You are invited to experience the power of coworking including: productive eavesdropping, positive collisions, and unanticipated connections. Join your colleagues from Jewish organizations across San Diego and experience a day in the life of The Hive at Leichtag Commons.
*Limited space available for private calls. Please let Paige (paige@thehivesd.org) know in advance if you will be needing a private space.
The Hive at Leichtag Commons
441 Saxony Road, Encinitas, CA 92024
In lieu of Brain Dates this month, join us for a special lunch with Sigal Kanotopsky, The Jewish Agency’s Northeast Regional Director.
Sigal was born in a small village in Ethiopia’s rural north, she made aliya at the age of five, having walked three months to meet the flight that took her to Israel. Today, she has a B.A. in International Relations from the Hebrew University, and an M.A. in Dispute Resolution and Management from Tel Aviv University. Fully aware of her complex identity as a Jew, an Israeli and a member of the Ethiopian community, she made an early decision to devote herself to ensuring young Ethiopian Israelis overcame the hurdles of racism and negative stereotypes they faced daily in Israeli society. Gathering experience through several positions in the Jewish Agency and a number of social-change organizations, in 2009 Kanotopsky arrived at Olim Beyahad, where she has spent the last decade inspiring Ethiopian Israeli university students to fulfill their potential.
With her singular brand of activism, she has turned Olim Beyahad into an efficient and effective launch pad for thousands of brilliant Ethiopian-Israeli men and women who now occupy leading positions in the corporate, nonprofit and public sectors throughout Israel. To accomplish this, Kanotopsky painstakingly assembled a network of 2,500 handpicked volunteers whom she molded into an army of guiding mentors. On the way, Kanotopsky opened doors to her students in over a thousand companies, and increased Olim Beyahad’s budget by 50 percent through a host of additional funding partners. Unwilling to rest on her laurels, Kanotopsky recently launched a national, multi-channeled media initiative designed to change the way Ethiopian Israelis are portrayed in the press, in film and television, and on social media, and so actively and finally reduce racism and discrimination towards the Ethiopian community and minorities in general.
Stacie and Jeff Cook understand commitment. They live it.
Black, Jewish and Queer. These three identities weave the fabric of who I am, but it took a long time to believe that they could exist together.
Lee and Toni Leichtag established the Leichtag Foundation in 1991 following the sale of their business. Lee and Toni were lifelong entrepreneurs with a passion for innovation and for supporting talent. They believed that only with big risk comes big reward. Both born to families in poverty, Toni to a single mother, they strongly believed in helping those most in need and most vulnerable in our community. While they supported many causes, their strongest support was for young children and the elderly, two demographics who particularly lack voice in our society.
Lifelong Baltimoreans, Rabbi George and Alison Wielechowski and their sons, 11-year-old Lennon and 9-year-old Gideon, are more than pursuing the good life in Southern California. Having moved to San Diego more than three years ago, they are fulfilling a lifelong dream.
You would think that as the executive director of San Diego LGBT Pride, Fernando Zweifach López Jr., who uses the pronoun they, has done all the coming out they possibly can. A queer, non-binary individual who has worked for many years on civil rights issues, López also speaks openly and often about their father’s family, Mexican-American migrant workers who tilled the fields of rural California.