(JERUSALEM – December 15, 2022) The Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies is delighted to announce that Faith Leener will join Pardes’s senior leadership as Chief Innovation Officer effective March 1, 2023. In this new role, Faith will be directing the work of Pardes North America (PNA) and its mission to dramatically expand access to deep, accessible Torah learning experiences across North America.
In her role as Chief Innovation Officer, a position prescribed by Pardes’s strategic plan, Faith will drive Pardes’s efforts to test and scale new ideas while building critical strategic partnerships. She will be the chief strategist and implementer of new and innovative initiatives designed to bring the magic of the Pardes Beit Midrash experience far beyond the walls of the Beit Midrash itself.
“Pardes is gaining a senior leader with abundant emotional intelligence, creative thinking, and relentless optimism,” says Pardes President, Rabbi Leon Morris. “We are particularly proud that Faith is herself an alum of our Year Program. She also currently sits on our board and has provided critical leadership for our efforts in North America. We are not just welcoming a new leader to our professional staff, we are welcoming an esteemed member of our family.”
Faith brings a decade of visionary leadership, a track record of successful entrepreneurship, and an enduring commitment to communal Jewish life through her role as a Founder and Executive Director of Base – a national movement of Rabbinic families building hyper-local, pluralistic hubs of Jewish life and learning in large cities across the United States. In 2021, Faith led Base through the formal acquisition process with Moishe House, positioning Base as a core program of the largest global platform for young adult Jewish life.
“Pardes is an institution and community that has influenced my own Jewish life in innumerable ways,” Faith says, “and I am honored to join the senior leadership team in this new capacity. Not only does Pardes host some of the best contemporary teachers of Torah in the world, but its 9,000+ global network of alumni boasts communal, religious, and business leaders across both the public and private sectors. I see this as a unique opportunity to shape the pipeline of communal and spiritual leadership across North America, to activate our incredibly diverse alumni network in new expressions of Jewish life and learning, and to imagine how else Pardes can and should be showing up in the world to achieve the impact we seek to have.”
Leon adds that, “It feels important that, as we celebrate our 50th year, looking back on all that Pardes has already accomplished, we re-commit ourselves to the innovative energy that helped catalyze Pardes into existence. When Pardes was founded in 1972, the idea of a pluralistic co-ed yeshiva was unheard of. Twenty years ago, the concept of the “havruta” as a signature Jewish pedagogy was foreign to most people outside of the Orthodox community. But today, as we look at the North American Jewish landscape, we are proud that these ideas have been adopted, iterated, and enhanced by many other institutions and partners. We are excited to usher in a new chapter of innovation and renewal and I cannot think of a better leader and Pardes champion than Faith.”