When it comes to school galas, they can often go a similar, predictable route. But not at the Kehillah School when Jenny Circle was in charge.
Circle, who spent 10 years in development at Palo Alto’s Kehillah and also served as its basketball coach, died unexpectedly on Oct. 14. She was 47 and had two young children. A cause was not given immediately.
As a coach, Circle made a lasting impact on her players. And as a fundraiser, she best expressed her creativity at the annual galas.
In 2016, there was a rock ’n’ roll theme to showcase the student bands. Circle was a fan of ’80s hair bands, and she teased her hair as high as it would go. In 2019, when she brought kosher wineries to the school for that year’s gala, she dressed up as a bunch of grapes.
“We’d have no problem getting parents to join the gala committee, because she was just so much fun,” said Lisa Strauss, who was part of an ad hoc staff band — called Mustache Pizza, with Circle as singer — that performed in 2016. “Our galas were larger than life because of her. She would just take an idea and run with it,” said Strauss, who worked closely with her as director of marketing and called Circle her “work wife.”
As far as her coaching went, Strauss recalled Circle once bringing in Sacred Heart’s coach to teach a few skills to the players. “She called in the big guns, because that’s just what she did,” said Strauss.
Heather Fils, who was a point guard on Kehillah’s basketball team from 2010 to 2014, shared her thoughts about her former coach on Facebook.
“It’s impossible to capture what she meant to us. She was our mentor, our inspiration, and our biggest believer, on and off the court. She pushed us to discover our own strength and taught us that our true power was in our unity as a team. We are better athletes and, more importantly, better people because of her.”
Born on Feb. 10, 1978, Circle grew up in Menlo Park, according to her bio at Good Karma Bikes, a nonprofit that provides reliable transportation to homeless and low-wage workers and where she had worked as director of development since 2021. A star basketball player at Sacred Heart Preparatory in Atherton, she was inducted into the Peninsula Sports Hall of Fame in 2016. Her skills earned her a scholarship playing Division 1 basketball, first at the University of Southern California and then the University of Colorado, Boulder, from which she graduated.
In 2010, she took a position as development associate at Kehillah, eventually becoming the director of annual giving.
Former head of school Rabbi Darren Kleinberg said that in addition to the creativity and great energy Circle brought to the annual galas, the fact that the school raised around $12 million in unrestricted gifts under her leadership “is an extraordinary amount for a school our size.”
That Kehillah “could grow the faculty, undertake a 12,000-square-foot renovation of the campus, increase the quality of materials, build a black box theater, a music studio and an engineering lab was extraordinary,” Kleinberg said.
Circle was not Jewish, but worked in her Jewish milieu with respectful curiosity and a desire to be part of her community, Kleinberg said.
“Her curiosity was unquenchable, and it wasn’t some kind of anthropological subject for her,” Kleinberg said. “She wanted to know the lingo.” He recalled her singing songs from the Kabbalat Shabbat service to her life-size cardboard cutout of the rock band Kiss. (It was part of the gala decor in 2016 and remained in Circle’s office until she left.)
“She was such a pure, caring, authentic, loving, kind, happy and generous person to anyone in any situation, and so she extended that to Judaism,” Kleinberg added.
In her time at Kehillah, Circle more than left her mark, both in terms of the money she raised and the impact she had on both staff and students.
“She did a great deal to build up an important organization in the Bay Area Jewish community,” Kleinberg said. “She dedicated 10 years of her life to that school, and the school is better off because of it.”
Circle is survived by her children, Thomas and Lilly Cronin, her mother, Candace Circle, and her sister, Jamie Circle.