Meet The New Director of the National Council of Jewish Women’s Pittsburgh Chapter

Jodi Hirsch has created a career focused on empowering women across communities.

With more than a year completed as the new executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women’s Pittsburgh chapter, the Edgewood resident said she is surrounded by people determined to make a change.

“There is a passionate membership who are committed to the mission, committed to doing the work and seeing it through, and I think it’s just being able to do this advocacy work on behalf of others and yes, feel good about it, but also know that you are standing up for the rights of other,” Hirsch, 35, said.

Hirsch grew up in Fox Chapel, later attending the University of Rochester in New York. She majored in psychology, European history and discovered women’s studies her senior year, which became her minor.

She also has a degree in nonprofit management and public policy from the University of Pittsburgh.

“I got hired at Planned Parenthood six months after college, which was kind of a dream job with a women’s studies minor, and what happened was from the time I graduated, I just kept applying to whatever jobs they posted whether I was qualified or not and luckily they actually kept my resume on file,” Hirsch said. “A position opened up the fall after I graduated and they hired me.”

Hirsch created a strong legacy of advocacy while at Planned Parenthood, where she eventually developed the organization’s public policy program and served as the vice president of public affairs for nine years. Then, she became the vice president of operations for three years.

“I left Planned Parenthood when Simon was born, stayed home with him for nine months and then realized that was not going to work for me, so I applied for an got the executive director job at the National Council of Jewish Women and started in February 2010,” Hirsch said.

Her son, Simon, is two years old. Hirsch lives with her partner, Stacey Edick, who is expecting their second child, this time a girl.

Hirsch said the transition to NCJW was perfect.

“I actually worked with NCJW at Planned Parenthood on some judicial nominations and other reproductive rights work,” she said. “I knew about the organization and knew it did some really good advocacy work. I thought it would be interesting to work for an organization that was doing the advocacy work I had done at Planned Parenthood, without also providing direct service.”

The mission of NCJW is to preserve and promote the lives of women, children and families and individual rights and liberties. One of the organization’s projects is providing childcare in the courts.

“For any litigation that parents or guardians have to go through, if they don’t have childcare, for years the children had just been waiting outside in hallways and particularly with protection from abuse orders and some of that stuff, that’s horrible,” Hirsch said. “So, we have childcare and what we call playrooms. They’re not licensed daycares, but they are like a daycare in that parents or guardians who are litigating for whatever reason can drop their kids off and we care for them as they go through the court proceedings so kids don’t have to be involved.”

NCJW also is beginning a new chapter after its board recently finished a strategic planning process. While the organization originally founded the Race for the Cure, now handled by , Hirsch said NCJW needed a new prime focus.

“What we determined it was is economic independence for women,” Hirsch said. “So, we have been working on that focus and we are in talks with another organization for a project to help a population to help women reach economic independence and security.”

Hirsch said that as the board discussed the issue, everyone realized economic issues often are at the core of a problem in many women’s issues, whether it’s domestic violence where a woman feels she cannot leave, divorce or reproductive rights.

“All of this stuff - it doesn’t hurt women who have the resources. It’s the women who do not have those resources that get hurt,” Hirsch said.

In addition to that advocacy work, NCJW also receives most of its revenue from a thrift in Swissvale and the home consignments shop. There also is Designer Days Boutique on Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside.

“They exist for the purpose of our advocacy work,” she said.

Hirsch said she will continue to fight for the rights of women through advocacy in an organization that has a foundation for that mission. There are 1,300 members of NCJW in Pittsburgh.

“It’s not faith-based, but it is based on the idea of Judaism in the sense of the values of rights, civil liberties and individual freedoms,” she said.