Sara Shapiro-Plevan, Ed. D.

Founder and Principal

917-562-6213 - SARA@RIMONIMCONSULTING.ORG

Sara is all about relationships. Her essential focus: understanding the way relationships influence the ability to improve our practice, shape our work, and engage effectively with others. Sara consults with individuals and organizations across the Jewish community to develop a networked, collaborative approach to their practice in a variety of domains and support their alignment with vision. She is a passionate network weaver and facilitator, working to build relationships with and between individuals, teams and communities, and both cultivate and leverage those connections to generate positive change.

Her current practice, in addition to her consulting, includes coaching and mentoring, facilitation and collaboration. Sara is most proud of her work in the practice of network weaving, network development and network learning, and feels deeply fortunate to bring this breadth of practice to bear on her work in the Jewish community. Sara is pursuing coaching certification, with foundational training from Minds at Work in their Immunity to Change model, as well as with CRR Global, through their Organization and Relationships Systems Coaching program.

Sara is the CEO of The Gender Equity in Hiring in the Jewish Community Project, which works to transform the endemic culture of gender bias that continues to keep women from senior staff positions within Jewish organizations. The Project supports organizations in ensuring their systems, processes and hiring practices reflect the Jewish values of equality and fairness. By strengthening organizations’ awareness of gender bias and helping them to respond, the Project hopes to see more women rise to positions of leadership, tapping our collective and individual human potential. 

As a moderator and facilitator of JEDLAB, a network of 12,000 people from across every domain and spectrum of Jewish life, Sara shares her passion for Jewish learning with folks who have come together to redesign the Jewish education ecosystem. JEDLAB is one of many networks of which Sara is a part: she lives and works within community in order to understand the challenges of her clients and what matters most to them.

She holds an Ed.D. from the Davidson School of Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary.  Her research focuses on the social and professional networks of Jewish educators, to understand how educators are connected and how this changes and influences practice. This research is deeply intertwined with her professional practice, as it focuses on the connections, both big and small, that weave together individuals and enable us to do our best work. Sara holds a BA in Near Eastern and Jewish Studies from Brandeis University and an MA in Jewish Education from JTS, and was a fellow in the Senior Educators Program of the Melton Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora at Hebrew University.