership is just as important as stepping into it. In eJewishPhilanthropy, Idit Klein (Keshet), Jodi Bromberg (18Doors), Aliza Kline (OneTable), and Dori Frumin Kirshner (Matan) — who have each led their organizations through significant growth — discuss their decisions to leave at the height of their impact. On the podcast It’s Who You Know!, they reflect on leadership transitions, the need for sustainability in Jewish communal work, and why knowing when to go is a crucial part of knowing how to lead.

HR Digest: 4 Rules of Work-Life Balance, And Why You've Been Getting It Wrong

WorkLife: Forget the stereotypes: Gen Z is the secret weapon for reshaping corporate culture

Allwork.Space: Forget Work-Life Balance, The Future Of Less Work Is Here

CCL: Navigating the Impact of AI in Leadership: A Social Process Continues

MIT SMR: What Leaders Get Wrong About Employee Motivation

Blue Avocado: Nonprofit Leadership Isn’t Perfect, and That’s the Point

NPQ: A New Framework for Governance Duties: Loving Accountability and Abundant Resourcing

NonProfit PRO: 3 Strategies to Bridge Generational Gaps for a Better Connected Nonprofit Board

HBR: When Activist Investors Ask for Board Seats

What We're Learning | March 2025

As of January 1, 2025, Leading Edge and JPro have joined forces to support, engage, and develop Jewish nonprofit leaders and professionals, creating a central hub that empowers them to deepen their impact at a critical time for the Jewish community. As part of this, we welcome eight new team members from JPro. Learn more about each of them below. 

As of January 1, 2025, Leading Edge and JPro have joined forces to support, engage, and develop Jewish nonprofit leaders and professionals, creating a central hub that empowers them to deepen their impact at a critical time for the Jewish community. As part of this, we welcome eight new team members from JPro.

Meet our New Team Members

Meet the people driving change at Leading Edge. Together, we're shaping the future of Jewish nonprofit leadership.

Our Team

During my undergraduate years, I was accredited to be a high school English and history teacher in Ontario. I taught supplementary school at my synagogue from 10th grade through university and I loved teaching. But as I was moving towards graduation, I felt curious about what else I might explore before going into the classroom. My roommate encouraged me to apply for a service learning alternative spring break trip to El Salvador during my last semester of undergrad, which sounded cool, and it ended up being with American Jewish World Service. Long story short, that turned into an offer to move to New York for one year to be the AJWS Alternative Breaks Fellow, which I did in September 2002. I thought I'd go for one year, and it turned into my career. 

I think a large segment of people who identify as Jewish communal professionals see themselves as accidental Jewish communal professionals. Like, it wasn't necessarily the plan, or they sort of fell into it sideways. And that was my story — it wasn't what I planned, but the path makes sense in retrospect. 

Let's talk about JPro's story. I'm especially interested in the decision, shortly before your time, to rebrand the Jewish Communal Service Association of North America as JPro. Beyond going from a long name to a short one, what motivated the rebrand?

JPro traces its history to 1899. And one of the remarkable things about that history is the number of times that it reinvented itself. It's a lot like Jewish history: There's continuity and change, and that ability to be elastic enough to move with the times but also connected enough to the past to maintain the through-line is part of what's extraordinary about this organization. JPro’s history dovetails with, has been informed by, and has also informed the development of the North American Jewish community.  The rebrand, I believe, was about a desire to catch up with the times, infuse a different kind of energy, and speak to younger generations as we worked to serve the Jewish communal workforce more and better.

What mandate were you given when you were brought on as the leader two years later?

The board was looking for an executive who would lead from the front with a vision — who would really look hard at what should continue and what shouldn't continue. And it was fascinating: As I got to know all of the stakeholders, everybody had a different perspective on what was essential to maintain! If I had listened to everybody, we wouldn't have changed anything. 

So we set a single-minded, big, hairy, audacious goal of tripling our number of JPro Affiliates over three years. We needed to re-establish the value proposition for becoming a JPro Affiliate. What I said internally is: If we cannot grow from 95 to 300 affiliates over three years, then there is something fundamentally broken about the value proposition for the organization. So by focusing on that goal, we were able to park a number of things off to the side without adjudicating them because we had that one shared goal that we were all driving towards. And people even believed in that so much that we secured 70 new affiliates before launching our first new programs: WellAdvised and JPro Master Classes. 

How would you tell the story of the arc from setting that goal through the uniting of JPro and Leading Edge?

I look back at three chapters. The first was from the beginning of 2017 through our conference in Detroit in August of 2019. And that chapter was an entrepreneurial, almost startup-like mentality. Everyone’s sleeves were rolled up, and we had rapid cycles of experimentation, learning, and refinement.

Chapter two: Coming out a conference that exceeded our hopes, we developed our first business plan. That was about solidifying our base of services to the end users in the field and growing the resources we needed to enable that. During those years we doubled from a team of three to a team of six. And, less than one year later, we adapted our work to respond to urgent needs of our audience during the early months of the COVID pandemic.

Our 2022 conference in Cleveland, in partnership with JFNA, was the transition to our third chapter. Once again, the conference sold out with a waiting list and exceeded expectations. Immediately thereafter we developed our next business plan with the headline of “Scaled Impact.” That plan asked: What would it look like to make change at the field-wide level? How can we shift attitudes and behaviors? We were interested in developing methodologies for how to do that, and also really moving the needle on management training and early-career interventions. 

And then, about a year and a half into that plan, we changed course and entered serious conversations with Leading Edge which, if successful, would turbocharge our drive to scaled impact. 

Since our 2019 and 2022 conferences were inflection points, it’s fitting that we are planning the next conference as a newly combined team, since it will mark this major milestone for our work and for the future of talent in the Jewish nonprofit sector.

Why were you so quickly positive toward the idea of joining with Leading Edge?

Leading Edge and JPro had been in conversation about their relationship from the first beginnings of Leading Edge. Gali was generous with advice when I reached out during the summer of 2016 when I became a candidate to be JPro’s exec. Everybody agreed that, if we were starting from scratch, nobody would build a Jewish nonprofit sector with a separate JPro and Leading Edge. We also understood that the missions, visions, cultures, programs, and business models had meaningful differences and tensions that needed to be considered. So when Gali and I first met with a consultant to really start discerning whether or not to come together, the big question was: What is in the best interest of the field? 

And our conversation moved into a posture of possibility and bold vision. The conversation was never about “How can we be more efficient, how can we do the same amount of output with fewer resources?” It was about, “What does it look like to scale and amplify impact?” We talked about things like a comprehensive approach to talent across the field through the entire talent cycle. Whether we're talking about recruitment, development, engagement, retention, and career pathing, or about the talent lifecycle from the perspective of organizations, what could it look like for the field to have a workforce and a pipeline that is healthy and vibrant, and to be able to do that in a comprehensive way? More and more we were seeing the limitations of not being in it together. JPro was developing and distributing products and services to the field; Leading Edge is a massive engine of knowing, based on data, what the field needs and was also driving impactful interventions. So to marry those things and have them be mutually reinforcing felt obvious. 

Let me be a provocative proxy for a certain skeptical kind of reader. Let’s say I'm a committed Jew, but I'm not emotionally bought into the idea of the Jewish nonprofit sector as a sector. Several times you've talked about the interest of the field. Why should “the field” have an interest, and why should I care about it? Why can't Jewish communal leaders just learn leadership from the Center for Creative Leadership and managers just learn management from the Management Center and organizations just use Culture Amp for employee surveys? What's the added value of doing all this together through a Jewish-specific lens?

The perseveration that is possible about this question, the sort of philosophizing — “Are we a field? What are the boundaries of the field?” — at the beginning, I found that to be a distraction, so I studiously avoided spending time on it because it seemed to me like work avoidance that was inhibiting bold action. That is a place of spinning wheels. And there is enough of a history and a broad-based and highly networked committed core of our field, doing the work of building the field and being a field. Defining our boundaries and justifying the reality that we are a field just wasn’t the place to begin. I think if we describe what is, we will see all the ways that we are a field in the relationships, in the ways that we collaborate, in the ways that we argue, even if we disagree… To the extent that we are in the conversation about whether we’re a community, and there’s a committed core that believes we are…well, then we are. (And, I would argue that those who are highly engaged in critiques about whether and how we are a field are also in an important relationship with this professional community.) We have shared third-rail issues, shared conversations. We come back to shared models, shared funding institutions, and the shared institutional identity of being a Jewish organization. Now, not everyone sees it that way. There have been organizations that said, “We're not going to be JPro Affiliates. We don't see ourselves as part of the field.” Okay, fine; there are thousands of organizations and people who do, so let's start there.

What are you most personally proud of from your role as CEO of JPro? And don't be humble and talk about pride in the organization. I want to know: What are you most proud to have personally done?

I think that my superpower is being able to move quickly from discomfort to growth. There are some things that have come less naturally to me than to some other people in positions like mine, but I’ve been able to look at the gaps and seek support to accomplish big things. I was terrified when I started this job, and I was open with some real gedolim [“great ones”] in our field about that. One shared with me that when he started in his job, he felt the same way and told me that it would take two years to get my sea legs. His normalizing that was incredibly helpful. I think it’s unfortunate that we don't speak publicly about those realities in the field and maintain the mythology of the hero-leader. Somehow the persona that executive leaders typically portray is of being confident and charismatic and successful... I think we do ourselves a disservice by being less honest. But every big accomplishment at JPro was the work of a team. I’m proud of how I’ve facilitated the circumstances in which groups, together have made the impossible possible. And it never ends. I've joked after our conferences that the reward of reaching the summit of a mountain is always another, bigger mountain. 

What has it been like going from a CEO role to a non-CEO C-suite role?

This has been a rollercoaster for everybody with lots of highs, some lows, some exhilaration, and some stomachaches. I’ve never heard of an M+A process that isn’t complex, so the “big why” has to be clear and worthwhile. If I wanted to, I could spend all day talking about what's hard. Or I could spend all day looking at the incredible opportunities and blessings for me personally and for JPro. And that's where I'm excited to put my energy. I'm working with one of the best executive teams, boards, and staffs in the business. I really mean it, the concentration of talent here is unbelievable. It’s incredible to be at this point in my career and to be at the beginning of a new journey with a steep learning curve. It’s the next mountain. I think about my own sense of mission and purpose as a Jewish communal professional, as a mother, as a granddaughter… In the days after October 7th, I really felt like everything that I grew up to think was true about being a Jew in the world at this moment in history was just lying shattered at my feet. And I just think it is an incredible blessing to be in a professional community and to have work that is, in part, about how we move through that moment as individuals, as organizations, as a field, as a broader Jewish community, in making meaning of our post-October-7th reality. I feel incredibly fortunate to be doing this work, in this field, with this organization, at this time.

Ilana Aisen is the Chief Community Impact Officer at Leading Edge. (Read her complete bio here.) From 2016 through 2024, she was CEO of JPro, which joined with Leading Edge at the beginning of this year. We sat down with Ilana for a conversation about her individual professional journey, JPro’s journey as an organization, and the future of the nonprofit field now that JPro and Leading Edge have come together.

Scaling for Impact: Ilana Aisen Reflects on Growing a Career, an Organization, and a Field

Feedback is one of those things we all know we need — and often struggle to do well. At Leading Edge, we found ourselves in that very place. As an organization that helps Jewish nonprofits build better workplace cultures, we’re constantly looking at how we can live our values and model the practices we advocate. Yet, when it came to feedback, we realized we had work to do.

The need became clear through both formal and informal channels. Our Employee Experience Survey and ongoing conversations revealed that feedback — especially upward and peer-to-peer — wasn’t happening effectively. Team members expressed a lack of openness to constructive conversations and observed that while we were excellent at positive affirmations, they often lacked detail. Without meaningful feedback, growth opportunities were being overlooked, and the culture began to feel surface-level positive rather than deeply supportive.

As the executive team dug into these insights, it became obvious that feedback was about more than improving processes, it was about relationships, development, and trust. We saw the opportunity to make a change by engaging in a feedback workshop series with Frontline Solutions, a program designed to help teams build stronger communication skills.

We had done feedback trainings before, and while they were well-received, they were one-off sessions. This time, we wanted to go deeper, knowing that real change takes time, practice, and commitment.

For the executive team, the workshops offered moments of deep reflection. We joined the full-team sessions while also participating in focused discussions tailored to our own development. These sessions gave us valuable insight into how the team views our current culture and helped us reflect on our leadership behaviors. They pushed us to consider how we need to adjust our approach to better support the culture we’re striving to build. It’s been a powerful process of listening, reflecting, and growing together.

We’ve realized that relying solely on supervisors to address concerns doesn’t always give us the full picture. People can present differently to us than they do to their direct supervisors, so it’s crucial that we share our own observations directly when something stands out. Supervisors may not always see the same patterns or behaviors we do, and leaving these conversations unsaid can lead to missed opportunities for growth and improvement. Power dynamics are a reality, and it’s important for us to stay mindful of them. While we encourage our employees to show up as their authentic selves at work, we also recognize the weight that a conversation with an executive team member can carry. Feedback from us often holds greater significance, and we have a responsibility to approach those moments with care and intention.

The workshops didn’t just focus on how to give feedback; they explored the dynamics between giver and receiver. A key “aha”  moment for us was understanding that feedback isn’t about following a checklist — it’s about meeting the needs of the person receiving it and being mindful of our differences.


One standout exercise paired feedback practice with the Change Styles Indicator, helping us see how individuals approach and respond to change. This realization deepened our feedback process and strengthened relationships. It wasn’t just about improving communication, it was about building trust and understanding.

Impact: Changing the Way We Lead and Connect

Since the workshops, we’re seeing tangible changes across the team:

More openness and collaboration: Team members are volunteering for projects outside their usual responsibilities, often with people outside their core teams. 

Greater accountability: Feedback has started to flow more naturally: upward, downward, and across the organization.

For the executive team, this shift has been significant. We’ve always valued feedback, but we’re now more aware of its complexities. We’ve also learned to manage expectations: while we encourage feedback, we’re clear that not every piece can or will be acted upon. When we can’t take action, we commit to sharing context and being transparent about why.

We know that feedback isn’t a one-time project — it’s a practice. Moving forward, we’re focused on reinforcing what we’ve learned and exploring areas like skip-level feedback (conversations between executives and team members who report to other supervisors).

Historically, we’ve tended to focus on positive skip-level feedback, perhaps contributing to a culture of hyper-positivity. We now see the need to balance that by sharing observations, even when they’re hard. This will require building trust and creating a culture where this kind of feedback is constructive and doesn’t carry disproportionate weight.

Already, we’re seeing team members reach out to the executive team more informally: “can I share what I heard?” or “can I give some advice?” These messages are welcome, and we’re working to make it clear that anyone can schedule time with us, anytime.

We’re also thinking about relationship-building across the team. As we grow, it’s not enough to rely on full-team meetings to create connections. We need to be intentional about building relationships with team members in new and different ways.

Written by our Chief Program Officer, this article is part of a series highlighting perspectives from various Leading Edge team members as we reflect on our journey through a feedback workshop series.

Blog

Alumni Spotlight: SooJi Min-Maranda