Today, after over six years of service as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, I have announced my resignation in order to become President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). I want to share some personal reflections about this exciting opportunity, and what it means both for St. Louis and HUC-JIR.

I came to the Federation after a process of recruitment that began in January of 2012. I had not intended to leave my prior career as a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis. However, I saw the role as an opportunity to support an important, vibrant Jewish community.

North American Jewish communities are facing complex challenges; and, I believed and still believe that Jewish Federations are uniquely situated to address them. Jewish Federations were set up to address urgent existential threats characteristic of the 20th century. As the threats have changed, Federations have been significantly challenged. In times of dynamic change, legacy institutions must recognize the different nature of the threat before them and be willing to change appropriately to address them.

In St. Louis, through a truly inspirational staff, board leadership, and philanthropic investors, we reimagined a legacy institution to take its strength and reposition it as a community development organization. This is an organization that operates “bottom-up,” engaging people first, and seeking collaborative partnerships to improve our entire region.

This engagement-first, community building strategy is much different from the long-standing view that Federations were simply fundraising organizations. We do not just fundraise, we seek investors to help us achieve our mission. And that mission is to preserve and enhance Jewish life in St. Louis, Israel and anywhere there is a need. We help individuals lead lives of dignity, meaning and purpose. We build connections to our tradition, our people, and Israel, so that Jewish engagement and service to others becomes part of a life well lived.

Oh, and by the way, that work requires significant philanthropic investment.

Just like any other non-profit organization.

Therefore, while we may no longer be simply a fundraising organization, our donors’ philanthropic support remains critically important and central to what we do.

By inspiring our donors to invest based on our mission beyond “raising money,” we have achieved real results. Since adopting our community-development, engagement-first framework we have attracted far greater financial support and significantly outpaced our peer Federations throughout North America.

Coming from the outside enabled me to look at old problems in new ways and develop a new vision to deliver on our mission.

While the vision may have been mine, the achievements of our Federation are not mine alone. They are the achievements of a team comprised of the 65 individuals who work tirelessly in partnership with dozens of volunteer committee members to inspire, educate, serve and connect our community.

They are the achievements of the security team members who warmly welcome people at our front desk and our support staff who make sure our administration runs smoothly.

They are the achievements of the fiscal team that helped us achieve a 4-star Charity Navigator rating last year.

They are the achievements of our marketing team that creates impactful and inspiring communications.

They are the achievements of our facilities and operations team that ensures our building is a welcoming place to be.

They are the achievements of our community impact team (what we used to call “planning & allocations”) that identifies our community’s needs and invests our resources for maximal impact: saving lives, supporting those in need and connecting individuals to Jewish life, here in St. Louis, in Israel and around the world.

They are the achievements of the educational team of the Center for Jewish Learning who tell the story of our people and inspire about our tradition.

They are the achievements of our engagement team who connect people to Israel, to PJ Library, and to leadership development through the Millstone Institute.

They are the achievements of the team at the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center that is well on its way to establishing a new museum to fight hate and antisemitism today, preserve the legacy of our St. Louis survivors, and ensure that the lessons of that dark time are never forgotten—for our own community and our entire region.

They are the achievements of the NORC team who help hundreds of seniors combat loneliness and isolation.

They are the achievements of our development team who help inspire the philanthropic investment of our community to serve others.

And they the achievements of are our officers, our Boards of Directors and Trustees, our Women’s Philanthropy team, and the more than 500—yes 500!—individuals who over the last 12 months decided to get involved in our work in some way.

I may be leaving, but the work of the Federation will remain; and I am confident it will remain strong.

Given the importance of the work we are doing and the dynamic team now in place, it was not an easy decision to pursue the presidency of HUC-JIR. But when I received an invitation to apply for the job, I recognized the enormous potential of HUC-JIR to shape the future of professional leadership of the Jewish world, and through its graduates, to shape the future of the Jewish people globally.

The opportunity to lead HUC-JIR was appealing to me because it allows me to return to academia and bring together different parts of my professional and personal life. At the same time, I applied to this position with intense humility, recognizing that while I am a committed Reform Jew, I am not a rabbi or cantor. Could someone with my experience and background lead the flagship seminary of the Reform Movement?

HUC-JIR is a broad institution of higher learning with graduate programs that train students to become rabbis, cantors, Jewish educators, Jewish non-profit management professionals, scholars, and pastoral counselors. I hope that my wide-ranging professional background and personal engagement with Jewish life will bring to HUC-JIR a new kind of leadership that will help energize and inspire its extraordinary faculty, staff, and students across all programs and all four campuses.

HUC-JIR is a uniquely positioned institution with the resources, history, reach, and most importantly, the commitment of its alumni, the thousands of professionals it has trained who have become some of the most important Jewish leaders in the world today. I am thrilled by the opportunity to work collaboratively with a dynamic team of professionals, deans, program directors, academic administrators, and faculty in Cincinnati, New York, Los Angeles, and Jerusalem to shape the future of professional Jewish leadership by inspiring, educating, and learning from a new generation of students.

I can only hope to live up to the historic legacy of transformational leadership that characterized those who held this position before me, from its founders, Isaac Mayer Wise and Stephen S. Wise, to its most recent president of blessed memory, Aaron D. Panken.

As we prepare to leave St. Louis later in 2019, I have to end with a more personal note.

This city has been our home since 2001. Along with the Federation, key institutions have created deep roots for us. Central Reform Congregation, Kol Rinah, Temple Israel, and B’nai Amoona, along with Hillel at Wash U and the JCRC, have created deep personal connections and shaped our family’s Jewish identities. Washington University, St. Louis University, Crossroads College Prep, and Flynn Park Elementary School shaped our family’s educational and professional lives. These institutions and the people who welcomed our family created a deep sense of belonging for us; they will continue to draw us back to our region.

I am truly honored and humbled to have been selected to become the 13th president of the College-Institute. I will carry the warmth of the St. Louis community with me as I approach this new role with the same 3-step process I took when I came to our Federation as an outsider over 6 years ago: to listen, listen, and listen to the key stakeholders who make HUC-JIR the premier Jewish seminary in North America, a world renowned institution of higher Jewish learning that is dedicated to the formation of academic, spiritual, and professional leadership for Reform Judaism and the wider world.