For the woman people are starting to notice.
Over twelve sessions, including a Shabbat retreat, participants build skills in self-awareness, trust, governance, and communal leadership, and practice using their voice in the cohort and in their own institutions.
A welcome, and a charge.
Pauline Foster's family carries forward her conviction that the Jewish community is strongest when women are prepared to lead it. Her daughter's message to the incoming cohort will live here.
Recording in progress
What a year in the Institute looks like.
A cohort of women move through the year together. Twelve sessions, beginning with a kickoff dinner and a Shabbat retreat, pair Jewish wisdom with practical leadership skills. Participants sit with women CEOs from our community, learn how boards and organizations make decisions, look honestly at what gets in their own way, and practice bringing real ideas back to their institutions.
Three pillars of the year
The cohort is the program. Women arrive as strangers and stay connected long after the year ends.
Find your voice as a leader, then practice using it, in the cohort and in your own institution.
Bring what you learn back to the places you already lead and try it there, with support.
Program components
Eight parts of the year. Select each one to learn more.
-
A cohort, not a class
A cohort of women move through the year as one group, most of them already balancing a career, a family, and volunteer leadership. They arrive as strangers and finish as a network.
-
Twelve sessions
Twelve sessions from February 2027 to January 2028. Topics include trust and culture, voice and story, how leadership works from the inside (with a panel of women CEOs from our community), what our community needs right now, adaptive leadership, governance, and facing resistance.
-
A Shabbat retreat
The year opens with a kickoff dinner and a Shabbat retreat with a scholar in residence. It’s where the cohort becomes a community and where each woman begins shaping her own Leadership Lens.
-
Pauline’s Leadership Lens
Rooted in who Pauline Foster was and what she believed leadership required: presence and intention, listening deeply and speaking with clarity, leading through complexity without losing your grounding, bringing others into shared responsibility, and learning from experience and from others.
The Lens isn’t a fixed framework. Each woman defines her own questions and commitments, revisits them through the year, and leaves with a personal leadership statement.
-
Something you’re growing
Many women arrive carrying something they want to grow: a role, a relationship, an idea. It doesn’t need to be fully formed. The Institute makes room for it to take shape, in the company of women who will help it grow.
-
Leadership development
The year moves from self-knowledge to communal responsibility. Each session pairs Jewish wisdom with a practical leadership framework, and participants practice with real situations from their own institutions.
-
The Five Tenets
Every session is grounded in one of five tenets, each rooted in a Jewish value.
Tzelem ElohimSee yourself as a leader first, before anyone else confirms it for you.
-
An alumnae network
The year ends with a Siyum, but the cohort doesn’t. Nearly 100 women have completed the Institute across five cohorts, and many go on to board, committee, and professional leadership across the community.
What the year leaves behind.
Leadership is about having influence to make positive change for our kids and our community.
Know a woman who’s ready? Nominate her. Nominees can apply now.
The December 3 deadline has passed. We’re accepting applications only until all 18 seats are filled.
Nominate, or raise your hand
Put forward a woman you know is ready or tell us you’re interested. Nominated women get early access to the application.
Apply
The application takes about 20 minutes and includes a short video (or a written option). It asks what you’re hoping to grow this year, even if it isn’t fully formed.
Offers and welcome
We review every application received by December 3 and begin offering seats on December 7.
At a glance
- Cohort
- 18–20 Jewish women
- Sessions
- Twelve, including a kickoff dinner, a Shabbat retreat, and a closing Siyum
- Begins
- Week of February 22, 2027
- Tuition
- $1,800Limited scholarships available.
- Cohort 6 dates
-
- Feb 23, 2027Kickoff dinner
- Mar 12–14, 2027Shabbaton weekend
- Apr 6, 2027
- May 4, 2027
- Jun 8, 2027
- Aug 24, 2027
- Sep 7, 2027
- Sep 28, 2027
- Oct 19, 2027
- Nov 9, 2027
- Dec 7, 2027
- Jan 9, 2028Half day, 10 a.m.–2 p.m.
All sessions, except for March and April, will be held from 6–9 p.m. at various locations throughout San Diego.
Questions? Contact usWho leads the learning.
Heather brings nearly two decades of leadership experience across M2, Jewish Federation of San Diego, and Birthright Israel NEXT. A Board Certified Coach and the founder of Maven Leadership Consulting, she is known for bringing sessions to life for participants.
Rabbi Yael B. Ridberg has served Congregation Dor Hadash since 2010. A graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, she has held leadership roles including President of the San Diego Rabbinic Association. She is an advocate for Jewish engagement and social justice, and lives in La Jolla with her family.
We welcome special guest speakers throughout the program.
The Institute began as her conviction.
Pauline Foster believed the Jewish community would only ever be as strong as the women it trusted to lead it. This Institute is the practical form of that belief.
A native San Diegan, Pauline spent more than six decades in service to this community. She helped found the Women's Division of Federation and created The Young Matrons at a time when Federation was governed entirely by men. She went on to become the first woman to serve as board president of Jewish Federation of San Diego, of the Jewish Community Foundation, and of United Way. In 2013, she and the Foster Family Foundation underwrote OPTIONS, which drew a thousand women and became the largest Jewish women's event in San Diego's history.
She did not simply hold those seats. She spent a lifetime making certain other women would fill them after her, and she was called a leader's leader by nearly everyone who worked beside her.
The Pauline Foster Women's Leadership Institute carries that work forward on a single premise: that leadership across the Jewish community should reflect the women who sustain it, and that the surest way to change who sits at the table is to prepare the women who belong there.
Questions? Contact us.
Wondering whether the Institute is right for you, or for someone you have in mind? Send us a note and the program team will be in touch.
- Twelve sessions pairing Jewish wisdom with leadership skills
- A kickoff dinner and a Shabbat retreat
- A network of nearly 100 alumnae
Contact the program team
We follow up within a few business days.
Submitting opens a pre-filled email to the program team in your mail app.
The women of the Institute.
Nearly 100 women across five cohorts.
Is this your year?
Apply, nominate a woman who’s ready, or reach out with questions.
Heather Wolfson
Senior Director of Leadership & Belonging