ABOUT MOVING TRADITIONS

Moving Traditions believes it is critically important for the Jewish community at this time of cultural upheaval and polarization to help Jewish preteens and teens navigate the world so they will thrive as healthy, ethical, and Jewishly connected people.

While a majority of Jewish teens will become b-mitzvah, most drop out of Jewish life soon after, leaving the Jewish community at a critical stage, just when they are figuring out who they are and how to behave in a society that often dictates narrow and unhealthy gender roles and ways of dealing with differences.

Moving Traditions connects the issues pre-teens and teens care about most—such as body image, social and academic pressure, friendship, romance, and sexuality—to enduring Jewish values, fosters positive peer-to-peer relationships through the trained educators and mentors, and inspires participants to develop an ongoing connection to Jewish community. By promoting a more inclusive and expansive view of gender for Jewish girls, boys, and transgender and nonbinary teens, Moving Traditions creates a more vibrant, engaging Judaism that helps all teens to flourish.

Impact:

Moving Traditions inspires Jewish youth of all genders to pursue personal wholeness, healthy relationships, and a just and inclusive world. We advance our mission by investing in the Jewish community, partnering with synagogues, JCCs, camps, and other institutions, and by training clergy and Jewish educators to implement our programming so that preteens and teens will grow and thrive. We:

1. Connect Jewish wisdom to social-emotional learning and contemporary understandings of gender and identity to help Jewish youth figure out who they are, relate to others with compassion and respect, and work for social justice.

2. Research issues and create resources imbued with our unique approach, to help preteens, teens, and their parents explore and navigate the joys and challenges of their daily lives.

3. Train clergy, Jewish educators, and other adult mentors to facilitate open and honest conversations and transformative Jewish experiences, both in person and online.

We help Jewish youth to flourish through a suite of programs including Moving Traditions B-Mitzvah Family Education for preteens and parents; Teen Groups including Rosh Hodesh for teen girls, Shevet for teen boys, Tzelem for LGBTQ+ teens, and Kulam for everyone; and the Kol Koleinu activist fellowship for young feminists. Through the CultureShift initiative, Moving Traditions prepares camp leaders to train counselors to prevent sexual harassment and assault and to promote a culture of safety, respect, and equity at Jewish camp.

Since it was established in 2005, Moving Traditions has emboldened more than 28,000 preteens and teens by partnering with more than 500 Jewish institutions across North America.

Moving Traditions has an operating budget of just over $3M, a staff of 23 and raises an annual fundraising campaign of $2.6M.

More information about Moving Traditions can be found at: https://www.movingtraditions.org/.

POSITION

The Moving Traditions CEO reports to the Board of Directors, is supervised by the Board Chair, and has overall strategic and operational responsibility for the organization. The CEO:

• Combines leadership and management abilities and is responsible for the organization’s consistent achievement of its mission, strategic goals, and financial objectives.
• Articulates the vision and goals of the organization to inspire the Jewish community to better understand and work with youth, and to secure resources and build relationships to advance the organization.
• Advances the organization’s culture, capability, processes, and impact.
• Ensures that Moving Traditions has a long-range strategy to achieve its mission, and toward which the organization makes consistent and timely progress.
• Monitors trends and opportunities and leads the adaptation of Moving Traditions’ tactics as needed.
• Partners with the Chair to enable the Board to fulfill its governance and fiduciary functions.
• Inspires innovation and works with the Vaad (Moving Tradition’s high-performance management team) to ensure that the organization is continually well equipped to advance its mission, makes progress on goals defined in the strategic plan, and achieves annual goals and objectives.

Priorities: 

• Be a visionary; hold and represent the current state of the mission and have a vision for the future in leading the intersection of Judaism/gender justice/ wellness/ adolescence
• Be a leader in the gender justice space; be present and be a national figure in all things related to feminism and gender justice
• Be bold in fundraising! Create, grow and maintain donor relationships
• Maintain and inspire a collaborative, creative, and flexible organizational culture
• Integrate the strategic plan; namely expand and grow the number of Jewish youth that Moving Traditions impacts and the organization’s sphere of influence

RESPONSIBILITIES

Leadership & Management

• Provides thoughtful and visionary leadership that is inclusive and transparent to support and guide the organization’s mission.
• Actively engages and energizes Moving Traditions’ Board members, partnering organizations, and funders.
• Develops, maintains, and supports an active Board of Directors; serves as ex-officio on each committee and leverages Vaad and other staff leadership to support Board committees; seeks and builds board involvement with strategic direction.
• Communicates effectively with the Board by providing members with all information necessary to make informed decisions in a timely and accurate manner.
• Leads, develops, and retains the Vaad.
• Oversees the VP/Chief of Program to ensure ongoing programmatic excellence, rigorous program evaluation, and use of resources to achieve the strategic goals.
• Ensures that staff manage effective systems to track and regularly evaluate progress toward goals, and to measure successes and challenges that can be effectively communicated to the Board, funders, and other constituents.

• Forges and maintains positive relationships with major individual and institutional funders; expands the pool of potential funders, with the VP/Chief of Advancement and the Chief of External Relations, as well as the Board.
• Promotes Moving Traditions’ mission and thought leadership.
• Represents the organization and serves as chief spokesperson at events, conferences, partnership meetings, and to the media.
• Oversees the VP/Chief of Advancement to ensure that the development team builds revenue-generating and fundraising activities to support existing operations and Moving Traditions’ growth.
• Oversees the VP/Chief of Advancement to ensure that the communications team deepens and refines all aspects of communications—from web presence to external relations with the goal of creating a stronger brand.
• Ensures the organization’s financial stability and sustainability by maintaining healthy cash flow and adequate reserves, with the VP/Chief of Advancement and the Board.

Financial Management, Human Relations, and Administration 

• Oversees the work of the VP/CFO in managing the financial, administrative, personnel, and operational functions of the organization in accordance with Moving Traditions’ mission, objectives, policies, and values.
• Assumes responsibility for the fiscal integrity of the organization.
• Works with the VP/CFO, Finance Committee, and the Board in preparing a budget.
• With the VP/CFO, ensures that the organization operates within budget guidelines.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

Experiences: 

• Development experience, proven track record in donor cultivation and retention
• Experience with building and working with a Board
• Experience of being the public face of an organization
• Has built out/scaled up a national organization
• Experience at growing an organization, able to negotiate alliances and partnerships
• Managed multi-million-dollar budget
• Public speaking and professional writing experience, contributed to thought leadership in their field
• Experience with building organizational strategy

• Strong management and leadership skills
• Build excellent (cross-functional and agile) teams, collaborator, promotes engaging and inspiring work environment
• Relationship builder, both internal and external
• Excellent communicator – internal and external, written and public speaking
• Strong capability to be the external public face of the organization
• Delegation skills and experience, fosters a culture of trust and support
• Strategic mindset, can create a vision
• Active listener and learner
• Financial acumen; recognizes both financial opportunities and threats
• Sophisticated development, stewardship, and solicitation skills
• Can identify and negotiate strategic opportunities and partnerships
• Passion for Moving Tradition’s mission

This position description is based upon material provided by Moving Traditions, which is an equal opportunity employer.

Sarah Skrovan

Associate

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Sarah Raful Whinston

Senior Search Consultant

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