Frustrated with Jewish organizations that geared their offerings for women’s involvement around the interests and schedules of stay-at-home mothers, Carol Wise forged a more welcoming place for professional women in the Jewish community.
As assistant executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, Roselle Ungar helped evacuees maintain community and find aid from basic necessities to scholarships for children.
A passionate supporter of Israel with decades of experience in fundraising for others, Donna Sternberg helped raise almost half a million dollars in aid to help her own community recover from Hurricane Katrina.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Lonnie Zarum Schaffer stepped up to lead her struggling Modern Orthodox synagogue, Anshe Sfard, rebuild themselves even better than before.
Accustomed as a shlucha (Chabad emissary) to helping those in her community, Bluma Rivkin went into action after Hurricane Katrina, first with the pressing concerns of finding housing and aid for evacuees, then with the larger task of rebuilding the community.
Both before Hurricane Katrina and during the long process of rebuilding New Orleans, Julie Wise Oreck has struck a balance between leading national Jewish institutions and focusing on organizations closer to home.
Sandy Levy’s lifetime of experience in New Orleans as a fundraiser and a preservationist made her uniquely suited to help survivors of Katrina rebuild their lives and their homes.
Ruth Kullman has dedicated her career to working for positive change in her community, from chairing her local Planned Parenthood to helping her synagogue recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Rebuilding her life time and again after great upheaval gave Lis Kahn unique insight as she helped the Jewish community of New Orleans heal after Hurricane Katrina.
A seasoned social worker and executive director of Jewish Family Service of Greater New Orleans, Deena Gerber helped residents put their lives back together in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The only woman in the Yale Law School class of 1941, Shirley Adelson Siegel became a trailblazer as head of the New York State Attorney’s first Civil Rights Bureau in 1959.
After a highly successful decade as the lead on Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert defied the odds for child actors by becoming a Hollywood power-broker as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 2001–2005.
In her four decades as an Emmy- and Tony-winning actress, Judith Light has repeatedly taken on challenging and unconventional roles, from a housewife-turned-prostitute on One Life to Live to ex-wife of a transgender woman on the acclaimed Transparent.
Inspired by the youth villages that allowed Israel to welcome staggering numbers of orphans after the Holocaust, Anne Heyman created the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village to shelter orphans of the Rwandan genocide.
Although she never became a rabbi, Jane Evans, Executive Director of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, became a powerful voice for women’s ordination within the Reform Movement.
In 2009, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld became the first female leader of an American rabbinical organization, serving as executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.
An unconventional CEO with tattoos, a black belt, and a reputation as a radical social activist, Stosh Cotler has mobilized Jewish Americans to fight for immigration reform, racial equality, and workers’ rights.
As a psychologist, Carolyn Goodman created early intervention programs for at-risk families, but when her son, Andrew Goodman, was killed during Freedom Summer, she became a powerful civil rights activist.
Yavilah McCoy is the founder of Ayecha, a nonprofit Jewish organization that provided Jewish diversity education and advocacy for Jews of color in the United States.
