Working with organizations in California and beyond, Ilana Kaufman has drawn on her personal experience as a queer Jewish woman of color to advocate for diversity and inclusivity.
Turning dining hall dollars into food for the hungry, Rachel Sumekh has empowered college students to address food insecurity in their communities and has shined a light on hunger on university campuses.
Sharon Salzberg helped bring Theravedic Buddhism, one of the most conservative Buddhist dsiciplines, to America as one of the three co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in 1974.
A political operative who served as deputy director of issues and research for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, Sara Teitelbaum Ehrman had an inadvertent brush with history when she drove Hillary Rodham to Arkansas while urging her not to marry Bill Clinton.
During her term as the first female Speaker of the Knesset, Dalia Itzik was called upon to take on another first when she became the first female Interim President of Israel in 2007.
In 1994 Judith Seitz Rodin became the first permanent woman president of an Ivy League school when she took the helm of the University of Pennsylvania.
Veronika Wolf Cohen has shaped Israeli minds in two very different ways, by developing national music curricula and by leading innovative Israeli-Palestinian dialogue groups.
Through her genealogical program Routes to Roots, Miriam Weiner helped Jews access historical records that had survived the Soviet suppression of information throughout Eastern Europe.
Rabbi Barbara Penzner has been a moral force for her congregation, leading it in multiple actions to uphold human rights around the world and in the local community.
Rabbi Elaine Zecher uses her own experiences of illness and struggle to counsel congregants and craft prayers for Mishkan T’fillah and Mishkan HaNefesh, the prayer books of the Reform Movement.
As senior rabbi of Washington DC’s Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, Shira Stutman has found new ways to engage Jews at the intersection of Jewish practice and social justice.
Rabbi Haviva Ner-David chronicled her struggles to become an Orthodox woman rabbi in her celebrated book Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination before finally achieving her dream in 2006.
Throughout her career, Rabbi Avis Miller has searched for new ways to educate, engage, and support unaffiliated Jews and those on the margins of the Jewish community.
After a car accident left Rabbi Lynne Landsberg struggling with a traumatic brain injury, she devoted her career to ensuring that Jews with disabilities have full access to the richness of Jewish life.
As one of the leaders of the Liberal Jewish Movement in France, Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur is working to bring a progressive mindset to the more traditional French Jewish community.
Rabbi Susan Grossman has helped shape the Conservative Movement’s policies on women’s rights and roles in Jewish life through her work as a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS).
One of the first women ordained by Yeshivat Maharat, a seminary for Orthodox Jewish women, Maharat Rachel Kohl Finegold is the first woman in Canada to serve as clergy for an Orthodox synagogue.
One of the first graduates of Yeshivat Maharat, the first Orthodox seminary to ordain women, Maharat Ruth Balinsky Friedman is crafting a new model of religious leadership for Orthodox women and girls.
Marjorie Switow Fisher found inventive ways to improve children’s lives, from funding mobile dental clinics to using summer jobs as an opportunity for career training. Fisher majored in art at Marjorie Webster Junior College and graduated at the top of her class.