Wexner Leadership Conference

Leading Effectively During Challenging Times

By invitation only.

Join Wexner alumni and nationally-recognized scholars from across the country for a communal dialogue, utilizing Jewish texts and tools from the business world, to discuss the most compelling issues facing the Jewish community today. We find ourselves in a seemingly unprecedented moment of challenge simultaneously feeling increased pressure from outside the Jewish community and fracture within our community. We believe that these challenges are calling us to step into our leadership roles in new ways. This conference is a thoughtfully curated opportunity for learning, inspiration, and connection among local alumni, the current Wexner cohort, and partners where we hope to inspire attendees to wrestle with the following:

  • How do we lead in an environment of increased scrutiny of Israel and rising anti-Semitism? 
  • What are the biggest factors that are dividing us from the inside and how can we re-frame them as opportunities?
  • Where can we find inspiration to help us become more effective and authentic leaders in this moment of stress from both directions?

Partners and spouses are highly encouraged to attend this complimentary event.

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PROGRAM

Light breakfast will be served from 9:30–10:00 am. The opening session begins promptly at 10:00 am.

Opening Session: 

“Do I think the future is something that will happen to me? Or can I shape the future?” There are no facts about the future, but how we feel about it — our posture and sense of agency around it, the processes that we use to understand and interrogate it, and our set of practices and tools to shape it. Those are very much available to us today. Building on her research, writing, and classes at the Stanford d.school, best selling author and Wexner faculty Lisa Kay Solomon will offer some opening reflections on what it means to lead like a futurist in today’s rapidly changing context.

Morning Breakout Sessions:

Lunch

Afternoon Breakout Sessions:

Community Storytellers:

  • Daryl Messinger (Wexner Alumna)  
  • Barry Cohn (Wexner Alumnus) 
  • Manny Yekutiel, Manny’s 

Closing Session:

Post-Conference Wine & Cheese

Organized by the Bay Area Wexner Heritage Alumni Council Delegates:
Matthew Gershuny, Susan Steiner Saal, Jackie Shelton-Miller, Tony Smorgon, and Kevin Waldman

Interests: Classes, Meetings
Date: 
December 08, 2019
TIME: 
9:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Apple Calendar Outlook Google (online)
Location: 
Provided upon RSVP
City: 
San Francisco
Cost: 
Complimentary

SHARE:

Organized By: 
Bay Area Wexner Alumni
Co-organizers: 
Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund
Event Contact Person: 
Lori Baron
415.512.6436
LBaron@wexner.net
Speakers: 
Lisa Kay Solomon
Lisa Kay Solomon is a passionate speaker, author, educator and thought leader focused on helping leaders learn how to be more creative, flexible and resilient in the face of increasing complexity and change. Currently a Designer in Residence at Stanford University’s Institute for Design (aka “d. School”) and founding Chair of Transformational Practices and Leadership at Singularity University, Lisa’s work focuses on developing, teaching and amplifying the skills, mindsets and behaviors required to lead positive change. Lisa has worked with innovative leaders from Citi Ventures, Coca-Cola, Toyota Financial Services, ING, HP, Bertelsmann, Herman Miller, and the Kauffman Fellows Program for Venture Capitalists, as well as social impact organizations like the Packard Foundation, PBS, and various K12 education institutions. A TEDx speaker, Lisa frequently keynotes at leading business schools across the country including Stanford University, Oxford Said School of Business, University of California- Berkeley, University of Virginia, and Hult Business School and at dozens of global innovation and leadership conferences around the world. Lisa coauthored the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change, and, more recently, Design a Better Business: New Tools, Skills and Mindset for Strategy and Innovation, which has been translated into over 12 languages. She is a frequent contributor to Singularity Hub, authoring a popular series on Exponential Leadership and Designing a Better Futures.
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Rabbi Sharon Brous is a leading voice in reanimating religious life in America, working to develop a spiritual roadmap for soulful, multi-faith justice work in Los Angeles and around the country. Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, which was started in 2004 and has become a model for Jewish revitalization in the US and beyond. With the goal of reinvigorating Jewish practice and inspiring people of faith to reclaim a moral and prophetic voice, IKAR quickly became one of the fastest growing and most influential Jewish congregations in the country. Today it is credited with sparking a rethinking of religious life in a time of unprecedented disaffection and declining affiliation. Brous’s 2016 TED talk, “Reclaiming Religion,” has been viewed by more than 1.3 million people and translated into 22 languages. In 2013, she blessed President Obama and Vice President Biden at the Inaugural National Prayer Service, and Mayor Eric Garcetti at his inauguration in LA in 2017. She spoke at the Women’s March in Washington, DC in 2017, and at the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in 2018. Brous was named #1 on the Newsweek/The Daily Beast list of the most influential Rabbis in America, and has been recognized by The Forward and the Jerusalem Post as one of the fifty most influential Jews. She was featured on the cover of TIME magazine in 2018 based on Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms. Brous is in the inaugural cohort of Auburn Seminary‘s Senior Fellows program, which unites top faith leaders working on the frontlines for justice. Brous also sits on the faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute-North America and REBOOT, and serves on the International Council of the New Israel Fund and the national steering committee for the Poor People’s Campaign.
Naomi Adland
Naomi Adland is Director of Program Operations at Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she oversees the design and execution of the North American program calendar and works with faculty and staff in creating a strategic program picture for the Institute. Naomi received a BA in American Studies from Brandeis University and an MPA in Nonprofit Management and Public Policy from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. She is also an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and a Davidson Scholar. Previously, Naomi served as North American Director of Recruitment for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and as a member of Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps. In her spare time, Naomi serves on the board of Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps, enjoys knitting increasingly complex blankets, walking in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and baking her way through the Smitten Kitchen.
Amanda Berman
Amanda Berman is the Founder and President of the Zioness Movement, a new initiative empowering and activating Zionists on the progressive left to stand proudly in social justice spaces as Jews and Zionists. She is also the Director of Legal Affairs at The Lawfare Project, spearheading such groundbreaking legal initiatives as the international action against Kuwait Airways for its discrimination against Israeli nationals, and the dual cases against San Francisco State University for its constitutional and civil rights violations against Jewish and Israeli students and community members. Amanda writes extensively on lawfare and civil rights issues and is a media contributor across various mediums and outlets. She has spoken and presented before diverse audiences including Hadassah, JNF, B'nei Brith, Jewish Federation, AIPAC, JCRC, Hillel, and many others. She is a graduate of the Anti-Defamation League's Glass Leadership Institute, the recipient of Hadassah's prestigious Myrtle Wreath Award, and was listed by the Algemeiner as one of the top "100 people positively contributing to Jewish life" in 2018. She is also an Executive Board member of the Friends of the IDF, Young Leadership New York. Amanda graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Diplomatic History and a Master of Governmental Administration and received her Juris Doctor from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. She practiced securities litigation at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP before dedicating her career to the advancement and protection of the Jewish people and the pro-Israel community.
Barry Cohn
Barry Cohn is a fifth generation San Franciscan, has an active real estate and Jewish communal career. Over 30 plus years in commercial brokerage, he has completed over 15 MSF of commercial real estate transactions in the Bay Area. He is currently a Managing Director at Cushman & Wakefield. He co-founded in 1998 Etz HaShaked Development, Inc., a real estate development company in Israel which has built over 2,000 apartments and 350,000 SF of commercial/office space in Israel. In 2015, he co-founded Freshwater Investments which is an investment company holding multi-family real estate assets in the western US. Since being president in 1976 of his temple youth group in Lafayette, CA, Barry has participated in and led countless organizations in the community. His focus has been on Jewish camping, education and Israel relations. He has led the construction of many capital campaigns and is currently part of the leadership team overseeing the rebuilding of URJ’s Camp Newman as well as the vice-chair of the Federation’s Capital Planning Committee. He received his bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and his double master’s degree in Public Administration from the USC and Jewish Communal Service from HUC.
Rachel Gerrol
Rachel Gerrol is widely recognized for her work on innovative philanthropy and she was named one of the “99 Most Influential Foreign Policy Leaders under 33” by the Diplomatic Courier. Her projects have been featured in The NY Times, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Forbes, Vanity Fair, Barron’s, Inc. and The Huffington Post. Rachel helped organize the “White House Conference on Next Gen Philanthropy & Impact Investing” in 2014 and worked closely with the Obama/Biden Administration to launch the “It’s On Us” campaign to stop sexual assault on campus, which she continues to be an Advisor to today. She Co-Founded the IMPACTHAUS Social Impact Film Series at the Sundance Film Festival and was Founding Executive Director of PVBLIC Foundation where she organized the “Media for Social Impact Summit” at the U.N. for several years and Co-Chaired the G8 Young Summit in 2013. Rachel previously was Director of Young Adult Initiatives for the Schusterman Foundation and spent eight years as Special Assistant to Ambassador Nancy Rubin, U.S. Representative to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. In 2012 Rachel founded The Survivor Initiative, a next-gen effort to raise awareness, funds and government support for US Holocaust survivors living in poverty. Rachel has testified before the Israeli Knesset and sits on the Board of Directors of the Birthright Israel Foundation and the Next Gen Council of the USC Shoah Foundation. She is on the Speaker’s Bureau and National Young Leadership Cabinet of the Jewish Federations of North America, Chairs the Board of Jumpstart and serves as an Advisor to Charity Miles, BeeSpace and Women’s Entrepreneurship Day. She previously served on the Evaluation Panel for Bloomberg’s Genesis Generation Challenge, the Advisory Council of Invisible Children, the Leadership Council of the Classy Awards and the Advisory Council of Girl Up (UN Foundation). She was a Wexner Heritage Fellow and is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Rabbi Doug Kahn
Rabbi Doug Kahn is the Executive Director Emeritus of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Relations Council, and founder of Broad Tent Consulting through the JCRC. He joined the JCRC in 1982 and became Executive Director in 1989, a position he held until his retirement in June, 2016. In that capacity he was heavily engaged in formulating the consensus-based education and advocacy efforts of the organized Jewish community on issues of vital concern and developing strategic initiatives on many issues ranging from civil discourse to combatting the delegitimization of Israel. One initiative he co-founded, the Institute for Curriculum Services, has achieved more than 10,000 edits improving accuracy about Jews, Judaism and Israel in public school textbooks throughout America. He served on the Global Council of United Religions Initiative, an international grassroots interfaith organization and currently chairs its Foundation Board. He also serves on the JCPA Civility Committee. He previously served as co-chair of the Intergroup Clearinghouse, San Francisco’s major organization addressing issues of intergroup tensions, and President of the CRC Directors Association. Prior to joining the JCRC, he was the Executive Director of Hillel at George Washington University. A fourth generation San Franciscan, Doug received his rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and his B.A. from U.C. Berkeley. He is the recipient of the Jewish Community Federation’s Executive of the Year Award and the community’s Israel in our Hearts award. He has written and spoken extensively on topical issues.
Michael Koplow
Michael Koplow is the Policy Director of the Israel Policy Forum. Before coming to Israel Policy Forum, he was the founding Program Director of the Israel Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University, where he specialized in political development and ideology, and the politics of Middle Eastern states. He writes Israel Policy Forum’s weekly Koplow Column and edits the Israel Policy Exchange, which is a leading source for commentary and analysis on Israel and American Jewry, and his work regularly appears in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, and the Forward, among other publications. In addition to his Ph.D., he holds a B.A. from Brandeis University, a J.D. from New York University, and an A.M. in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.
Rabbi Joshua Ladon
Rabbi Joshua Ladon is West Coast Director of Education for Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where he oversees educational and programmatic activity in the San Francisco Bay area. Joshua received a BA from Washington University in St. Louis and subsequently lived in Jerusalem for seven years, completing an MA in Jewish Thought at Tel Aviv University. He received rabbinic ordination from the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is currently a Doctoral student in Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Joshua joined SHI North America from San Francisco's Jewish Community High School of the Bay, where he served as Dean of Student Life and Jewish Life with great distinction, including receiving the Diller Award for outstanding teaching.
Daryl Messinger
Daryl Messinger is the Chair of the North American Board of Trustees of the Union for Reform Judaism. Prior to this role, she served on the URJ Board for 15 years and in Reform Movement affiliated organizations in a wide variety of roles. A dynamic leader with a track record of sustained involvement and success, she served as Chair of the Reform Pension Board, which serves Reform Movement professionals and has a total portfolio of more than $1.2 billion. She has been a key partner in helping to implement the URJ’s Campaign for Youth Engagement and in shaping the Union’s 2020 Vision strategic plan. She currently also serves as Chair for URJ Camp Newman Advisory Board (in Santa Rosa, CA) where she has been instrumental in raising over $25 million to-date for Camp Newman’s renovation including a $4 million gift from the Koret Foundation. Messinger previously served as a Vice Chair and an Assistant Treasurer of the URJ. Messinger’s congregational lay leadership experience is extensive. She served, at the age of 36, as the youngest president of her then 1,100-member congregation, Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, CA. She has served in a variety of roles there including as treasurer, chair of its capital campaign, chair of the rabbinic search committee, and volunteer coordinator of an innovative family education program.
Gamal J. Palmer
Gamal J. Palmer is also the Senior Vice President of Leadership Development at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, overseeing several leadership programs and board and professional development for a 200-person staff. Palmer is also Founder and CEO of Global Eye Entrepreneurs, a multicultural network for male entrepreneurs of color. He has worked hard to diversify Federation’s Leadership programs, including the Community Leadership Institute (CLI) and he strives to make diversity, equity and inclusion a top priority of the Los Angeles Federation. For over 7 years, Gamal has led his signature workshop, The Diversity Gym, within the Jewish non-profit sector for professionals, executives and board members. In addition, Palmer has led the Diversity Gym for non- Jewish entities throughout the United States for companies such as Sempra Energy, Cornell University’s Business School, Occidental College, ITVS etc. He regularly convenes key Jews of Color (JOC) community leaders to explore how the JOC community can be best supported by Federation, foundation and other organizations. Palmer designed and lectured international programs at Yale University, Theater and Public Health in Swaziland and South Africa and Social Justice in Tanzania. Palmer earned his Post-Graduate Associate from Yale School of Management, M.FA. from Yale School of Drama and a B.A. from University of Miami. In addition, Palmer served as a Los Angeles Global Justice Fellow and delivered a TEDx Talk on the intersection of art and social impact in 2014. In 2018, Palmer was an International Career Advancement (ICAP Fellow) at the Aspen Institute and was asked to return in 2019 as faculty, lecturer of Diversity and Inclusion.
Currently Gamal is a Schusterman Fellow through the Charles’ and Lynn Schusterman Foundation and a Springboard Fellow through the Durfee Foundation. A native of Philadelphia, Palmer is the youngest of nine children and was highly influenced by his activist parentage.
Rabbi Yonah Schiller
Rabbi Yonah Schiller work has been focused on investigating new and high-impact approaches to the idea of Jewish community building. Through the creation of a “user-centric” design model, as Executive Director, Schiller oversaw the process of an organizational re-imagining and re-structuring at Tulane Hillel. Through prototyping a new operating system for community building, Schiller and the organization experienced unprecedented growth across the various institutional divisions. In 2017, Schiller was named one of the 50 most influential, accomplished and interesting American Jews by the Forward magazine for having “revolutionized Jewish outreach using a model that is being examined and replicated across the nation.” He is the Founder of the Jewish Design Platform (JDP), an emerging national design incubator geared towards building scalable systems, models and initiatives for designing inclusive and high impact Jewish community. Schiller created and serves as Senior Project Advisor to the Organizational Design Lab, an initiative that addresses institutional stagnation by applying design thinking to deliver transformational change for Hillels on 16 university campuses across the US and Canada. Schiller also serves as Special Projects Consultant at the Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane. Schiller is an adjunct lecturer at Tulane in various areas; Ecumenical spirituality, Jewish Civilization and Mysticism. Schiller serves as a consultant to a number of local and national organizations and projects for leadership development, community building, strategy and organizational visioning and impact. Schiller was awarded the 2013 Mortar Board Excellence in Teaching Award for the most outstanding non-tenured professor at Tulane University and the Helen A. Mervis Jewish Community Professional Award from the Jewish Endowment Foundation of Louisiana. Schiller is also a professional abstract mixed-media artist working out of his studio in New Orleans. Schiller is from the Boston area, a graduate of Brown University with a degree in Studio Art and Art History. Schiller received his rabbinic degree in Israel, with an emphasis on Mysticism and Law. Yonah received his MBA from the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, focused on Leadership and Entrepreneurship.
Jessica Trubowitch
Jessica Trubowitch is Public Policy and Community Building Director. She has a strong background in public policy, advocacy, and policy-making through consensus. Jessica is a California native and has been living in the Bay Area for over ten years. She has a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Master’s in Public Policy and Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Collaborative Governance from California State University, Sacramento.
Manny Yekutiel
Manny Yekutiel is the owner of Manny's, a civic gathering place featuring a café, restaurant, and bookshop that was named "Small Business of the Year" by the California State Senate, District 11. Manny founded ESY Strategies, a consulting practice through which he assisted individuals and families with their political and charitable giving. He graduated from Williams College in 2011 with a degree in political science and leadership studies. Manny was active in student government and served as the student body president. He was selected as class historian and was also awarded the prestigious Watson Fellowship, given to selected liberal arts graduates to engage in year-long international research. Manny completed a summer internship in the West Wing and after completing his fellowship, he returned to take a paid position with the 2012 Obama campaign in New Hampshire.