Assistant Director

Houston Hillel

Job Overview

Starting July 2023

Houston Hillel seeks an engaging and innovative Assistant Director to provide vision and oversight for all three areas of Houston Hillel’s programming: Undergraduates, Jewston, and QJews. This position provides lots of opportunities for personal and professional growth and includes the responsibility to guide Houston Hillel’s presence on campus and in the community.

What You’ll Do

• Provide the vision, oversight and implementation for all aspects of Houston Hillel’s engagement, empowerment and program agendas – on campus, in Houston, and around Southeast Texas – for Undergraduates, Jewston, and QJews.
• Serve as the primary Jewston engagement professional and build on Jewston’s success as the leading organization in Southeast Texas for Jewish twentysomethings – graduate students and young professionals.
• Supervise Houston Hillel’s QJews Program Director.
• Supervise Houston Hillel’s Springboard Fellow.
• Develop one-on-one relationships with Jewish graduate students and young professionals by meeting them where they live, work and/or study, utilizing creative methods to reach and interest them.
• Identify, engage and nurture participants who can assume varying levels of leadership.
• Identify uninvolved and marginally involved Jewish students and young professionals and help them on their Jewish journeys.
• Coordinate with campus and community professionals outside the Houston Hillel orbit to figure out how you can work together to make Jewston and QJews engaging centers for Jewish life.
• Serve as a thought-partner with Houston Hillel’s Executive Director.
• Manage Houston Hillel’s annual program budget, distribute funds and account for costs.
• Oversee the collection and analysis of our engagement data.
• Staff and attend programs, including on Shabbat and holidays, sometimes for specific groups and at other times for the entire Houston Hillel community.
• Engage in development by identifying donor prospects within the young adult community and creating opportunities for participants to support Houston Hillel.
• Participate in ongoing Jewish learning.

What You’ll Bring to the Role

Houston Hillel welcomes the opportunity to provide mentoring and professional development to applicants whose experience may not include every attribute listed below, but who have the promise, potential and willingness to learn on the job and grow into the position.

• 2 to 5 years of professional experience. Hillel experience strongly preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree required.
• Proven success in project management, including the ability to provide vision, articulate expectations, and produce and evaluate outcomes for multiple projects simultaneously.
• Strong organizational skills.
• Experience with Jewish content creation and teaching.
• A love of welcoming new arrivals to Houston, connecting new friends to each other, and helping people find their passion and act upon it.
• A listening ear, and the ability to hear the words people don’t say.
• Comfort with your Jewish self (or you’re actively figuring that out).
• A penchant for disruptive questions and doing things differently even when the old ways work just fine.
• Curiosity about what other people and groups around the country are doing in similar spaces, so that you can learn from them and bring their ideas to Houston Hillel.
• Social media skills that generate lots of likes and shares.
• The ability to work with others and alone, and handle lots of stuff at the same time.
• A commitment to pluralism, egalitarianism, and inclusivity.
• Strong written and verbal skills to communicate with a wide variety of stakeholders.
• A charismatic personality that engages people with honesty and humility, leading participants to respond to your requests simply because you asked.

What You’ll Receive

• A competitive salary in the nonprofit marketplace. The salary range for this role is $60,000-$70,000.
• Flexible work hours and locations. The freedom to set your schedule and arrange for multi-day periods of remote work.
• Great professional development, mentoring, and skill-building opportunities.
• The opportunity to negotiate a ten-month contract if you want to spend your summers working at a camp.
• Self-managed (unlimited) vacation.
• 15 medical leave days each year.
• Opportunities to travel regionally and abroad.
• Houston’s dynamic twentysomething Jewish community.
• Houston's affordable housing market and low cost of living.
• A comprehensive benefits package that includes health insurance, a retirement plan, life insurance, and long-term disability coverage.
• Access to Houston Hillel’s fund solely dedicated to providing financial travel support for employees seeking abortion access that is not available locally.
• Additional benefits, like a remote work stipend, the opportunity to deliver a High Holy Day sermon, and lots of free lunches.

About Houston Hillel

Houston Hillel is a multi-campus Hillel Foundation that engages undergraduates primarily at Rice University and the University of Houston, and supports Jewish students at almost a dozen universities in Southeast Texas, some as far as two and one-half hours from Houston.

Jewston is Houston Hillel's community for Jewish twentysomethings - graduate students and young professionals between the ages of 21 and 29. Houston Hillel is one of only a handful of Hillel Foundations with a separately branded program for twentysomethings. In fact, Houston Hillel's professional time and resources are almost evenly split between our work with undergraduates and twentysomethings.

QJews, launched in early 2022, provides an affirming environment for Houston's queer Jews in their twenties and thirties.

Our primary facility, the Ida and William Zinn Building, acts as both a student center and a community resource. We also operate the UH Hillel Student Lounge in the A.D. Bruce Religion Center on the University of Houston campus.

Houston Hillel is affiliated with Hillel International. Hillel International enriches the lives of Jewish students so they may enrich the Jewish people and the world, and envisions a world where every student is inspired to make an enduring commitment to Jewish life, learning and Israel.