By Richard Friedman, Executive Director

It was a wonderful evening at The Birmingham Jewish Federation, full of energy, creativity and inspiration, as The BJF kicked off its new Leadership Writing Project.

"I loved tonight. It was EXACTLY what I needed," wrote one participant shortly after the session was over. "I am so fired up to be part of The BJF. I'm totally in."

The Leadership Writing Project is designed to give young adults in their 20s and 30s the skills and encouragement they need to discover and embrace their leadership styles and affirm their leadership voices by writing for Update and other media.

Leadership writers draw people to them and inspire readers to join their causes. Our goal is to develop a cadre of gifted young writers, who will write for Update and other media, and who have the skills and voices to inspire others to follow them in their community pursuits.

Participating in our new Leadership Writing Project are Nik Layman, Elisa Nelson, Miriam Bleich, Amanda Weil, Samantha Dubrinsky, Brittany Saag and Hilary Gewant. Lisa Engel, one of The BJF's most talented volunteer leaders and a gifted writer, participated as well, serving as a resource, offering her own reflections and drawing upon her 30 years of volunteer work for The BJF.

I facilitated the workshop, drawing on my previous experience as a Birmingham News reporter and editor and journalism teacher at Birmingham-Southern College.

POTENTIAL TO LIFT

Among other topics, the workshop explored leadership styles, the creative process, how to make a personal story universal, how to find the poetry in organizational work, inviting others into your own creative process, and how this new generation of young adults has the potential to lift our Federation and community to new heights.

The ascension of Daniel Odrezin as a well-known Update contributor was analyzed. Daniel, a third year law student at the University of Alabama who will come to work for The BJF after graduation, began writing leadership pieces for Update as an intern, and blossomed into one of our community's most effective and well-known leadership writers.

Lisa and Amanda talked about recent Jewish holiday pieces they wrote for Update -- Lisa's on Sukkot and Amanda's on Simchat Torah, both of which drew rave reviews from Update readers. They talked about their goals in writing these pieces, the "digging deeper, reaching higher" process they went through, and the satisfying and uplifting feedback they received. Both articles were outstanding examples of Leadership Writing.

I encouraged the participants, all of whom were selected and recruited for this project, to believe in their uniqueness, to never abandon their passions, to understand the reward that can come from taking intelligent risks, and to develop the confidence to emote publicly and to be personal in a public way.

VINTAGE BJF

Our new Leadership Writing Project is vintage BJF -- a low cost endeavor, innovative and homegrown, and one that we believe will achieve high and lasting impact. As a next step, I will work with participants individually, to brainstorm and help them develop leadership pieces for Update. In addition to having their writing appear in Update, participants will have the opportunity to submit their work to the Birmingham News and other media.

Meanwhile, the writing already has begun. I invited Hilary to write two pieces tied to Thanksgiving that will appear in Update this coming week. Watch for them -- they are moving and memorable and the Montgomery Advertiser has expressed an interest in running one of them next week as a guest column.

Our Leadership Writing Project is part of a new BJF movement called LIFT -- Leadership Initiatives For Tomorrow. Increasingly, BJF programs and projects will focus on tomorrow -- and will be designed to identify and groom leaders for the future, and open up new avenues for them to develop their leadership skills and make a lasting impact. Watch for this outstanding cadre of young writers to emerge as they LIFT Update and the entire BJF to new heights!

Photo is of BJF Executive Director Richard Friedman facilitating the Leadership Writing workshop. With backs to camera are, from left, Miriam Bleich and Elisa Nelson. Sitting across from them is Amanda Weil. (Photo by Leadership Writing participant Nik Layman)