Investing in a new generation of communal leaders

After he graduated from college in 2023, Ezra Emerson of Bergenfield wanted to spend some time working in a nonprofit, so he joined the Orthodox Union’s new Executive Fellowship program. “The OU is doing a lot for the Jewish people,” Mr. Emerson said. He hoped to be part of that service and to spend time helping the next generation.

The OU launched the fellowship last fall as an investment in future nonprofit leadership. The 10-month program for early career professionals is intended to create a new cohort of communal leaders, Shai Kopitnikoff said. He is the OU’s assistant director of talent development and will lead the program next year.

Each fellow joins one of the OU’s departments, where he or she is mentored by senior staff members. The eight members of the inaugural class worked in a wide range of departments — human resources; information technology; marketing; synagogue initiatives; community projects; the OU’s youth group, NCSY; Yachad, the OU division that works with people with disabilities and their families; and the OU’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus.

Mr. Emerson, who graduated from Yeshiva University’s Sy Syms School of Business, was in the marketing department, where he worked on a variety of projects, including podcasts, conferences, and livestreams; as he did so, he developed his skills in video editing and filming.

This was his first experience working in an office, he said, and he appreciated the opportunity to develop “good time-management skills, as well as a healthy work-life balance.” He’s also grateful for the friends he made during the year.

Adina Peck joined the program’s inaugural cohort after graduating from Emory University. She worked in synagogue initiatives, the OU department that supports synagogue leadership across North America, and she found the work particularly meaningful. “I come from North Carolina, and I know what it means to be part of a small, close-knit Jewish community, and how important the synagogue is to communal life,” she said. “So it was really intriguing to me to have the opportunity to see what happens on the inside, behind the scenes, for synagogues, and to be able to support that.”

Ms. Peck was involved in communicating with shuls and disseminating information to professional and lay leaders. She started last August, and October 7 happened soon after, “so the priorities of what we were talking about with shuls changed,” she said. “Security and Israel initiatives became much more of a focus.” She wound up coordinating different initiatives to connect synagogues across North America with Israel. One project involved giving synagogue members the opportunity to write letters to bereaved families in Israel.

The inaugural class of fellows made important contributions to the OU, Mr. Kopitnikoff said. They helped further the organization’s communal work and “brought fresh perspectives, new energy, and new ideas to their departments.” And while he sees that as an important benefit of the program, the primary goal is for fellows to make an impact far beyond the OU.

“By providing opportunities to appreciate the beauty and complexity of nonprofit work, the OU is investing in the future of Jewish communal organizations,” he said. “The only way to ensure a thriving community is to systematically involve the next generation in communal work, and to foster their desire to make meaningful impacts within it.”

To that end, the fellowship includes opportunities for the cohort to learn about some of the work being done by the OU and other Jewish nonprofits. The group visited a range of organizations, including Yeshiva University, Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters, the Jewish Federations of North America, Agudath Israel of America, the Masbia soup kitchen, and JLIC branches at Columbia and New York University, and they met with staff there.

Fellows are mentored by a variety of OU professional and lay leaders, and they work together on community-oriented projects. In October, the inaugural cohort traveled to Florida as part of an OU relief mission and worked with evangelical Christian groups to help residents affected by Hurricane Ian. At the March for Israel in Washington in November, fellows distributed water bottles and tehillim cards to 12,000 people as they stepped off buses near the National Mall.

“Our fellows can contribute to the greater Jewish community in unique kinds of ways that ordinary employees might not have the time or opportunity to,” Mr. Kopitnikoff said. He’s excited about the “cross-departmental innovation” the inaugural cohort brought to the organization over the past year and plans to schedule time for next year’s group to “meet regularly to collaborate and discuss ways to help the broader Jewish community and ways to further different initiatives.” He hopes to see fellows who work in different departments “working with each other to innovate and collaborate in ways that we now know are possible.”

The initiative is designed to cultivate both professional communal leaders and lay leaders, Mr. Kopitnikoff added. “We want the community to have more people with this type of experience.”

The fellowship is also intended to support early career professionals. “This is a great opportunity for fellows to learn and to grow, on both a professional level and a personal level, in a supportive cohort environment that promotes self-discovery,” Mr. Kopitnikoff said. And it’s intended to help participants “get a better sense of what they want to be doing in life.”

Mr. Emerson plans to make aliyah in the fall. He hopes to work in marketing and is looking at opportunities in both the nonprofit and private sectors. And he really enjoyed the opportunity to explore nonprofit work. Before participating in the fellowship, “I didn’t know if I wanted to go into the nonprofit world,” he said. “But now it definitely is something I’m going to keep my eyes on, because I can see what it does for the Jewish people.”

Ms. Peck also found that the program helped her consider different career paths. She is not sure about her long-term plans, but she’s now thinking about a career in human resources. She plans to join the OU’s human resources department in the fall and to work with Mr. Kopitnikoff to coordinate next year’s fellowship program. Her degree is in psychology, and she wants to “help people live more purposeful, fulfilling lives,” she said. She had assumed she would do that in a clinical setting, but “supporting professionals in their place of work” during her time in the synagogue initiatives department helped her realize that “you can make a huge difference by helping people in their professional roles” since they tend to spend a lot of their time at work.

Mr. Kopitnikoff is looking forward to next year’s program. “I’m really excited about the incoming cohort,” he said. “And I’m so thankful to our inaugural fellows who have really done tremendous work and I’m excited to start building an alumni network.”

To learn more and for an application, go to
www.ou.org/fellowship/about.