Director of Engagement

Join the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale (Yale Hillel) as Director of Engagement to enrich the lives of students and shape Jewish life on campus. As an experienced engagement professional, you will be the primary professional responsible for our mandate to reach as many Jewish Yale students as possible in every academic year. Reporting to the Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain, you will create and oversee a sophisticated and detailed strategy to map out the Yale campus and make Jewish life compelling and accessible to the full diversity of Jewish students. You will use data to track progress, guide priorities, and engage other members of the Student Facing Staff as partners in this work. Additionally, the Director of Engagement will be the “go-to” program-planning resource for our Hillel Student Board, whose goals and activities are crucially important to reaching as many students as possible. You will also manage a small team of “breadth-focused” engagement professionals, which we expect to grow over the next two academic years.

Successful professionals in this role will use critical and strategic thinking, leadership skills, relationship-building expertise, and their energetic presence to quickly build a robust and trusting rapport with students and colleagues both at Slifka Center and elsewhere at Yale. The Director of Engagement will join a staff team spearheaded by visionary leadership. You will not only play a pivotal role in hundreds of students’ lives – you will work with us in developing a new picture of what college Jewish life can and should be. Start date is flexible, no later than August 1, 2022.

What You’ll Be Responsible For

• Planning, facilitating, and evaluating a variety of Jewish life opportunities and initiatives
• Ensuring that our student engagement work is consistent with the vision for Jewish life as articulated by the Howard M. Holtzmann for Jewish Life and Executive Director.
• Ensuring that activities and initiatives are marketed effectively to their target audiences in collaboration with our student and staff communications teams.
• Building and monitoring the general engagement and Israel engagement budgets
• Overseeing engagement of first-year students, from the moment they express interest in Yale.
• Recruiting, training, and supervising student leaders and interns
• Functioning as a key educational and organizational resource to student leadership as they build Jewish life and community for graduate students and young professionals.
• Supporting student-initiated programs and serving as a Jewish resource to students and groups on campus
• Identifying uninvolved/under-involved student populations and developing strategies for contacting and engaging them
• Overseeing our Israel engagement portfolio, including supervising our new Jewish Agency Israel Fellow.
• Attending a large number of programs, including some evenings, Shabbatot, and holidays – in rotation with other members of the Student Facing Staff
• Representing Hillel on campus with students, as appropriate, as well as within the wider community
• Serving as a liaison to the local Jewish community and university organizations, especially with regards to joint efforts
• Working collaboratively with the Executive Director and Development department to help prepare grant proposals and reports for engagement initiatives.

What You’ll Do

• Build individual relationships with students and expand overall student engagement to reach every one of the estimated 800 Jewish undergraduates at Yale, and a similar number of graduate students
• Connect students with a variety of opportunities including Hillel leadership positions, Jewish life including jobs and internships, Jewish trips abroad, travel to Israel (including Birthright), Jewish and Israel-related conferences, and more.
• Attend weekly Student-Facing Staff meetings and 1-on-1 supervision meetings with the Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain
• Be accountable for receipts and charges related to engagement work.
• Supervise a team of engagement professionals in daily communication and management of the student relationships and program implementation
• Work with the administrative team to manage our student tracking database and provide appropriate reports for development purposes.
• Work with the Development Team and members of the Student Facing Staff to write proposals and reports for grants and other funds to support student engagement.
• Supervise, support, and evaluate our Israel Fellow and his/her/their work engaging students through and Israel-focused lens.
• Supervise student interns, when applicable.
• Support our Social Justice and Arts Springboard Fellow’s work engaging students through a social justice and arts lens.
• Together with the Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain, facilitate the day-to-day student-facing work of Slifka Center including programs and events that shape the student experience both at Slifka Center and at Yale.

What You’ve Accomplished

• College degree (BA/BS)
• 2-4 years of Hillel or other community building experience
• Proven success as a relationship builder; experience building a student engagement plan is a plus
• Supervisory experience is preferred

What You’ll Bring to the Job

• A passion for student engagement work and an appreciation for the importance of every Jewish student we reach
• Thoughtfulness and intentionality
• Great attention to detail and strong project management skills
• An authentic love of pluralistic Jewish living and learning.
• Experience creating strategic plans to build relationships across multiple microcommunities.
• Enthusiasm, energy, and a team-oriented approach
• Clear communication and interest in entering feedback loops with your supervisor, supervisees, and students
• Leadership skills and excitement about managing a team

What You’ll Receive

• The salary range for this position is $50,000-$60,000, commensurate with experience
• A comprehensive benefits package, including health insurance, Group Supplemental Retirement Annuity (GSRA), retirement plan, life insurance, Long Term Disability (LTD), Flexible Spending Plan, generous vacation/sick time, and parental leave. You also receive free meals at Slifka Center for you and your immediate family
• Great professional development, mentoring, and skill building opportunities
• Travel regionally and abroad, particularly to Israel
• Connection to the Yale community, including relationships that will last long beyond your time working at Slifka Center

About Slifka Center

The Slifka Center is a self-supporting non-profit that serves more than 1,400 Yale undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty, staff, and members of the greater New Haven community. Located at 80 Wall Street, in the heart of Yale University’s campus, Slifka provides a warm, welcoming and diverse Jewish environment in which students and other members of the university community can connect socially, culturally, intellectually, and spiritually. Slifka Center is the home to Yale Hillel which hosts multiple minyanim and communities of students with diverse interests including Magevet (Yale’s Jewish a cappella group), Shibboleth (Yale’s undergraduate journal of Jewish thought), W{Holy} Queer (Yale’s premier LGBTQ program), Yale Friends of Israel, Jewish service and social justice programs as well as other student groups. For more information see www.slifkacenter.org .

The Slifka Center contains the only kosher dining hall on campus, which serves as a focal point for student life within and beyond the Jewish community and a meeting place for students, faculty and community members alike. In addition to the kosher kitchen, the facility also features a chapel, a library, a Beit Midrash as well as additional gathering spaces utilized by the Yale campus community. The building is currently undergoing a major renovation and is expected to reopen during the Spring 2022 semester.

About New Haven

Now Connecticut’s second largest city with a population of nearly 130,000, New Haven, the nation’s first planned city, sits on the coast midway between New York and Boston. The central town square, established in 1640 and located across the street from Old Campus (Yale’s “front door”) and a block away from Slifka Center, hosts many summer concerts and other events. A wealth of museums, theaters and Yale’s architecture-style Gothic academic buildings are all woven into the fabric of the city, which stretches for 20 square miles and is picturesquely surrounded by the red bluffs of East and West Rock. Residential communities range from modern high-rise apartments to lovely old houses on tree-lined streets that lead to campus, shops, restaurants, hiking trails, beaches and more. Famed for its intellectual life, sports, cuisine, theater and music, New Haven expands each summer with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, a 15-day festival of performing arts, lectures, and conversations that celebrates the greatest artists and thinkers from around the world. New Haven has had a significant Jewish presence since 1758 and currently has 11,000 Jewish households, many of whom participate in the array of activities which Slifka Center provides.

About Hillel International

In 1923, Rabbi Benjamin Frankel started Hillel with humble means, a noble mission and a breathtaking vision: to convey Jewish civilization to a new generation. Today, Hillel International continues to enrich the lives of Jewish students and is the largest Jewish campus organization in the world at more than 550 colleges and universities across North America and around the world. As Hillel evolves as an organization, the mission remains steadfast: to create lasting connections with students that foster an enduring commitment to Jewish life, learning, and Israel and train them to become the next Jewish leaders.

Slifka Center is affiliated with Hillel International. Hillel International enriches the lives of Jewish students so they may enrich the Jewish people and the world and envisions a world where every student is inspired to make an enduring commitment to Jewish life, learning and Israel.

Hillel is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an accepting and inclusive environment for all.

To Apply

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