YOU Lead

Applications are now open for the 2025-2026 cohort through Friday, May 9, 2025! To apply for the 2025-2026 program, please click here.

YOU Lead, Prizmah’s leadership development program, provides a research-informed, cohort-based, and highly personalized leadership development experience for school professionals who aspire to deepen their leadership capacity in their current role, and for roles they will hold in the future. Over nine months of synchronous and asynchronous learning with expert coaching and mentoring, you will gain the practical tools, resources, skills, and knowledge you – and your school – need to excel.

Who it is for

YOU Lead is for Jewish day school professionals with leadership responsibilities (not including current heads of school) who want to develop their leadership skills. This includes:

• Curriculum coordinators
• Principals
• Judaics directors
• Directors of teaching and learning
• Teacher leaders/mentors
• Admissions directors
• Development/advancement directors
• Directors of student life/deans of students
• Department chairs
• Directors of educational technology

Three separate cohorts for senior, mid-level, and entry-level leaders help YOU Leaders connect with peers confronting similar challenges. Typically, the program enrolls 30 participants a year, and acceptance into the program is competitive.

What it is

YOU Lead combines in-person learning, online modules, cohort building, and 1:1 coaching with experienced mentors to support the development of capacities and dispositions – such as emotional intelligence and curiosity – that are central to effective day school leadership. Relevant program sessions focus on a range of pragmatic skill sets, including: best practices for hiring and supervision, talent development, adaptive leadership, time management, how to deliver effective feedback, and much more.

How it works

In YOU Lead, you will learn about and master the skills that are most important in Jewish day school leadership. The YOU Lead curriculum is informed heavily by Prizmah’s research on school leadership, and it provides highly personalized support that promotes professional growth and addresses leaders’ most pressing priorities.

• YOU Leaders participate in online learning modules and interact with leading experts in Jewish education. Each module is specifically designed for each cohort.
• YOU Leaders have monthly virtual cohort meetings, which focus on dilemmas of practice. Throughout the year, each participant presents a professional challenge they are experiencing, and the group uses a protocol to help the presenter gain new insight into the challenge.
• YOU Leaders have twice-a-month confidential one-on-one coaching calls with their mentors to work through their most pressing leadership challenges and questions.
• At the beginning of the program, YOU Leaders come together for a two-day in-person gathering in the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut) for valuable learning and relationship-building.

Why it is needed

For Jewish day schools to thrive, school leaders need skills, resources, and support to succeed. YOU Lead addresses the growing need in the Jewish day school field for targeted, practical training for emerging day school leaders. Professionals in day schools who show tremendous talent and promise are often quickly promoted into leadership positions. YOU Lead invests in leaders in order to strengthen their leadership capacity and support them in serving their schools and communities now and into the future. Through YOU Lead, participants:

• Gain a sense of belonging and connection to peers and colleagues.
• Feel they are part of a larger field of Jewish day school leaders.
• Experience a greater sense of efficacy in their leadership.
• Feel a renewed commitment to Jewish day school leadership.
• Feel supported in their work and feel they have someone/colleagues to turn to.
• Translate their learning into practice.
• Develop awareness of and deepen their leadership presence.
• Develop a greater understanding of the diversity in the field of Jewish day schools.
• Feel a clear sense of what they can work on to improve in their practice.

Cost

Thanks to the generous support of our funders, we are able to offer subsidized tuition to YOU Lead program participants. The actual cost of the YOU Lead program is $10,000 per person, and our subsidized tuition for the 2025-2026 program year is:

Please note that program participants are responsible for assuming the cost of travel and lodging for the November gathering (in the tri-state area).

Tuition is generally covered by the participant’s school. Scholarship funding is available.

Applications

Applications are now open through Friday, May 9, 2025

QUESTIONS?

Contact Gavi Elkind, Director of Leadership Development, at [email protected].