Our Shir Tikvah member panelists devote their professional lives to breaking the cycle of poverty that keeps people from buying or renting a home and saving for their futures. They work to create affordable housing, strengthen communities, boost access to education, workforce training and jobs, and offer financial literacy and savings programs so that families don’t have to live a paycheck away from financial disaster.
Learn about their social justice, anti-poverty work, how you can support it, and start to advocate for fairer economic and housing policies in Massachusetts and beyond.

Our Shir Tikvah member panelists:

Marc Dohan, Executive Director of New Vue Communities. Led by community members of diverse incomes and backgrounds, New Vue develops quality housing, creates economic opportunities, and fosters civic engagement in North Central Massachusetts. Among other things, New Vue is working in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Fitchburg on a comprehensive community development plan that will make a meaningful difference in the lives of residents. Marc has also worked as a community organizer and an attorney. He lives with his family in Arlington and when he is not working at New Vue, serves as President of Shir Tikvah.

Joanna Ain, Senior Policy Manager at Prosperity Now, focusing on tax policy, emergency savings, children’s savings accounts and VITA (the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program). Joanna came to Prosperity Now after six years at Housing Corporation of Arlington, a nonprofit community development corporation, where she implemented Arlington’s Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program. Joanna began her career at Jewish National Fund, while teaching sixth grade American Jewish history at Temple Shir Tikvah for five years. She is also a proud VITA volunteer in Washington, DC, where she currently lives.

Rebecca (Wolfe) Lane, Associate Vice President at Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit that reimagines how education and workforce systems meet state and regional talent needs and prepare people for careers. Rebecca oversees JFF’s Students at the Center project, working to ensure that all students--with a focus on low-income youth and students of color-- have concrete opportunities to acquire the skills, knowledge, and dispositions for success in college, workforce, and civic life. Prior to JFF, Rebecca worked as program director at the Fairfield County Community Foundation on an initiative for growing and training urban school principals and the Suffolk County DA’s office for the first US. Department of Labor Youth Opportunity Area. She has consulted and written widely on educational equity and college and career readiness for low-income young people.

 Please RSVP below for dinner by February 3. Suggested donation: $10.