Director of Student Life & Leadership at Hillel at UMass Amherst

Director of Student Life & Leadership

Role Overview:

As the Director of Student Life and Leadership, you’ll lead people and programs and foster an inclusive vibrant Jewish campus community.

On a daily basis, you will hold the big picture of our engagement strategy while overseeing a robust offering of meaningful activities that engage students and cultivate leadership. The ideal candidate has an authentic commitment to pluralism, is a natural relationship builder, and excels in mentoring and empowering students and young professionals.

Jewish life is growing at UMass and we’re looking for a leader to expand the ways in which Hillel supports all students to find belonging and meaning.  

What You Will Do:

Student Engagement & Leadership: 

• Design and execute a comprehensive engagement strategy with quantitative and qualitative goals that bring our mission and core values to life. 
• Drive and reshape Hillel’s student leadership initiatives to foster collaboration, shared mission, and cultivate new leaders.
• Oversee communal student-engagement events, including FreshFest, Shabbat and holiday programming, Birthright/immersive experiences, and on-campus outreach. 
• Manage collection and use of student engagement data to improve and prioritize our work. 
• Directly engage and inspire students by modelling authenticity while teaching, advising, and bringing your personal passion and creativity to Hillel (whether that’s baking, hiking, an identity-center space or something else awesome you want to share).  

Management & Organizational Growth

• Lead (supervise, mentor, hire, and inspire) the Student Life Team, leveraging staff members’ unique skills, passions, and backgrounds to support our diverse student community to thrive. 
• Manage information flow to keep the team on the same page including marketing, social media, programming, and the calendar.
• Develop and manage an annual budget and related reporting so our spreadsheets match our mission and goals
• Develop relationships with campus partners and external stakeholders, building bridges and helping create a safe and supportive climate for Jewish life
• Collaborate with Hillel’s fundraising staff, furthering a shared commitment to sustaining our work

What You Bring:

• 5 years of relevant professional work, with a preference for Jewish engagement or experiential settings. 
• A collaborative spirit and experience in program planning, community-building, project management, and supervision 
• Authentic care for Hillel’s mission, core values and Jewish pluralism
• Excellent interpersonal skills; ability to work well with a diverse range of students and stakeholders
• Strong organizational skills; ability to balance accountability with flexibility and to learn from both successes and failures. 
• A love of learning, whether that is Jewish, new software or systems, and/or what’s on the mind of students today. 
• A positive can-do attitude, drive for excellence, and ability to work well independently and with a team.  Values both hard work and fun!

What you’ll get out of it:

• Salary of $65,000-80,000. 
• Comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental and vision insurance, Flexible Spending Plan, retirement, generous vacation/sick time, parental leave.  
• Professional development, mentoring, and skill-building opportunities as part of a wonderful national Hillel network.
• Flexible work hours with some weekends, nights and Jewish holidays required
• A dynamic and collaborative work environment within a vibrant student community and university setting
• Mission driven work as an indispensable member our our leadership team and diverse community
• The opportunity to have a direct and meaningful impact on students’ lives and the UMass campus community

About UMass Hillel:

UMass Hillel serves as the vibrant center of Jewish communal life on the UMass Amherst campus.  Our mission is to empower students through the vitality of Jewish life to cultivate healthy, purposeful lives and relationships that better our community and world. UMass Hillel engages over 1600 students annually through an amazing array of social, educational, cultural, religious and leadership opportunities.  Learn more at umasshillel.org.

UMass Hillel is located in the fun college town of Amherst in the Pioneer Valley, also known as the “happy valley.”  The area has a rich cultural life, beautiful nature, thriving local Jewish communities and is a great place to live.  

UMass Hillel is affiliated with Hillel International. Hillel International seeks to enrich the lives of Jewish students so that they may enrich the Jewish people and the world, and envisions a world where every student is inspired to make an enduring commitment to Jewish life, learning and Israel.

Salary : $65,000 - $80,000