To keep young Jewish leaders from falling off what she describes as a “leadership cliff” after college, Laura Lauder, a Bay Area-based philanthropist, is launching the Jewish Leadership Accelerator, a nine-month paid fellowship for young professionals who led Jewish life on campus.

The program will launch in January with a pilot cohort of 20 fellows in San Francisco, followed by a second 20-person cohort in the New York area in mid-2027. 

The accelerator is a Jewish Leadership Fund project, which is housed at the Jewish Federation Bay Area. Through the fellowship, Lauder said she wants to address a dynamic in which student leaders move to new cities after graduating and “fall off the map” of the organized Jewish community.

The idea grew out of watching Bay Area campuses — including University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University and San Jose State — grapple with antisemitism and getting to know the Jewish student leaders who pushed back. After college, she said, those leaders lack clear entry points into organized Jewish life, and many communal organizations struggle to find them.

“I realized that we have a huge generation of leaders who have come up through middle school, high school, college, even early 20s, who, when they’re actually interested and willing to have a seat at the table in the organized Jewish community, and we need their voices, we don’t know who they are, and they don’t know how to reach us,” she told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

The Jewish Leadership Accelerator fellowship also comes as a new crop of Jewish leadership fellowships is emerging, and as the field is in flux. 

Though focused on different age ranges, the Maimonides Fund’s Jewish Leadership Institute, a yearlong program for established professionals with limited Jewish backgrounds, is already working to expand before its pilot cohort completes its first year. Meanwhile, the Schusterman Family Philanthropies’ ROI Community shut down earlier this year, and the Wexner Foundation is spinning off its North American leadership programs in the coming year.

Specifically, according to Lauder, the fellowship provides participants with a stipend of $2,000 and aims to recruit young adults who were active on campus as Jewish leaders but are working jobs outside of the Jewish communal ecosystem after graduation. The goal, she said, is to create a group of “phenomenal high-impact young leaders” for whom balancing a career with Jewish involvement is a priority.

“The majority of folks who work in the secular world don’t find time to give back to their Jewish community, and we’re trying to model for them early in their careers that they can do both,” said Lauder. 

The fellowship also includes monthly “confidential, highly personal dinners” with senior Jewish leaders, which Lauder described as “a little bit of a matchmaking exercise” meant to build a network of peers and show young Jews how they can get involved.

Fellows will also be matched with mentors in areas they care about, such as Hillel or local government, and will attend a retreat for bonding and Torah study. On the nine-month program’s closing night, fellows will pitch their goals to community leaders, said Lauder.

“The last night will be the launching point for them for their Jewish life ahead,” she told eJP.