JFS Perspectives

Appetizers on edible spoons, a signature Sangria, 200 people mingling in a hip art gallery...this was definitely not your grandmother’s annual meeting! Last week, we hosted Celebrate JFS at District 475 in the new Vallagio at Inverness area, which Peter Kudla, owner of the event space and emcee for the evening, said is the new midtown.

JFS volunteers, board members, staff, and supporters gathered to celebrate the agency’s successes from the past fiscal year, install eight new board members and new Board Chair Alan Mayer, and toast the 2011 Max Frankel Volunteer of the Year Daisy Flynn.



In the past four years, Daisy has volunteered two days per week in the Accounting department and has given about 1,650 hours to JFS! She is also a regular canning volunteer, and fills in at the Weinberg Food Pantry as needed. Congratulations to Daisy on this well-deserved honor!



We also said goodbye to our previous board chair. Yana Vishnitsky, president & CEO, presented Steve Kris with an over-sized gavel with the inscription: Steven D. Kris, Jewish Family Service of Colorado Board Chair 2009-2011. Heartfelt thanks for your leadership and dedication. May your gavel continue to be heard far and wide.



After a few brief words from Steve, he turned the meeting over to the new board chair, Alan Mayer, who welcomed our eight new board members: David Asarch, Carla Bartell, David Friedman, Will Gold, Blanca Lerman, Linda Appel Lipsius, Rob Naiman, and Kerry Shelanski. He also thanked outgoing board members Jeff Johnson, Annette Pluss, Dean Prina, M.D. Chet Schwartz, Debi Tepper, and Ted Wirecki, M.D. for their years of dedicated service to JFS.

View more photos from the evening...

Thank you everyone who attended this event! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. If you were there, please leave your comments - we'd love to know what you thought of the event!

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department

Last week, nationally-recognized author, speaker, and communication guru, Debra Fine led a professional development event for JFS staff, board, and committee members to help us polish our networking and communication skills. Debra's quick wit and tell-it-like-it-is speaking style kept us entertained as we learned!

We learned some great tips for meeting new people, what to talk to them about, how to get the JFS message into the conversation, and how to leave a conversation gracefully (can't we all use that tip sometimes?). She demonstrated easy ways to make small talk and how to "dig in deeper" to avoid getting those dreaded one-word answers.

Through some fun, interactive group exercises, we got to practice what she preached and she showed us how we were making some common mistakes such as not "giving people the gift of our names."

Our leaders left energized and ready to get out in the community and talk up JFS and our upcoming Reel Hope fundraiser!

Alan Mayer, incoming board chair, says, “This event was a great reminder that every interaction we have is an opportunity to create a meaningful human connection. And with that connection, we have an opportunity to talk about the agency to someone who would be interested in learning more. I really enjoyed the event and learned a lot.”

Thank you so much to Debra for providing this tremendous opportunity for us!

-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department