After leading the San Francisco office of the Anti-Defamation League for over a decade, Seth Brysk is taking on a newly created, executive-level position at the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund.
His new title will be chief officer of external affairs and partnerships, the Federation announced in a July 25 press release. The job starts on Aug. 16.
“I’ve always been interested in serving my community,” Brysk said in an interview. “I felt I was ready for a new challenge.”
The veteran Jewish community leader spent 11 years leading the regional ADL office serving Northern California, Utah and Hawaii. From the start of his tenure in 2012, he witnessed a marked increase in antisemitic speech, vandalism and hate crimes in the Bay Area and across the country.
The anti-hate organization’s local office played a key role in passing a hate crime statute in Utah and expanded programming threefold, Brysk said. He also oversaw an eightfold increase in annual fundraising.
I’ve always been interested in serving my community. I felt I was ready for a new challenge.
Brysk won the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award in 2021 and was appointed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Holocaust and Genocide Education Council in 2022.
His new job at the Federation follows a series of positions at Jewish organizations over the last 25 years. He was executive director of Hillel of San Francisco from 1999 to 2005, Israel Center director at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston from 2005 to 2007, and regional director of the American Jewish Committee in the Los Angeles area from 2007 to 2012.
At the Federation, Brysk will work as the “brand champion,” according to the press release. His job will include forging “partnerships with local Jewish agencies, policymakers, partners, and industry leaders,” said CEO Joy Sisisky in the release.
“The idea is to leverage, create and strengthen partnerships to build community,” Brysk told J., “for both the benefit of the Federation as an agency, and also all members of the community — and [to help] people have a better understanding of how the Federation works.”
The S.F.-based Federation is one of the nation’s largest, managing over $2 billion in assets through a combination of donor-advised funds, supporting foundations and its endowment.