Emanu-El welcomes our new team of Directors for Membership and Congregational Engagement

April 24, 2019

We are thrilled to announce a successful conclusion to our search for Emanu-El’s new team of Directors for Membership and Congregational Engagement.

Before sharing the exciting details, we owe tribute to Terry Kraus, who is retiring at the end of June. Please plan to attend the June 21 One Shabbat service where we will honor Terry, who has served the Jewish community as a synagogue administrator for more than 30 years, and enriched Emanu-El for over 16 years. She has fearlessly taken on the challenge of synagogue membership through a period of daunting attrition rates, ensuring the strength of Jewish community among countless people across the country. We all recognize Terry’s warm and welcoming spirit makes her the ultimate connector and ambassador. Of course, replacing Terry is not possible.

That is why Terry’s impending retirement motivated us to take a step back, assess and re-envision membership, engagement, communications and our marketing strategies. We worked with organizational consultants for nearly a year to conduct an in-depth assessment. The consultants recommended aligning the staffing structure so that we can most effectively carry out our mission and goals. The recommendation was to hire three director-level positions, one as a senior director overseeing two directors in charge of membership and engagement.

We formed an advisory committee that included clergy, senior staff, several members of our Board of Directors and lay leaders: Dale Boutiette, Dana Corvin, Alan Greinetz, Melissa Koenigsberg, Sasha Kovriga, Rachel Melman, Paula Pretlow, and Anna Weinstein. The group started the search for the most senior position, ultimately deciding to interview three excellent candidates.

The feedback from the advisory committee was nearly universal – each candidate possessed an irreplaceable piece of the member experience and engagement puzzle. We assumed that finding three leaders per the consultants’ recommendations would be a long process. However, we were lucky enough to find and hire all three candidates at once.

We are pleased to bring on board:

· Randi Fields, Senior Director of Membership and Engagement Operations

Randi is an experienced nonprofit executive with a background in communications and managing complex projects. Since 2011, Randi has been Director of the Jewish Coalition for Literacy.

· Ariana Estoque, Director of Member Experience

Unbelievably, Ariana has worked at Emanu-El for more than 20 years in various capacities but primarily education. Ariana has been the Director of Adolescent Education since 2005 and in 2014 she added Adult Education and Israel Action to her portfolio. Ariana welcomes this opportunity to shift her focus to membership.

· Rabbi Sarah Joselow Parris, Director of Congregational Engagement

Rabbi Joselow Parris was ordained by the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College and has a diverse background in education and community organizing. She is relocating to San Francisco from New York, where she has been the Senior Jewish Educator at Columbia/Barnard Hillel.

We could not have dreamed of assembling a finer team. We believe that Randi, Ariana and Rabbi Joselow Parris, in partnership with our clergy and professional staff are poised to help us transition to the next iteration of what it means to be part of a renowned synagogue. Over the next couple of years, we expect that the experience of joining, engaging and volunteering with Emanu-El will become more meaningful and relevant to the lives of our members, and the community as a whole. We anticipate Ariana making a gradual transition to her new role, Rabbi Joselow Parris is slated to start June 1, and Randi will officially begin June 24.

Please feel free to reach out to us if you have questions or would like additional information.

Sincerely,

David Goldman, Executive Director

Rabbi Beth Singer, Senior Rabbi

Rabbi Jonathan Singer, Senior Rabbi

Elena Gary, CFO