Dear Colleagues,
We are excited to announce that, starting July 1, Sheryl Katzman will be our Senior Director of Member Engagement. We created this position directly in response to our Strategic Plan, which calls for a shift towards a focus on facilitating relationships among rabbis and transitioning the structure of our staff towards supporting a networked organization of distributed leadership.
As Senior Director of Member Engagement, Sheryl will join our RA's rabbinic staff in fulfillment of our strategic plan's mandate to support and connect with our members. In this role, Sheryl will:
- Create networks and connections that strengthen members individually and as a collective.
- Develop new ways for colleagues to convene (physically and virtually) for shared experience and relationships.
- Nurture a culture of care and support among RA members.
- Foster development of leadership skills among colleagues in their work, and develop a strong pipeline of volunteers and leadership for Our RA.
Sheryl is very familiar with this work as she served as co-chair of our RA's strategic planning work since 2016 and has been an officer of our RA since 2015. Having been an integral part of our visioning and implementation, we are so excited that Sheryl has chosen to bring her strategic thinking, extensive knowledge of educational methodologies, and enthusiasm for supporting colleagues in our sacred work to our RA full-time. (If you'd like to know more about Sheryl's background, her bio is below.)
We are also in the final interview stages for the Director of Continuing Rabbinic Education, Mentorship and Career Development and look forward to updating our membership about this position in April.
And if you'd like to know more about what our RA has accomplished in the past year, please read our 2019 Annual Report.
We look forward to welcoming Sheryl to the team when she officially starts in July.
Jacob Blumenthal and Debra Newman Kamin
Rabbi Sheryl Katzman is the Associate Director of the Legacy Heritage Instructional Leadership Institute of the Wm. Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Sheryl began working with the Jewish Day School Standards and Benchmarks Project as a consultant in 2011 and has had the privilege of working with a wide spectrum of Jewish day schools across North America supporting instructional leaders in gaining the leadership skills necessary to develop learning environments that engage the hearts and minds of students in the study of sacred Jewish text.
Sheryl began her career in Day School education at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Metropolitan Chicago where she taught middle school Tanakh and served as the Rabbi in Residence, Middle and Elementary school principals. After earning a BA at the University of Michigan, Sheryl attended the Jewish Theological Seminary where she earned rabbinic ordination with a concentration in Tanakh, and a Masters in Jewish Education.