Four Inspiring Women join the JLGB Trustee Board

It is a historic and exciting time for JLGB as we welcome four inspiring women to the JLGB trustee board. At this year’s Annual General Meeting, members and trustees voted unanimously to reform the constitution and bring on board several new trustees. Over the last year, JLGB has been conducting a governance review led by outgoing trustee Michael Livingston to support and reflect the phenomenal expansion of the JLGB in recent years. 

Each year thousands of young people participate in local JLGB activities and take part in a journey of age-progressive, faith sensitive national achievement awards through JLGB partnership programmes. These initiatives, including the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, National Citizen Service, vinspired and the Yoni Jesner Award, enable young people to develop character while giving back to society. However, there is still much more to do and JLGB has major plans to expand its reach and transform the lives of even more young people.

As part of the review process, JLGB launched a campaign earlier in the year to find new trustees to join our board and were delighted to receive not just some brilliant applicants, but so many compliments from both the Jewish and wider charitable sector on the professional and best practice approach in which we have conducted our search.

Our campaign centred on finding new trustees with significant experience, particularly in the areas of fundraising, governance and partnerships to help take JLGB to the next level. 

To support us in this mission, we are delighted to welcome four new trustees to the board, including our first youth trustee, Jordana Price.

Jordana has been a member of JLGB for four years and has held several prestigious leadership positions, including Co-Chair of The Voice Youth Forum 2016 and Leader of Productions Team on Winter Camp 2016/17.

In February, Jordana was selected to meet Prince Charles at Yavneh College to explain to him about JLGB youth programming and how it enhances the skills of our members. She regularly takes part in social action projects, including as a mentor for disadvantaged primary school children with the SHINE mentoring project and as a volunteer at Linden Lodge School, for visually impaired and disabled children. Through JLGB, Jordana has completed her Bronze DofE and achieved the vinspired award for 100 hours of volunteering in the local community.

Jordana was appointed as Admissions Ambassador at school (Wimbledon High School), part of the Senior Leadership Team, which involved presenting the school to prospective parents and ensuring new girls settled in well. Jordana is a Straight-A student with a passion for climate change and sustainable development and participates in MUN (Model United Nations) conferences. We are especially proud that Jordana has just started her Geography Degree at Cambridge University. 

We are also delighted that three other trustees, Ruth Green, Ruth Dwight and Symmie Swil have joined us, each of whom have a wealth of knowledge and experience from within the Jewish community, and wider charity sector and the business and corporate world.

Ruth believes passionately in the role of youth organisations in creating a safe, empowering place for young people to develop and become amazing citizens. She is also passionate about partnerships and making links between people and organisations, managing them respectfully and being creative so that one plus one makes three.

Ruth has a wealth of experience both working in Jewish charities and working with young people. She was a member of the advisory board for JVN, has been a counsellor for 25 years specialising in young people, and a teacher of PSHE. Ruth has vast governance experience as the founding trustee of The Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Centre, as a trustee of UJIA and previously a trustee of the JLC.

Ruth was the safe guarding person at King Alfred for 10 years and recently stepped down as co-chair of Highgate United Synagogue where she successfully led a rebuild programme focused on building a centre useful for the community’s needs. She grew up in RSY Netzer, was involved in the new leadership network and still ran a cross communal women chairs of synagogue group.

For the past year, Ruth’s family have become foster parents to a Syrian refugee who arrived last year under the Dubbs scheme from Calais and have been helping him to achieve his goal of getting into university.

Ruth is currently Programme Director at the Citizenship Foundation, which is committed to inspiring young people to take part in society as equal members. She has previously been a trustee for the Tibetan Jewish Youth Exchange and has been heavily involved in Jewish Youth Movements since the age of 8. Ruth has also been a volunteer youth leader, Schools Development Director and Advisory Board member of AJ6 and her father, Prof Bernie Cohen, was a member of JLGB Pipe Band in Glasgow and went on the inaugural JLGB Israel Tour.

Symmie currently works at Investec, focusing on strategy development for the corporate and institutional bank. Prior to this, she spent 8 years in investment banking focusing on mergers and acquisitions and equity fundraisings. Symmie previously founded a Jewish women’s networking group and participated in a Jewish charity trustee training programme in Sydney and has been involved in a number of formal and informal mentoring initiatives, including currently participating in the Arrival Education Mentoring programme for disadvantaged high school students.

JLGB President the Lord Levy said: “JLGB is the organisation that directly delivers and removes all barriers to ensure a fully accessible and faith sensitive Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, Yoni Jesner Award, National Citizen Service and vInspired Award provision is available in all of our partner schools. JLGB continues to grow the scale and reach of these programmes at a rapid rate and will engage a further 15,000 more young people over the next 5 years through its evolve young volunteering and skills initiative. There really has never been a better time to get involved with JLGB, and I am delighted that Jordana, Ruth, Ruth and Symmie have joined us and I thank them and the entire board for all that they do for the youngsters of our community.”

JLGB would like to sincerely thank all the trustees that have served their periods in office: Howard Kemp, Richard Cirsch, Michael Gladstone, Lewis Lane, Harvey Livingston, Michael Livingston, Dean Lush, Lee Sidney, Alan Simberg, Jacques Weisser and Edna Terret. We are extremely grateful to each and every one of you for your passion, time and dedication to JLGB and for helping us to shape the future of Jewish youth.