Associate Executive Director
Application Deadline: August 6, 2026
Application Deadline:
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
Urban Adamah is an educational farm and community center in Berkeley, California that integrates the practices of Jewish tradition, mindfulness, sustainable agriculture, and social action to build loving, just, and sustainable communities. We provide training programs, educational workshops, and community celebrations for more than 15,000 visitors annually.
Our signature programs include two immersive residential leadership programs for young adults, a farm-based summer camp and year-round educational program for youth ages 3 – 12, and farm festivals for many of the Jewish holidays. Additionally, we offer an exciting menu of farm based programs for a wide variety of groups and organizations, host community educational, culture, and learning events and Jewish holiday celebrations, and run multi-day retreats and lifecycle celebrations. Our urban farm produces a diverse yield of fruits, vegetables, and eggs, all of which we donate to help address issues of food insecurity.
About The Role
The Associate Executive Director is responsible for managing all of our program departments and work, supervising multiple Directors, and overseeing a broad swath of our organizational planning, development, advancement, and evaluation. The role serves as an important contributor to organizational planning, direction and leadership, both programmatic and operational. As Urban Adamah’s second most senior position, the Associate Executive Director holds significant responsibility and opportunity to support and influence the organization's overall impact and success.
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT, SUPERVISION, SUPPORT & EVALUATION
The Associate Executive Director is responsible for leading and supporting a team of talented program professionals in developing and delivering the wide range of our current programs. They provide support to their direct reports and departments in the following ways:
- Partner with Directors on, articulate, hold, and lead strategic vision for all programs
- Manage and support program teams, including Community & Ritual/Public Programs, Education (Youth & Family Programs), Young Adult Programs, and Farm
- Supervise Directors, including Community & Ritual/Public Programs, Education (Youth & Family Programs), Young Adult Programs, and Farm Directors
- Oversee all program evaluation and ensure integration of findings/learnings
- Support each supervised department’s annual budget preparation and year-round budget management work
The Associate Executive Director is also responsible for leading the development of new program initiatives with Urban Adamah’s mission, values, and strategic plan.
Responsibilities include:
- Support each department’s program development, implementation, evaluation, and refinement
- Imagine, propose, and implement program development and innovation across the four worlds of Urban Adamah’s work: Jewish values, social justice, sustainability, and mindfulness
- Serve as a thought leader, educator, and resource on Jewish values and community development
- Explore, identify, and develop new areas of organization-wide program innovation across all areas of Urban Adamah programming
- Encourage, strengthen, and facilitate synergy and cross pollination between departments, including program ideation and development
- Nurture and support learning and activities that contribute to an organization-wide commitment to growth mindset / beginner's mind
- Developing, launching, supervising, and leading programming that includes educational, experiential, cultural, and spiritual content preferred
The Associate Executive Director leads and initiates Urban Adamah’s partnerships with mission aligned community members and organizations. They provide leadership in community engagement and impact in the following ways:
- Explore, propose, and design new mission aligned initiatives to meaningfully engage community members as participants, volunteers, program facilitators, etc.
- Lead efforts to deepen and expand partnerships with mission-aligned organizations in the Jewish and general community, to grow Urban Adamah’s audience / community of belonging and impact
The Associate Executive Director will lead, develop, and direct setting annual goals and plans to meet these goals. Responsibilities include:
- Support and guide each department’s annual work planning, including identifying key outcomes / impacts, and paths to achieving them
- Create accountability structures to ensure planning leads to demonstrable actions and desired outcomes / impact
- Structure and lead annual or semi-annual (every two years) strategic visioning process across all areas of programmatic and operational areas of work
TheAssociate Executive Director participates actively with the Executive Director to ensure the success of the Board of Directors. Specific areas of work include:
- Overseeing development of reports for the Board’s review in advance of and discussion at quarterly Board meetings
- Support and ensure the success of some Board committees (current committees include Finance & Personnel, Development, Governance, and Audit)
- Work with the Executive Director to steward and support the meaningful engagement and investment of Board members between meetings/year-round
FUNDRAISING
TheAssociate Executive Director participates actively with the Executive Director and the Development Director to continue advancing our fundraising work and success with both individual donors and foundations. Specific areas of work include:
- Individual donor stewardship, cultivation, and solicitation
- Developing, deepening, and sustaining foundation relationships
- Contributing to grant management, writing, and reporting
Urban Adamah’s Finance Director and Executive Director hold primary responsibility for setting and managing the organization’s overall annual budget. The ideal candidate for the Associate Executive Director role will have 5+ years experience managing a budget, organizational or departmental, of $500,000+. The Associate Executive Director’s budgeting responsibilities include:
- Contribute to an overall budget that balances income and expenses
- Ensure all supervised Directors have the knowledge and skills needed to draft, finalize, and manage their department’s annual budget
- Support Directors to identify earned income generating programs and initiatives
- Ensure all staff in each supervised department understand their department’s budget, both income and expenses
About You
You have the background and experience required to thrive as a senior-level organizational manager and leader. You have demonstrated success managing individuals and teams, and facilitating interpersonal relationships and collaborations. You possess a love of and creativity for enhancing existing programs and developing new ones. You have a strong understanding of how finely tuned and well implemented operational systems enhance team engagement and satisfaction, minimize administrative friction, and lead to greater satisfaction and success. You have a strong grounding, appreciation, and affection for Jewish wisdom, values, and practices. You have a personal connection to the natural world and a demonstrated commitment to helping others develop and nurture a similar connection.
We are open to applicants with varying levels and types of experience, provided you display the skills required to succeed in the job described above. You might be a good fit if you possess / demonstrate:
LEADERSHIP:
- Empathetic leadership; you enjoy working with people from a wide variety of backgrounds and possess a high level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence
- Exceptional ability to inspire, motivate, and gain the trust and investment of others; you understand what drives behavior and can use your insights to inspire others to work collaboratively and successfully to achieve lofty and aspirational goals
- Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; you value the diversity of insight, perspective, and experience brought by people from diverse backgrounds
- Possess strong interpersonal skills; you communicate and collaborate well with a range of colleagues and other stakeholders
- A thoughtful relationship builder; you are able to develop positive and productive working relationships, whether in person or virtually, to support people and move work forward
- Collaborative; you enjoy learning from and with talented colleagues, and are excited to be part of the success of the whole organization
- Tech-savvy; you are comfortable with Google Suite, Microsoft Office Suite, Asana, Slack, and database systems like Salesforce (additional tech savvy is a bonus)
- Big picture thinking is what you do; you enjoy developing, pressure-testing, and implementing new ideas and initiatives
- Excellence in planning; you think ahead, can plan events months – and even years – inadvance, and are able to hold complex and dynamic program and operational details
- Problem solver; you enjoy problem solving, seeing it as an opportunity to connect with and support others and the organization
- Analytical; you are a critical thinker with a high level of analytic / interpretive thinking and problem-solving skills, and are able to and comfortable delegating tasks with a positive, solutions-oriented approach to problem-solving
- Self-starter
- Highly organized and efficient; you are highly organized, able to track and execute on multiple projects and tasks simultaneously, and are detail oriented
- Adept at time management with a proven ability to meet deadlines
- 7+ years of progressively increasing experience and responsibility in program and operational leadership and delivery in a Jewish not-for-profit context or related field/area of work
- 7+ years of managerial and/or team leadership experience
- 7+ years experience successfully supervising director-level colleagues, individuals responsible for leading a department or area of work and who supervise staff themselves
- Experience serving in a senior leadership role at a not-for-profit organization
- Experience working in a Jewish outdoor Food Farming and Environmental Education, sustainable agriculture, or farm and land based settings/organizations
- Demonstrated experience and impact increasing organizational success, building effective cross-team initiatives, operationalizing a vision across an organization, and using evaluation tools and metrics to support accountability
- Demonstrated programmatic and operational vision and implementation skills
- Experience developing, launching, supervising, and leading programming that includes educational, experiential, cultural, and spiritual content
The physical demands listed below are representative of those that must be met by an employee in this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable people with disabilities:
- Typing, writing, reading, hearing, and speaking
- Standing and walking for several hours
- Sitting, squatting, crawling, climbing
- Lifting up to 30 pounds
Additional Details
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS:
This is a full-time benefited, and exempt position that includes healthcare, holidays, and paid time off (PTO). The annual salary range for this position is $135,000-155,000.
Comprehensive benefits include:
SCHEDULE:
General hours of employment are 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Monday – Friday. At times, the role will require more than 40 hours per week to fulfill all duties. The Associate Executive Director will need to be available to work:
● ~ 1 Friday evening per month
● Some Jewish holidays
● Some weekday evenings
● Occasional weekends
SUPERVISION:
This position is supervised by the Executive Director
This is a full-time benefited, and exempt position that includes healthcare, holidays, and paid time off (PTO). The annual salary range for this position is $135,000-155,000.
Comprehensive benefits include:
- 100% coverage for self and 50% coverage of dependents in a Silver tier Kaiser Permanente plan or its equivalent in our carrier’s options
- 80% coverage of dental insurance for self
- Paid vacation days (PTO) beginning at 15 days – 20 days in second year – incremental increase to 25 days
- Unlimited sick days per year
- Up to 18 paid holidays (a mix of both national and Jewish holidays)
- Thanksgiving week off
- Tax-free retirement account after 1 year
- A pre-tax FSA for medical, dependent care, and transit
- Paid and unpaid parental, medical, and bereavement leave (following 1 year of employment)
- Paid jury duty leave
- Unpaid time off
SCHEDULE:
General hours of employment are 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Monday – Friday. At times, the role will require more than 40 hours per week to fulfill all duties. The Associate Executive Director will need to be available to work:
● ~ 1 Friday evening per month
● Some Jewish holidays
● Some weekday evenings
● Occasional weekends
SUPERVISION:
This position is supervised by the Executive Director
Application Details
We deeply value the diversity of insight, perspective, and experience brought by people from diverse backgrounds. We welcome applications from people of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, spiritual, and cultural backgrounds. We affirmatively seek to advance the principles of equal employment opportunity.
APPLICATION SUBMISSION INCLUDES:
Cover letter, resume with three references, at least two of which should be professional, and responses to the following questions. Please feel free to use bullet points in your answers, if preferred (max 300 words per answer).
- Please share how you personally relate to Urban Adamah’s mission.
- Share an example of how you have driven innovation in your current or another recent work role.
- What approaches or methods do you use to promote mastery in the people you supervise?
- What work have you done that prepares you to help lead Urban Adamah and contribute to its strategic advancement?