Our People
Our Team
Dr. Sara Shapiro-Plevan, Ed.D.
Sara's professional focus considers the way relationships influence the ability to improve our practice, understand our work, and engage effectively with others as we build sustainable communities and workplaces. It is in this relational space that Sara came to appreciate the roles gender, power, and privilege play in understanding our workplace cultures, on the way to building equitable Jewish workplaces. Sara's work supports Jewish organizations to develop a networked, collaborative culture, support alignment with vision, and shift from hierarchy to flatter, networked organizational structures. As part of her work, Sara coaches individuals and teams as they imagine change, inextricably intertwined with the continuum of relationships and connections that make up our communities and workplaces.
Sara holds an EdD from The William Davidson Graduate School of Education of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her research aims to enable individuals, teams and communities to understand how they best work in relationship so that they might begin to shift their capacity to work in productive, connected ways to realize their–and their communities’–hopes and dreams. A passionate network weaver and facilitator, Sara works to build relationships to both cultivate and leverage connections to catalyze and generate positive change. Sara is the founder of Rimonim Consulting and is receiving coaching certification from CRRGlobal, with a focus on organizational and relational systems.
She holds a BA in Near Eastern and Jewish Studies from Brandeis University and an MA in Jewish Education from JTS, and was a fellow in the Senior Educators Program of the Melton Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora at Hebrew University. Sara also holds a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace Certificate from the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida. She is a mikveh guide and volunteer at ImmerseNYC, New York’s Jewish community mikveh, and serves on the boards of FatTorah and Camp Ramah in New England. Sara proudly uses sports metaphors in her work (albeit often incorrectly), thanks to her husband and son, who are both Knicks and Mets fans.
Reach Sara Shapiro-Plevan here.
Sara Beth Berman
Sara Beth is proud to partner with the Gender Equity in Hiring Project. Sara Beth, a writer, podcaster, and storyteller, has spent her career as an Experiential Jewish Educator and Consultant, working on curriculum development, teen programming, professional development, and programmatic initiatives. Her decades of work in the Jewish nonprofit sector has prepared Sara Beth to train people in all levels of their careers to negotiate, self-advocate, and ask good questions. Sara Beth worked on a remote educational startup at The Jewish Education Project, ran the Newish Jewish Professionals Institute & the Graduate Fellowship at UJA-Federation NY, served as the Nadiv Educator at URJ Camp Coleman and the Davis Academy in Atlanta, Georgia, and was the Associate Director of Storahtelling, a Jewish ritual theatre company. She has spent time working for the Foundation for Jewish Camp, and a number of Jewish summer camps through North America, after beginning her career in Human Resources at Penguin Group (USA). Sara Beth received her BS in Psychology from the University of Florida and her MA in Jewish Education from the Davidson School at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Reach Sara Beth Berman here.
Advisory Circle
Our Advisory Circle draws on a non-hierarchical model that weaves together a network of advisors who share in organizational decision-making. Together with our professionals, our Advisory Circle offers advice, sets goals and designs outcomes, while engaged in a reflective, collaborative and strategic process. Advisory Circle members are experts in their various domains, engaged in Jewish professional and communal life, members of our networks, and deeply involved in striving for gender justice and equity. As such, they offer their wisdom and advice to set our course for the future.
The GEiHP Advisory Circle addresses questions that guide us toward integrity and justice in our work. We practice this governance process grounded in seeking advice from those affected, not just our leadership, and from experts. We take a multitude of perspectives into consideration, accessing collective wisdom on our journey toward action. This process dismantles typical power structures and distributes leadership and power to anyone who seeks initiative and advice. We believe that this exemplifies our feminist values in action, as a radical partnership and collaboration that will lead toward more equitable hiring, employment and workplaces, and model how we can work together in more equitable ways, too.
To be fully equitable, we must embrace a full reflection of the Jewish community in the voices, profiles and people who are a part of our Advisory Circle. We are not there yet. We hold open seats around our Circle for communities, perspectives, opinions and people who are not yet represented in our work. If this is you, we invite you in.
