Gender Equity Advocates Seminar & Workshop: South Florida (Cohort 12)

We invite you to join our 12th cohort of Gender Equity Advocates, especially for changemakers from South Florida.

As a Gender Equity Advocate, you'll join the communal effort to address gender bias in the Jewish workplace, with a specific focus on how employees are hired, retained, employed and advanced by and in our Jewish organizations. We begin with our biases, contemplating where our personal stories intersect with our work. We then step into these biases, examining how they function in our lives and work, how they influence our communication and decision-making, and where these biases emerge in intersection with hiring and employment. We then consider the multi-phased work of the hiring committee and our professional partners, and the various steps of the hiring process, as we imagine how to constitute these committees and professional roles to effectively combat bias and strive for equity. As we reimagine this process, we consider our first strategies toward understanding our relationships, the challenge of power, and the questions that drive our work and our values as we plan for a future that is less biased and more just and equitable for women and people of all genders.

Our Learning:   As we engage in close textual reading as a tool to consider how language influences behavior, we continue to consider our biases, as we notice and observe social and cultural norms and shift our behavior. We use job descriptions to evaluate language and evaluate ourselves, as our primary text to lift up opportunities to create gender equitable internal and external organizational processes.

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We design for action, as we uncover helpful, practical strategies for identifying challenges in hiring and employment processes, with templates for advocacy located in thoughtful, organizational strategy and a desire to create supportive, equitable workplace cultures. Our work is deeply relational, and we focus on considering and mapping the roles we play in our organizations, and those with whom we are in relationship. In order to more deeply understand power and connection, and clarify our images of leadership, we tap into our own power to advocate and make change.

We believe that hiring and employment processes that are more gender-equitable enable women rise to positions of leadership, and will also enable our Jewish organizations to hire the best candidates at the same time--and that a rising tide will lift all ships, supporting all those who work in the Jewish not-for-profit sector to be enriched and satisfied by their work, regardless of gender. We believe that designing for equity in hiring and employment processes requires us to be intersectional in our thinking and our practice, and we invite you to join us in this space.  Our work is to tap into the greatest potential our community has to offer, and to enable us to release our biases and preconceived notions that hold us back from recognizing the powerful human resources in our midst. If you are ready to begin advocating for yourself and your colleagues, and this is a change that you feel committed to amplifying, we invite you to join us.

Who should join us?   Our Gender Equity Advocates are professionals and lay leaders fundamental to the success of their organizations, embedded in their Jewish communities as this work is done within their current roles. Gender Equity Advocates represent a diverse array of voices for all kinds of change toward gender-equitable and unbiased processes, language and behaviors across our Jewish organizations. We welcome all those who are curious, passionate and eager to learn, within their current professional and/or volunteer roles.​ 

Why South Florida?       We are pleased to partner with the South Florida Jewish community to consider how advocacy may have an impact across this communal system as professionals and volunteer leaders in partnership work together toward gender equity in hiring and employment. This cohort is funded in part by a generous grant from Herizon, the Jewish Women's Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches. Together, we will strive to have a measurable impact on the ways in which gender bias is addressed and mitigated across workplaces throughout the South Florida Jewish community, and make concrete changes on the ground both in practice, perception, policy and personal relationships. If you live and/or work in Palm Beach, Broward, or Miami/Dade Counties (and Monroe, Martin, or any counties in the greater Tampa/St. Pete or Orlando Metro areas, too), please consider joining us. 

Our Schedule:  The Gender Equity Advocates Seminar meets for a total of 6 sessions.

Please note that the first and last will be IN PERSON, and the middle four will be VIRTUAL.

• IN PERSON: Monday, December 12, 2022       9:30am-1:30pm ET
• VIRTUAL:      Thursday, January 12, 2023          11:00am-1:30pm ET
• VIRTUAL:      Thursday, January 26, 2023          11:00am-1:30pm ET
• VIRTUAL:      Thursday, February 9, 2023           11:00am-1:30pm ET
• VIRTUAL:      Thursday, March 2, 2023                 11:00am-1:30pm ET
• IN PERSON: Monday, March 20, 2023                 9:30am-1:30pm ET

Registration is limited to 20.

Please note that our location for our in-person sessions will be announced ASAP. We will be located in easy proximity to I-95, likely in Boca, so that we are centrally located and most accessible to all. 

Time Commitment & Participation: Expectations

• Our in-person sessions are 4 hours (total of 8 hours in person over the course of 2 sessions), inviting our learners to engage in conversation and debate, presentation, writing, independent reflection and small group dialogue, weaving a community of learners to begin our work as advocates as part of a networked community.
• Our virtual sessions are 2.5 hours (total 10 hours virtual), with a few weeks in between, engaging many of the same modalities represented in our in-person work and offering ample break time to stretch our minds and bodies.

Pre and Post-Learning:   Gender Equity Advocates will prepare for each session with a combination of pre-learning, time in chevruta (dialogue and conversation with learning partners) and independent learning, drawn from a curated selection of short articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos and a multitude of other creative sources (approximately 3 hours over the full program).  Part of this work will involve connection with other colleagues in our cohort, both synchronous and asynchronous, as we share stories and engage in debate and dialogue and grow our relationship. 

Gender Equity Advocates Network:  Upon the completion of our learning together, you will join a network of 150+ Gender Equity Advocates engaged in changing their organizations from the inside, working toward bias mitigation and changing our Jewish ecosystem. Membership in our Gender Equity Advocates Network is included, and will help to anchor your practice as you grow as an advocate. 

Accommodations & Learning Modalities: Our learning together (both virtual and in-person) involves dialogue, small group work, discussion, writing and drawing individually and in groups, reflection, chat/polling and other forms of active virtual participation. Each session will include pre- and post- work. Our virtual sessions are not a webinar format: we believe in engaged connection and dialogue. 

If you need support or any accommodations, please let us know how we can welcome you and support you best.

GEiHP Equitable Fee Policies:   

We are grateful for the generous support from our funders, including Herizon, the Jewish Women's Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches, the Leader Family Foundation, and the Safety Respect Equity Network, who make our work possible. Thanks to our generous funders, costs are minimal—so we can all afford to make change together. We’re saving you a seat.

Because our work is rooted in equity as a value, we bring an equity lens to our payment and fees as well. We believe that equity is about giving people what they need, to make things fair. The concept of equity is synonymous with fairness and justice. Here, we can use equity to build a system of trusting each other to pay what they can, to be willing to give and to receive, and to see all of us as one whole, working together to build a more equitable world.

• SUSTAIN: If you (or your employer) are able to offer more to sustain our work, keep this program accessible and equitable and make it possible for another person to participate, please choose this registration category. In doing so, you sustain our work and the ability of others to participate without having to ask.
• BALANCE:  If you’re able to pay the fee we consider a balanced exchange for this experience and learning, please choose this registration category.
• SUPPORT: If your participation requires a partial scholarship, please use this registration category.

GEiHP Refund and Cancellation Policies. Due to limited seating, we request that you cancel at least one week before our workshop begins. This gives us the opportunity to fill the course. Cancellations made 7 days or more in advance of the event date will receive a 100% refund. Cancellations made within 3 - 6 days will incur a 25% fee. Unfortunately, cancellations made within 24 hours of the beginning of the program will be non-refundable, and cancellations (or withdrawals) after the beginning of the program are also non-refundable.

Questions? Please contact us at info@genderequityinhiringproject.org with any questions.