The mission of AWP is to promote the leadership of women professionals within Jewish institutions at the national and local levels. The purposes of the project are twofold: first, to leverage the talents of women professionals on behalf of the Jewish community and second, to be a catalyst for change, helping Jewish organizations design more effective and fulfilling work environments. AWP programs are guided by the following strategies:

• Acknowledge and eradicate bias
• Link gender equity to improved organizational effectiveness
• Weave gender equity into every aspect of training, education and leadership development
• Apply wisdom from other fields while fostering “home-grown” change
• Enlist “champions” at all levels
• Benchmark and monitor progress

PROGRAM AREAS

Education and Consensus-Building: Since AWP’s launch, we have engaged professional and volunteer leaders of national, regional and local Jewish organizations in discussions about the status of women in their agencies. AWP professionals have made public presentations in many venues, including the Jewish Funders Network, United Jewish Communities General Assembly and Lion of Judah Conference, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Institute and Alumni Institutethe Association of Jewish Studies annual conference, the Rabbinical Assembly, and dozens of local communities.

Pilot Projects: AWP has partnered with three major Jewish institutions on pilot projects designed to create more conducive work environments for women professionals. These organizations have demonstrated how ideas, inquiry and dialogue can be converted in to useful programs and policies:

• At the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, AWP worked with regional Directors to help them become more effective consultants in the rabbinical search process. The goal was to make it possible for women to compete more successfully for rabbinical positions.

• At Hillel, AWP worked with staff to help them explore ways to meet the challenges of navigating life and work issues throughout their national system of college-based centers. As a result, Hillel has incorporated training sessions around life-work at annual conferences, inserted new language supporting work-life balance in the Personnel Code and includes this dimension in their annual personnel assessment.

• At the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in New York, AWP collaborated with senior management to develop guidelines for flexible work arrangements, as an explicit and practical way to enhance productivity and diversity. As a result, JBFCS has experimented with flexibility in several of its central departments (Human Resources, MIS) and is teaching senior managers and staff how to integrate such scheduling into its metropolitan network of social service agencies.

Conferences and Convenings: One of AWP’s central goals is to share “lessons learned” in its own work and from other fields:

• “Impact and Influence”: This 2003 conference, sponsored by Ma’yan: the Jewish Women’s Project, and designed by AWP’s Founding President, Shifra Bronznick, brought 90 influential women leaders together to accelerate the opportunities for women’s volunteer leadership in the Jewish community. This collaboration with Ma’yan laid the groundwork for AWP’s efforts to advance women professionals.

• “24/7: Is It Time to Change the Way We Work?” (May 2005) brought more than 100 professionals and volunteers together to examine assumptions and norms about navigating work and life in the Jewish community. This convening also showcased the life-work pilot projects launched by AWP at Hillel and JBFCS.

Research: AWP advocates for using research as the first intervention in gender equity change initiatives. In 2003, AWP and UJC launched a research project designed to identify the organizational norms, attitudes and practices that hindered professional women from achieving senior executive positions in federations. By involving leaders – professionals and volunteers – from fourteen communities in interviews, we began to focus attention on issues of gender equity. The report, “Creating Gender Equity and Organizational Effectiveness in the Federation System” was released in January 2004 and received wide media attention.

Partnerships: AWP is working with UJC on programs that will identify and cultivate women within the federation system. Since the leadership of the top Federations is responsible, in many ways, for determining the communal agenda, the AWP-UJC partnership represents an opportunity for long-term impact. This project is expected to serve as an innovative model for the entire organized Jewish community.