Director of IdeaLab

Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation

• Reports to our Chief Innovation and Impact Officer
• Full-time; Salary range $100,000 - $120,000, plus competitive benefits
• Hybrid; Local to NYC preferred, or the ability to be in NYC regularly; Qualified candidates outside NYC considered
• Application Deadline is Friday, December 11

Who We Are

Working at Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation means joining a dynamic team committed to strengthening rabbinic leadership and supporting a thriving Jewish future. Atra equips rabbis, and the ecosystem that supports them, to grow, adapt, and lead the Jewish people in a rapidly changing world. We envision a future where every Jew and seeker can call someone “my rabbi” and, in that relationship, find wisdom, care, guidance, and connection to a living tradition.

Jewish life depends on great rabbis, yet too few people are entering the rabbinate and too many who do leave because of isolation and a lack of support. Atra works to change that. We are the leading pluralistic platform advancing rabbinic leadership across North America. In five years, we have trained and supported more than 850 clergy ordained at over a dozen seminaries, and reached more than 300,000 members of the Jewish community through their work. Atra is fiscally sponsored by Hillel International.

The Position

Reporting to our Chief Innovation and Impact Officer, the Director of IdeaLab leads Atra’s work to strengthen the ecosystem of rabbinic leadership and the rabbinic pipeline. This role advances Atra’s strategic priority of research and experimentation (today called the Rabbinic IdeaLab): promising ideas are tested in real settings, and what is learned is put to use in Atra’s programs, by seminaries and employers, and by funders. This is one of three Director positions on Atra’s Innovation & Impact team, which reports to our Chief Innovation and Impact Officer, and works together to carry out Atra’s strategic plan.

The work takes many forms. The Director identifies promising ideas and runs pilots in real settings, in partnership with the rabbis, seminaries, employers, and funders that make those pilots possible, and helps establish a clear, shared process for how Atra and its partners collaborate and coordinate across the field. The aim is for experimentation to become a shared practice across the field that produces lasting change for a thriving rabbinate, not a one-off effort by Atra. Sometimes Atra leads; sometimes our greatest contribution is to catalyze others. Within the strategy set by Atra’s leadership, the Director spots needs, leads the work, and recommends what is worth exploring, advancing, handing to another owner, or setting down.

Research and evaluation help the field learn from this work and put it to use. The Director oversees Atra’s contracted research and evaluation partners and does not need to be a researcher or evaluator, but they need a strong point of view on why research and evaluation matter and keep them a priority in every pilot and program.

Who You Are

The ideal Director of IdeaLab is an entrepreneurial builder and clear thinker who has created new things in complicated, multi-stakeholder settings, and who is just as energized helping others test and build their own ideas. They bring a track record of taking an ambiguous problem from a rough idea to a pilot, a decision, and real learning, and they are excited to define what rigorous but practical experimentation looks like for the rabbinic field. They are curious, collaborative, and proactive, comfortable moving between exploring and executing and between big-picture questions and the practical first step, and motivated by strengthening the field as a whole.

Key Responsibilities

Research & Pilot Portfolio

• Scope, plan, and run several pilots and experiments at once, at different stages: framing a question, designing a test, running it, interpreting results, and finding a mature project its next home
• Spot needs and opportunities, and recommend to the Chief Innovation and Impact Officer what to explore, advance, hand off, or stop
• Oversee Atra’s large-scale, fieldwide research on the big questions facing the rabbinic field, working with contracted research and evaluation experts and outside research firms
• Ensure research findings are synthesized, translated into clear and actionable insights for the field, and connected to the IdeaLab’s learning, experiments, and priorities, with support from the Chief Innovation and Impact Officer and external research partners

Learning Across Atra and the Field

• Ensure evaluation is a priority across Atra’s work, and build practical, lightweight ways to capture learning in real time, including from the pilots of partners and stakeholders, gathering feedback and noticing patterns as they emerge
• Turn what we learn into clear takeaways (what worked, what didn’t, what is still open) and bring them into decisions and next steps at Atra
• Share learnings with the field through briefs, cases, tools, and convenings, so what we learn is used well beyond Atra

Partners & Field Collaboration

• Build trust with rabbis, seminaries, employers, researchers, and funders, and help them shape and test their own new ideas, including defining what success looks like
• Help shape a clear process for how Atra and its partners coordinate pilots and collaborations across the field, and manage the consultants and partners who carry them out

Integration Across Atra’s Work

• Supply tested approaches and findings to the Director of Learning and Practice to build into curriculum, and draw on what facilitators and participants observe to decide what to study next
• Partner with the Director of Network and Partnerships to find pilot sites and partners and learn what the field is asking for
• Manage the IdeaLab budget and help inform annual budget planning
• Support fundraising by sharing findings with funders and the board and identifying new opportunities, alongside development and communications colleagues

The Innovation & Impact Team

Each director of Atra’s Innovation & Impact team owns one pillar of Atra’s 2025–2028 strategic plan, and the three pillars work as one system:

• Learn. IdeaLab studies what helps rabbis enter the rabbinate, stay, and thrive, and tests new approaches.
• Teach. Learning and Practice (Atra Academy) turns what we learn into learning that changes how rabbis lead.
• Connect. Network and Partnerships (the Atra Rabbinic Network), led by Rabbi Maddie Cooper, keeps rabbis and institutions in relationship, so good ideas travel and we hear what the field needs next.

Our directors listen closely to the field, test bold ideas, and grow what works. They share one picture of the field and plan priorities together, including what to stop.

Core Competencies

Every director on the team brings these shared competencies, alongside those specific to the role.

• Rabbi-centered judgment: Starts from what rabbis and their communities need; earns credibility across denominations.
• Learning and evidence orientation: Decides using evidence and participant feedback, and changes course when needed.
• Cross-pillar collaboration: Shares learning early, plans handoffs with peers, and measures success by Atra’s whole impact.
• Ownership and prioritization: Holds a portfolio from idea to result and makes clear choices about what matters most now.
• Relationship-building across the Jewish world: Builds trust across denominations, institutions, and perspectives, and treats disagreement as information.
• Leading collaboratively: Gets results with consultants, partners, and colleagues by setting clear expectations and building buy-in, including where there is no formal authority.
• Vision and entrepreneurial building: Sees what the field needs before it’s obvious, tests ideas, builds out what works, and helps others do the same; comfortable with ambiguity and willing to stop what isn’t working.

Specific to this role

• Strategic Inquiry & Learning Design: Turns a broad concern into a testable question; values research and evaluation, keeps them high on Atra’s agenda, and builds findings into decisions.
• Experimentation & Project Leadership: Moves ambiguous, multi-stakeholder work from idea to proposal, launch, and a clear recommendation to grow, adapt, hand off, or stop. Able to hold the details and the process.
• Synthesizing & Translating: Writes and speaks clearly about complex findings, making field insights practical and useful.

Qualifications

Required

• 5–8 years of experience in Jewish communal, nonprofit, or related settings
• A track record of building and piloting new programs, tools, or partnerships from scratch, with multiple stakeholders at the table and no existing playbook
• Demonstrated skill in building trust with people of differing perspectives and backgrounds, and in connecting them to one another through relationship-building and facilitation
• Strong writing and synthesis skills, and the ability to turn many conversations into a decision others can use
• A proven commitment to research and evaluation and how they inform decisions; subject-matter expertise is not required
• Familiarity with the rabbinic landscape and broader Jewish communal ecosystem

Preferred

• Rabbinic ordination, or equivalent experience in direct work with rabbis and/or institutions that sustain Jewish spiritual leadership
• Experience helping others build and test new ideas, including shaping a pilot, defining what success looks like, and deciding what to scale, adapt, or stop
• Experience convening senior professionals and field leaders to learn or collaborate strategically
• Experience managing consultants or contracted partners and a project or program budget
• Local candidates in the NYC area who can work in a Hybrid office model

What We Offer

A competitive salary in the nonprofit marketplace. The salary range for this role is $100,000- $120,000, depending on experience.

We care about the long-term careers of our staff. Working at Atra connects you with rabbis, institutions, and leaders across the Jewish world, and we invest in your growth so those relationships and skills carry you through a lifetime of Jewish work. You’ll have a hybrid, flexible schedule, an early close every Friday for Shabbat, and full access to Hillel International’s benefits, including unlimited vacation, paid sick days, and a generous holiday calendar that includes all Jewish holidays. Benefits also include paid parental leave, professional development funds, medical, dental, and vision coverage, an employer HSA contribution, employer-paid life and long-term disability insurance, and a 403(b) retirement plan with a 5% employer contribution after two years of service. Rabbis who work at Atra can also claim parsonage through Hillel.

Why this Role Matters

Atra’s work is only as good as what we know about what helps rabbis thrive. Too often the field makes decisions on habit, anecdote, or the loudest voice. This role ensures that Atra learns deliberately: that new ideas are tested before they are scaled, that what works is shared well beyond Atra, and that what doesn’t is set down without regret. By building a lasting practice of research, piloting, and collaboration, the Director of IdeaLab strengthens the pipeline of rabbis entering and staying in the rabbinate.

After one year, we hope Atra can describe and demonstrate a working approach for turning research, tests, pilots, and programs into insight the field can use; at least one well-scoped test has been designed, run, and learned from enough to make a clear call on what comes next; several workstreams are moving at once; learning practices are in use across all three pillars; and the three directors share insight across pillars as a matter of course.

Our Hiring Timeline

Our process has three stages. We review applications as they arrive, so we encourage you to apply early.

• Stage one: Applications and screening calls. Applications are due by December 11. We’ll begin reviewing them right away and hold short screening calls with a group of candidates on a rolling basis.
• Stage two: Interviews. Candidates who move forward will interview with members of our team, in person in New York City for local candidates and on Zoom for candidates outside the area.
• Stage three: Final panel interview and practical exercise. Finalists will meet with a final panel and complete a role-based practical exercise. We’ll share the details and timing of the exercise directly with finalists.

Atra is closed from December 24 through January 1 for winter break, so we’ll plan the timing of these steps around that break.

#LI-HYBRID