Leadership development for alumni in the North American Jewish communities and the State of Israel.
The Wexner Foundation is proud to offer Wexner Summits: The Network in Action. For information about the latest iteration of Wexner Summits, Summit Seeds, please see below.
Program Overview
Summits offer platforms for select North American and Israeli Wexner Alumni to engage in deep dialogue, learning, and problem-solving. Allowing our network of leaders in the Israeli public sector and in both the professional and volunteer ranks of Jewish life in North America to leverage one another, Wexner Summits empower and mobilize a cadre of change agents to address major challenges facing the Jewish people and Israel.
In addition to addressing a specific topic, Wexner Summits connect Alumni to other extraordinary leaders across the Jewish world and Israel, drawing wisdom, insight and new collaborative possibilities from our network.
Incorporating online and in-person learning, Summits are by application and include our most effective and robust Alumni.
Expectations
Wexner Summits are meant to empower Alumni to act. As such, participants in Summits provide much of the content and drive most of the action. Summit participants are expected to bring energy and ideas related to the topic and an openness to new relationships and collaborations.
Our expectation is that as a result of their participation in a Wexner Summit, participants will deepen their commitment to their own work on the issue that is the focus of the Summit, strengthening their individual impact; develop new partnerships and collaborations that will collectively make progress on addressing the issue; or, ideally, both of the above!
Current Summit
After running seven successful Summits on the model of a yearlong process bookended by two in-person events, in 2024 we are launching a new model: Summit Seeds.
Our first Summit Seeds gathering is addressing the topic of Antisemitism. The inaugural Summit Seeds program will take place between March and August of 2024.
History
To date there have been seven Wexner Summits fostering substantive action:
- (Re)Imagining the Israel-North American Jewish Community Relationship (launched 2016)
- Social Justice (launched 2016)
- Civil Discourse (launched 2017)
- Accelerator – for those robust projects from the first 3 Summits electing to continue after their obligatory year of work (launched 2019)
- Gender Safety and Equity (launched 2019)
- Leadership Skills (launched 2020)
- Climate Change (launched 2022)
Leveraging Jewish Leadership
To see what Vice President Rabbi Jay Moses says about The Wexner Foundation’s leveraging our most precious Jewish leadership resource through these Summits, click here.
Work Examples
To see examples of the kind of work participants have produced, one impactful outcome of our Summit on Gender Safety and Equity is at this link.
