Surrounded by walls plastered with ideas — networking plans, collaborative visions, strategic goals — Elluminate convened Jewish women leaders from nonprofits, philanthropy and social advocacy on Tuesday in New York City to kick off its Global Jewish Women’s Leadership Network.

The leadership network was launched at the close of Elluminate’s inaugural Global Jewish Women’s Leadership Network summit, a new two-day seminar that will become a mainstay of the network’s annual programming, officials said. This year, it brought together the 70 women from both Israel and the United States who are part of “The Collective,” the organization’s leadership accelerator for women social entrepreneurs and activists, the organization’s board and members of Elluminate’s “Visionary Circle,” its community of women philanthropists, to participate in a “think tank” to plan the future of the network. 

“We have the bold opportunity to think about what it might mean to share infrastructure. This is something that the Jewish community has wished for for a long time. What it might mean to do that, or, not for Elluminate to do that, but to enable all of you to do that together,” Sara Shapiro Plevan, Elluminate’s chief program officer, said during a closing address at the gathering. 

First announced last May at the organization’s annual luncheon, the launch of the network marks a milestone for the group, which has steadily expanded its scope over three decades. Founded in 1995 as the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York, Elluminate initially focused on pooled philanthropy to advance opportunities for women and girls. Over time, its mission expanded beyond grantmaking, launching The Collective and the Visionary Circle in 2018, before rebranding as Elluminate in 2022. 

“The launch of the network is the next step in our commitment to equity and justice through a gender lens,” Melanie Roth Gorelick, Elluminate’s CEO, told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

The goal, she said, is to bring women working at the forefront of social issues impacting women, “from stillbirth, malnutrition, economic violence against women, to women running for office, ensuring women are in decision-making and working for reproductive rights,” into a network to serve as a support system and “force multiplier” for each other’s work. 

A key theme that emerged during the seminar, Gorelick said, was a growing demand for mentorship among both emerging and experienced leaders, as the landscape for women’s social activism has become increasingly challenging. Funding rollbacks — both from government sources and within the Jewish community — have further strained equity- and social justice-focused initiatives, she said. As a result, many women leaders are finding it harder to plan for the future, fueling a greater need for collaboration and the development of shared infrastructure to strengthen individual organizations, said Gorelick.  

“We took all of these women together to build relationships with each other and set priorities of what we can do together with the women’s lens to raise up women’s voices right now, when for so many of the issues we work on, funding is being rolled back. We also looked at how to ensure that these women have the courage, the support and the ability for sustenance to stay with it for the long run, because it’s really hard times for so many,” said Gorelick. 

The announcement of the leadership initiative also came as Elluminate marked 30 years of operations during its annual luncheon, which brought together 420 women leaders at Cipriani and honored philanthropists Marcy Syms and Andrea Baumann Lustig.