I didn’t grow up believing I could lead. I grew up surviving, keeping the peace, staying small, trying not to take up too much space. Leadership wasn’t something I saw modeled. It wasn’t something I believed I deserved or was capable of. For a long time, I didn’t think my voice mattered.

Hadassah changed all of that. Hadassah changed me.

My journey began quietly, almost without me realizing anything was beginning at all. It started with Gabby Clayman’s kindness. She was the president of B’yachad, the Hadassah group in Southern California I had only just joined, when she asked me to lunch. Not because she needed anything, but because she genuinely wanted to get to know me. I remember sitting across from her, nervous and unsure as to why I had been invited, when she asked one simple question: “What do you like to do?”

No one had ever asked me that before. Her warmth made me feel safe enough to answer honestly. I told her I liked to write. And from that admission came my first yes: becoming the newsletter chair for B’yachad. I was nervous but excited.

This was new territory, yet it felt like a place where I could contribute. I even created our newsletter logo, never imagining it would be the beginning of something much larger. That “yes” was the first door to open.

In 2016, at my first Hadassah convention in Atlanta, then Hadassah National President Ellen Hershkin pulled me aside. She looked me in the eye and told me she believed I had what it took to be a leader. I tucked her words away.

Shortly after, while still working on my chapter newsletter, an email arrived about the Jewish Public Affairs Committee (JPAC). I didn’t understand the connection between engaging in advocacy and voting. I stared at the email for a long time, torn between wanting to grow and wanting to run from something that felt bigger than me.

Eventually I gathered the courage to call Hadassah Southern California (HSC) Executive Director Lauren Rothman, whom I had previously met on an unrelated trip to Israel.........

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