By Cindy Mindell

SOUTHBURY – After two years with lay leaders at the helm, the Jewish Federation of Western Connecticut has tapped former Connecticut resident Jade Stoltz to serve as its next executive director.

A native of Rochester, N.Y., Stoltz moved with her family in the late ‘60s to Bloomfield. After graduating from Bloomfield High School in 1976, Stoltz attended UConn, where she majored in Liberal Arts with a focus on Hebrew and Arabic. She spent junior year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and after graduating, studied classical and Egyptian Arabic at the American University in Cairo for a year. Stoltz earned a master’s of social work at UConn in 1988 and a doctorate of social work from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1995.

Since then, Stoltz has built a career in non-profit management, specializing in development. She began with Island Harvest, a food bank based in Hauppage, Long Island. “I kind of fell into development and loved it and have stayed with it ever since,” says Stoltz, who served as director of development for the JCC of Greater New Haven from 2000 to 2003 and for Ability Beyond in Bethel from 2003 to 2006. During those six years, Stoltz called the Southbury area home.

The newly elected Board of Directors of the Jewish Federation of Western CT: (front row, l to r) Matt Magida, Lisa Miller, Sybil Blau, Marcelo Tortoriello; (back row, l to r) Eric Albert, Rachel Albert, Roy Walzer, Pauline Zimmerman, Barbara Phillips, Jane Z. Mahler (board president), Marian Dar, Lisa Buccino, Jade Stoltz (executive director), Gerry Klein and Rudolf Zeidler.

She spent the next six years in Colorado, where she worked in development positions for several non-profit organizations, including JEWISHcolorado (formerly the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado). “JEWISHcolorado is a fantastic Federation and a great brain trust for innovative ideas,” she says. “There was an outstanding group of leadership – both lay and professional – and that’s how I ended up in Southbury: I loved the experience I had and when I was recruited for this position, I was thrilled to come here.”

Stoltz returned to Connecticut in 2012, taking a development position at Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation in Bloomfield. She comes to the Jewish Federation of Western Connecticut from the Middlesex YMCA in Middletown, where she has served as senior director of development for the last three years. She succeeds Shelly Katz, who served as executive director from 2011 to 2014.

The Jewish Federation of Western Connecticut comprises Waterbury, Southbury, Danbury, and Torrington, a diverse Jewish catchment area that ranges from the Orthodox Yeshiva Ateres Shmuel community in Waterbury to the pluralistic Greater Washington Coalition for Jewish Life in Litchfield County. The Federation is home to the Foundation endowment arm and the Brownstein Jewish Family Service.

Stoltz joins the Federation staff at a time of significant change across Jewish communities. “The Jewish Federation of Western Connecticut is in a huge organization-change process,” she says. “We realized that we had to change; the old ways simply weren’t serving us and we had to look to the future and what did that mean? The Federation movement is challenged to reinvent itself, to reimagine, to re-vision, to look at how we’re going to connect with Jews in a meaningful way and stay relevant. Across the country, across the world, we’re all faced with a changing Jewish community: changing demographics, changing ways in terms of how people want us to connect with them. But fortunately, we can go with those changes.”

Under the banner of “shinui” – Hebrew for “change” – the Jewish Federation of Western Connecticut recently simplified its governing structure by combining the Federation and Foundation boards of directors into one entity. A retooled mission statement begins, “We seek to be the HOME, real and virtual, for thriving Jewish life, community, and values.” The organization will now examine its operations and programming to ensure that it most effectively meets the needs of its community. Data will be provided by an upcoming community-needs assessment.

“Every community is unique and it’s not just the numbers, it’s who are the people who make up your community and how can you be meaningful and relevant if you don’t ask questions?” Stoltz says. “These are our customers; what do they want? We can’t presume to know the answers; we’ve got to have them, and we will.”