Soy Vey: Chinese New Year Shabbat dinner

Adam Swig Honored with the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Young Leadership

"Adam Swig is a leader and trendsetter in cutting-edge Jewish leadership. Not only is Adam thinking with innovative fashion for San Francisco, but as the world stopped, he chose to keep going and bring his leadership to the virtual front for the rest of the globe and show them what leadership in the San Francisco arena looks like!” -Nominator

Adam Swig is the founder and executive director of Value Culture, a California nonprofit focused on engaging the next generation in culture and philanthropy through events and culture programming. Since 2012, Adam worked with over 60 nonprofit organizations raising over $1 million dollars for philanthropic causes. His constantly sold-out events have raised awareness for many causes including the environment, children in need, Shabbat and Jewish life, homelessness, public institutions, inclusivity, the arts, up and coming musical artists of all genres, disaster relief, cancer, women’s issues, goats, strengthening Bay Area culture, and encouraging philanthropy. Adam currently serves on the board of trustees at the University of San Francisco, The Bammies Music Foundation Advisory Board, the board of the Bay Area Jewish Sports Hall of Fame of Northern California, a member of the Doolan Larson Residence and Storefront Task Force, & the Contemporary Jewish Museum Contemporaries. Highlights of 2021 pandemic programming included producing a 60,000-person international virtual Passover seder featuring stars like Tiffany Haddish, creating the first Afikomen NFT featured in The NY Times, and hosting virtual talks with Holocaust survivors reaching hundreds of thousands of new listeners to the topic.

With nominators and supporters from across the country, Adam Swig has fostered deep and meaningful relationships in the Bay Area and national Jewish communities. Adam has his finger on the “pulse of our city and various communities within it” while extending himself with generosity and kindness. He is a mensch, does his work with heart, and is proudly Jewish. Adam’s leadership is creative, and he builds bridges across communities with high impact and innovative events and relationships that are open to everyone, and at little or no cost.

What started out through his own sense of giving back to his primarily Jewish community has developed into a national schedule of events that bring together his colleagues, his peers, and his fellow Jews. He creates programs and opportunities that “represent the moment and the passions and values that many of us share at this particular junction in history.” He’s creating spaces to confront topics and ideas that many didn’t even know we would want or need in Jewish community.

Honoring the first president of the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, this annual award, inaugurated in October of 1959, recognizes an outstanding young leader in the local Jewish community.