Sarra Alpert
Educator | Trainer | Facilitator | Coach
I support individuals and organizations with relationship-driven, values-aligned collaboration, problem-solving, and social change. Whether through team-building tools, conflict transformation, facilitation, curriculum/program design, or coaching, I’m here to help people show up as our full selves as we build healthier communal structures and stronger ways to work together for a better world.
Educational Workshops
Interactive workshops designed to deepen understanding of dialogue, social justice principles, values alignment, conflict transformation, team building, and other relational leadership practices. Tailored for organizations, conferences, and community groups seeking meaningful engagement with complex topics. (See recent examples)
Organizational Support
Comprehensive consulting services to help organizations work through values-oriented problems or integrate equity, dialogue, or other key principles more fully into their programs, policies, and practices. Support options range from strategic planning to curriculum development to staff training and culture change initiatives.
Retreat Planning and Facilitation
Whether helping to plan a multi-day retreat or day-long team meeting, these offerings include all elements of creating a container that feels supportive, meaningful, and where everyone leaves feeling like their time was well-spent.
Individual Coaching
One-on-one coaching for both emerging and experienced leaders seeking to deepen their impact, navigate complex organizational dynamics, and/or develop their authentic voice in social justice work.
Services
Sarra’s facilitation is thoughtful and skilled – she has an incredible gift for creating and holding space for authentic inquiry.
Shana Bloom, Chief Program Officer, Repair The World
Sarra’s programs were transformative and really helped build confidence in my leadership.
Avodah Fellow
Sarra modeled tremendous respect for people across differences. She created and held space for authentic inquiry, teaching us how to interrogate ourselves and our assumptions with compassion and showing us that we could push each other in a way that strengthened our relationship rather than dividing us.
I have had many faculty experiences, but in working on Sarra’s team, I felt supported in unprecedented ways. I wish this were a model for how to treat collaborative educational work.
Caroline Rothstein, renowned educator/facilitator/writer
Sarra is a role model for approaching social justice work with commitment and care.
Clara Schwartz, Avodah Alum
Sarra’s tools and coaching were so helpful in navigating crisis leadership, especially around values, emotional complexity, and equity.
Senior leader, coachee
Sarra wove community, teaching, and concepts together that otherwise feel at odds with each other - holding the beauty and truth of working to transform institutions alongside personal and collective healing.
I want to give Sarra a shout-out because of how included she made everybody in her sessions feel, no matter our backgrounds. She led multiple sessions I was a part of, and in each session I had with her, I always felt like I had a meaningful place there.
Participant, Foundation for Jewish Camp Cornerstone Seminar
As a result of Sarra’s workshop, I realized how important it is to slow down and spend time identifying my values and making sure I can articulate them.
Workshop participant, UJA
For many of us, Sarra's facilitation was a model that taught us to be stronger, better facilitators in our own work.
Sarra saw each of us individually for who we are - helping us to see ourselves in turn.
Sarra leaned into joy and fun, helping us make room for it in our justice work too.
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What People Say...
About
I have over twenty years of experience as an educator, facilitator, writer and speaker in Jewish communal spaces and beyond. I'm passionate about helping to build communities that can support and challenge each other in transformative social movement building and the many ways of working towards a better world.
I was a senior staff member at Avodah, a Jewish justice leadership organization, for eleven years, overseeing all of its core programs and serving as the creator of both the Avodah Justice Fellowship and the Avodah Institute for Social Change, and I was a Program Director there for five years before that.
In addition to that time at Avodah, I've been shaped in my thinking, teaching and being by my own Avodah Service Corps year and alumni experience, two terms on the board of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, eighteen years on the faculty for the Foundation for Jewish Camp's Cornerstone Seminar, four years as a Lecturer in the NYU Expository Writing Program, my term as a Schusterman Fellow, many years of teaching in a wide range of Hebrew schools and other Jewish learning spaces, my MFA at NYU and BAs at UCSD, growing up in United Synagogue Youth and at Camp Ramah in California, and most importantly, by being a part of many wonderful, warm groups and communal organizations.
I can often be found cooking with and for friends, singing along to something, reading on the subway or enjoying New York City's parks, events, and various surprises.
