Original article by Jewish Federation Bay Area, published on June 30, 2026.
What does it look like when a community truly invests in its women leaders — not just by promoting them, but by creating space for them to discover themselves, build deep collegial bonds, and realize their fullest potential? For the Jewish community of the Bay Area and beyond, the answer is the Voices for Good Fellowship, a transformational two-year program created by Jewish LearningWorks, and made possible in part by the generous support of the Federation.
Now in its third cohort, Voices for Good has quietly and powerfully changed the lives and careers of 35 women professionals in Jewish communal life, including a number of Federation professionals themselves. This is the story of how it started, how it works, and why it matters.
The Lightbulb Moment
The Voices for Good Fellowship didn’t emerge from a strategic planning retreat or a grant opportunity. It grew from a reckoning.
In 2017, Jewish LearningWorks — whose mission is to nurture Jewish educators, inspire innovation, and build Jewish literacy — conducted a landscape analysis of the field of Jewish education in the Bay Area. The findings were striking: roughly 75-80% of the field was composed of women. Dana Sheanin, Jewish LearningWorks Chief Executive Officer (at the time, Chief Strategy Officer), recognized that the organization’s work supporting Jewish educators meant supporting Jewish women. It was a lightbulb moment — she realized her organization was not yet doing enough to address the specific challenges Jewish women faced.
Jenni Mangel, Senior Director of Impact and Evaluation at Jewish LearningWorks, who has helped lead the fellowship since its inception, describes it this way: “We decided that we needed to dial in and do what we could to support Jewish women in the workplace, lifting their voices. That was the genesis for this program.”
The first cohort launched in 2018 and ran through 2020. Six years and three cohorts later, Voices for Good has become one of the most distinctive leadership development offerings in the Jewish communal world.
