Dena is a rabbi (Hebrew Union College, 2010) and has the honor of holding the Funder Collaborative's education and scaling portfolios. Her professional calling is to help improve the lives of young people and the adults who care about them. Sara joined the Funder Collaborative in 2021 after serving as the executive director of one of her ten local initiatives, 4Front Baltimore. Previously, she had been privileged to serve as one of the campus rabbis at Cornell University Hillel and the associate rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford, CT. She is super interested and passionate about experiential education, relationship building, community structural change, spiritual entrepreneurism and scaling innovation.
A few quick fun facts... Sara has been training in the martial arts since she was three years old and loves to go running on the underappreciated Baltimore trail systems, these days accompanied by her dog, Levi.
Dena is so excited to be part of the JFNA family and looks forward to getting to know everyone. She can be reached at Dena.Shaffer@jewishfederations.org.