What does it look like when a community truly invests in its women leaders — not just by promoting them, but by creating space for them to discover themselves, build deep collegial bonds, and realize their fullest potential? For the Jewish community of the Bay Area and beyond, the answer is the Voices for Good Fellowship, a transformational two-year program created by Jewish LearningWorks, and made possible in part by the generous support of the Federation.
Now in its third cohort, Voices for Good has quietly and powerfully changed the lives and careers of 35 women professionals in Jewish communal life, including a number of Federation professionals themselves. This is the story of how it started, how it works, and why it matters.
The Lightbulb Moment
The Voices for Good Fellowship didn’t emerge from a strategic planning retreat or a grant opportunity. It grew from a reckoning.
In 2017, Jewish LearningWorks — whose mission is to nurture Jewish educators, inspire innovation, and build Jewish literacy — conducted a landscape analysis of the field of Jewish education in the Bay Area. The findings were striking: roughly 75-80% of the field was composed of women. Dana Sheanin, Jewish LearningWorks Chief Executive Officer (at the time, Chief Strategy Officer), recognized that the organization’s work supporting Jewish educators meant supporting Jewish women. It was a lightbulb moment — she realized her organization was not yet doing enough to address the specific challenges Jewish women faced.
The analysis landed at precisely the moment the #MeToo movement was capturing national attention and forcing long-overdue conversations about working women. The timing crystallized a call to action.
Jenni Mangel, Senior Director of Impact and Evaluation at Jewish LearningWorks, who has helped lead the fellowship since its inception, describes it this way: “We decided that we needed to dial in and do what we could to support Jewish women in the workplace, lifting their voices. That was the genesis for this program.”
The first cohort launched in 2018 and ran through 2020. Six years and three cohorts later, Voices for Good has become one of the most distinctive leadership development offerings in the Jewish communal world.
What is the Voices for Good Fellowship?
The Voices for Good Fellowship creates an affinity space for women+ leaders in Jewish communal organizations to build collegial relationships, explore Jewish values in leadership, and address challenges unique to women in Jewish professional life.
Aimed at leaders who identify as women, working for Jewish communal organizations in the primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area (the third cohort included the Pacific Northwest and the Denver-Boulder area), the program runs as a two-year, hybrid fellowship with monthly online synchronous seminars and in-person regional meetings, including a retreat in California.
The curriculum is organized around three progressive arcs: Core, Change, and Competency. The Core phase focuses on self-discovery, community building, coaching, and Jewish leadership values. The Change phase moves outward to mission and vision, change theory, organizational systems, and leading with wisdom. The Competency phase focuses on practical skills: presentation and voice, communication, conflict resolution, and fiscal leadership.
But what makes the fellowship more than a leadership curriculum is how it weaves together all of these elements — personal reflection, peer community, Jewish wisdom, and professional skill-building — into a coherent, cumulative experience.
Discovering Who You Are. And Can Be.
Amanda Cohen, a Federation professional and Cohort 1 graduate, described the experience of identifying and separating from her inner critic as transformative: “My whole worldview broke open. I had been plagued with a lot of self-doubt. It helped underscore that lesson: I don’t have to shape myself into the leader I see everyone else being — I can be 100% authentically me, and that is enough. A switch flipped.”
The program uses a character strength assessment called TILT365, which helps fellows understand their own leadership style and learn how to adapt and collaborate with people whose styles differ from their own. Mangel describes it as a practical framework for building self-awareness: “You don’t always want to be back in your quadrant. Sometimes you want to lean into this one, or lean into that one, or draw somebody out from their spot to meet you in the middle.”
The impact of that self-knowledge can ripple outward in unexpected ways. Mangel remembered one fellow from the third cohort who brought the TILT framework back to her CEO, and together they used it to diagnose the tension in their professional relationship. Mangel explained: “It identified some of the sources of conflict that existed between them and created an opportunity to have that uncomfortable conversation around, ‘why are we having this friction, and what can we do about it?'”
Fellowship Within the Fellowship
If self-discovery is the heart of Voices for Good, community is its backbone. Many Jewish communal professionals work in small organizations where they are the only person in their role — as the one educator, the sole development director, the only marketing professional. Mangel acknowledges this: “Working in the Jewish community can be very lonely. If you’re on a staff of five to 10 people, there isn’t a lot of wiggle room to think dynamically about your work.”
The fellowship addresses this through a practice called Critical Colleagueship, a structured protocol for peer problem-solving that fellows work through in consistent small groups throughout the two-year program. The consistency matters: “When they bring up an issue in September, people understand the background when it’s their turn to present again in January,” noted Mangel.
Megan Edelman, a Federation professional and Cohort 3 graduate, found that community to be the fellowship’s most powerful element: “The strongest impact for me was being in a group of other professional women. Many of us were at the same phase of life, and all were open to learning and being with each other. The connectedness of the cohort — the care and the community we created — is what stands out to me the most.”
That community has proven durable. Cohen still meets virtually every couple of weeks with two women from her cohort (which graduated in 2020). “Part is just catching up and being friends, and part is actually digging into challenges. That was something we’d done when we were in the program, but I love that we’re continuing this six years later.”
Cohen has also brought the Critical Colleagues protocol into her own work at the Federation, using it to structure convenings of grantees. “We periodically gather young adult and teen-serving professionals in what we call ‘peer coaching circles,’ but they’re effectively using the Critical Colleagues protocol that Jenni put together.”
“To have that support from the Federation is really important. I think having that vote of confidence — ‘we trust you, we know you’re doing good work, we see that you’re developing the leadership in the community, we thank you for that, and we’re happy to help make that possible’ — is really fantastic.”
— Jenni Mangel, Senior Director of Impact and Evaluation at Jewish LearningWorks
A Tapestry of Jewish Values
One of the central Jewish frameworks the program explores is the concept of the bat kol — a Talmudic concept that directly translates as “daughter of the voice.” Mangel describes how the bat kol resonates with the fellowship’s broader themes: “It’s your divine voice talking to you about what you’re supposed to be doing.”
The fellowship also explores texts on anavah (humility) — examining how much space women take up in their professional and communal lives, and when claiming space is not only appropriate but necessary. And it draws on the Talmudic concept of Elu v’Elu, the teaching that two seemingly opposing things can both be true — a framework Edelman describes as central to her experience: “A Jewish learning on discourse and understanding. This can be true, and this can also be true.”
The Federation Connection
The Federation’s support of Jewish LearningWorks has been instrumental in making Voices for Good possible. Mangel is clear about what that partnership means: “To have that support from the Federation is really important. I think having that vote of confidence — ‘we trust you, we know you’re doing good work, we see that you’re developing the leadership in the community, we thank you for that, and we’re happy to help make that possible’ — is really fantastic.”
The echoes of the fellowship can be felt throughout the Federation’s work. Six past and current Federation professionals have participated in Voices for Good across the three cohorts. Cohen describes the alumni group as “an ‘old girls’ network — but a good one. Being in my specific role, to easily call someone up and ask them a question, or brainstorm something together — it helps me do my work better.”
Edelman, who completed the third cohort as a senior professional, credits the fellowship’s peer support with helping her navigate a demanding role: “When things are difficult or a challenge arises, I have professional allies I can turn to. It created a real safety net of experienced professionals to guide me through.”
In the meantime, interest in a fourth cohort is building. Mangel encourages anyone who is interested in participating to reach out to her directly. She is always keeping a list of potential fellows — and the right moment to launch the next cohort depends, in part, on who is ready for it.
A Final Word
When asked what she most wants readers to take away from Voices for Good, Mangel paused, then answered simply: “Voices for Good is about investing in the people who are the future of the Jewish community.”
For Cohen, the program was nothing short of life-changing: “I don’t think I would be here in this role if it weren’t for this program. It’s given me so much confidence and self-reflection. I’m really grateful for it.”
And for Edelman, the experience was a reminder of what becomes possible when women are seen as their full selves: “To be seen as a whole person—not just for what you bring, or what your title says, or what your experience looks like, but as an entire human. I think that is what becomes possible in women’s leadership.”
Both Cohen and Edelman, when asked to sum up the fellowship in a single word, arrived at the same one: transformational.
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To learn more about the Voices for Good Fellowship or to express interest in a future cohort, visit jewishlearning.works/voices-for-good-fellowship or contact Jenni Mangel.
