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The visionary women nonprofit leaders Elluminate supports and elevates are rising up to meet today’s current challenges facing women and the most marginalized, and we must ensure that they are resourced and equipped to do so.
Our Jewish values call us to seek justice and to repair the world, just as our foremothers worked hard to fight for women’s right to vote, reproductive rights, and equal rights in all sectors of society. I was reminded of this most recently at the play Liberation, which focused on the consciousness-raising groups in the 1970s.
Women’s rights are under severe threat in the US and abroad. Here at home, a recent freeze of close to $35 million in federal Title X funds will have a devastating effect on women’s health. Title X has helped millions of women get reproductive healthcare—everything from birth control and STI services, to cancer screenings.
Additionally, Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP and Social Security are imperiled, which could directly impact women and their families as women make up the majority of Medicaid recipients as caregivers and seniors. It would also deepen the country’s maternal mortality crisis, which predominantly impacts low-income communities and Black women.
While women gathered in New York in March to celebrate Beijing +30, a report was released showing the increase in discrimination against women and several countries have experienced a backlash from gains won.
I was glad to be at the Jewish Funders Network (JFN) Conference in Nashville last month, as JFN rolled out its new publication on funding through a gender lens. We need to ensure that all of us looking for visionary approaches to community, national and global challenges incorporate the recommendations of this document into our work.
Elluminate has created a meaningful community for women to come together. Now is the time that women need to support women as their top priority, especially those leading nonprofit organizations that are currently experiencing loss of government funding, and seeing their social justice work threatened.
Please join us for a day of inspiration, solutions and solidarity, at our upcoming Luncheon on May 13 in New York! If you can’t attend, please consider making a donation and giving generously. The time is now!
Wishing you a sweet Pesach as we march from slavery to freedom.
Warmly,
Melanie Roth Gorelick
Elluminate CEO
| | Sivan Yaari to be featured Special Guest at Annual Luncheon | | |
We are thrilled to announce that Sivan Yaari, Founder and CEO of Innovation: Africa, will be a featured speaker at Elluminate’s 2025 Annual Luncheon on May 13 in New York. Yaari is one of the first visionary Jewish women CEOs supported by Elluminate. A trailblazing Israeli entrepreneur, Sivan founded Innovation: Africa to bring Israeli solar, agricultural, and water technologies to rural African villages.
Over the past 15 years, she has provided clean water, energy and light to more than five million people across ten African countries, as well as spreading a positive image of Israel across the continent. Beyond her impact in Africa, Sivan is a powerful advocate for supporting Israeli women leaders. Sivan’s groundbreaking work has earned her numerous accolades, including being named one of the 50 Most Influential Jews in the World in 2023.
| | Register and Support the Luncheon | | Please join us on May 13 and be part of this extraordinary event celebrating Jewish women leaders and philanthropists from the U.S., Israel, and around the world. Reserve your spot today and stand with the women shaping our future. Consider joining the Benefit Committee, being a Corporate Sponsor, or taking a Journal Ad to support our amazing honorees. | | |
Elluminate CEO Melanie Roth Gorelick participated in the opening of the United Nations Beijing+30, commemorating the Fourth World Conference on Women that took place in 1995. Elluminate helped to organize the SUFF’s performance at the opening, thank you to Elluminate leader Tobi Pilavin-Weinstein. Shaina Taub, the writer and actor, began the presentation by sharing how her Jewish values led her to create SUFFs and the importance of remembrance as we move forward to still achieve women’s equality in the United States.
Unfortunately, 30 years after the Beijing Conference, a recently published United Nations report said: “women’s and girls’ rights are under attack and gender discrimination remains deeply embedded in economies and societies—nearly one-quarter of governments worldwide reported a backlash.”
“These findings make it imperative that the Elluminate community of Jewish women leaders, philanthropists and activists continues to grow in reach and impact, advancing social change through a Jewish and gender lens,” said Elluminate CEO Melanie Roth Gorelick.
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A Special Conversation on Protecting Reproductive Rights:
Women Taking Action
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Elluminate was proud to host A Special Conversation on Protecting Reproductive Rights: Women Taking Action, on March 31. More than 50 women came to network and hear from inspiring women leaders working on the frontlines to protect reproductive access and rights.
We were inspired by the founders of P.O.W.E.Repro (The Power of Women Engaging in Repro) Audrey Spiegel, Jane Pollock, Kim Chirls, Lissa Hirsch, and Laura Ross. They shared with us how they came together to build a coalition of activists and supporters of reproductive rights. This included supporting organizations around the country working on policy to provide abortion access.
Then we heard from two of the organizations that P.O,W.E.Repro supports: Deputy Director McKensey Smith of Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which is devising solutions to ensure the legality and safety of prescribing abortion pills over state lines, and Caroline Weinberg, Executive Director of Plan A Health, who works in the Mississippi Delta and rural Georgia, providing mobile clinics to bring health care directly to underserved communities, with an emphasis on improving sexual and reproductive health. Each of these organizations are on the front lines to ensure abortion access.
| | A Briefing with Hanan Alsanah, Co-Executive Director of Itach-Ma'aki in Israel | | |
Elluminate held a briefing on March 18 with Hanan Alsanah, the new co-director of Itach Ma’aki - Women Lawyers for Social Justice, one of the organizations in The Collective. Hanan is an Arab-Israeli, and the first Druze woman lawyer in Israel. After October 7th, the organization chose to create a co-director to partner with the current Executive Director and Collective member Ela Alon, to enhance and sustain its work for gender justice representing all women in Israel in all sectors of society.
Hanan shared the challenges Druze women encounter to be educated and have professions outside of the home and Druze community, including her own journey to get a law degree and to work in the public sphere for gender justice at the local, national and international levels.
To lift up the vision of their organization’s work, Ela Alon and Hanan co-authored an oped, "A Shared Future Starts Now," in The Jerusalem Post. “As activists who have been devoted to promoting equality and justice for over 20 years, we know that the path to true equality requires daily cooperation – hand in hand – Jews and Arabs, women and men, despite the many challenges.” Read it here.
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Join us for Elluminate’s Crown JEWEL Conversation with Kimberly Novod on Thursday, May 1 from 12:00 to 1:00 pm ET. Kimberly is Founder and Executive Director of Saul’s Light Foundation and a member of Elluminate’s Collective, collaborating with hospitals, service providers and grassroots organizations to ensure that neonatal intensive care unit and bereaved families receive comprehensive and compassionate care and advocating for equity in healthcare.
To register, click here.
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We encourage you to watch the truly inspiring recent Crown JEWEL Conversations with members of Cohort 5 including:
- Keshet Starr, the new CEO of Shalom Task Force and Former CEO of the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot, click here.
- Jamie Beck, Founder and President of Free to Thrive, click here.
Elluminate’s monthly Crown JEWEL Conversations webcast highlights members of our Collective. View a list of upcoming events here.
| | | | Orit Sulitzeanu, Executive Director of The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (Cohort 5) was cited by Israeli First Lady Michal Herzog at The Jerusalem Post Women Leaders Summit in March for her work elevating the voices and experiences of survivors and victims of sexual violence on and after Oct. 7. “I’m so proud of a group of very brave Israeli women who keep this topic on the world’s stage at all times,” the First Lady said. Read a full account here. | | | | Unchained At Last, led by Fraidy Reiss (Cohort 4), was part of a coalition that successfully pushed for new legislation banning child marriage in Washington, DC. The new act was signed by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser in March. “Thank you, DC, for standing up for girls and banning an archaic human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives.” said Fraidy Reiss. Read more here. | | | | Idit Klein, President and CEO of Keshet (Cohort 2) announced on March 12 the “Move to Thrive” program, a joint initiative with the Hebrew Free Loan Society in New York providing an interest-free loan of up to $10,000 for a trans person or a family with trans kids anywhere in the country that needs to relocate due to discrimination or lack of health-care access. Read more here. | | | | Karyn Grossman Gershon, CEO of Project Kesher (Cohort 3) wrote an oped in eJewish Philanthropy marking International Women’s Day. She wrote: “Tapping into the potential of women entrepreneurs is one of the strongest possible ways to lift up families, communities and societies, bringing us closer to the more equitable world that International Women’s Day helps us envision,” wrote Read the full piece here. | | | | Sara Shapiro-Plevan, CEO and Founder of Gender Equity in Hiring Project (Cohort 3), invites participants to the next cohort of Gender Equity Advocates working toward equal, unbiased hiring and employment processes, language and behaviors in Jewish workplaces. Zoom sessions begin on May 2. Click here for more information. | | | | |
