Alissa Bernstein
Assistant Director AJC Los Angeles

A) What qualities make the nominee deserving of the Z3 Bridge Builder Award?

I am the Director of American Jewish Committee (AJC) Los Angeles, and I am nominating Alissa Bernstein, the Assistant Director AJC Los Angeles. Alissa manages our political outreach, legislative advocacy, and interfaith and intergroup coalition building initiatives. She is also a participating author in Wicked Son Publishing’s newest book, Young Zionist Voices, which will be launched at the Z3 conference in November.

In her role as Assistant Director Alissa works tirelessly to strengthen relationships with our community partners. She places a premium on understanding their community priorities and spends hours of her time outside work going to community programs to learn how to best support them. Over the last six months, Alissa has worked closely with AJC LA lay leadership to establish a Latino/Jewish Relations Working Group to enhance our relationships with LA’s Latino community - she has organized meetings with the leaders of California’s Latino Jewish Caucus to partner on shared legislative priorities, and has met with several of LA’s most prominent Latino organizers, leaders and elected officials to strengthen our advocacy efforts. 

Alissa has pursued community building initiatives long before her time with AJC. As a student at Occidental College, Alissa was committed to bringing Jewish and Palestinian students together for dialogue about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, their identities, and how to bridge the divide on campus. As an intern with AJC’s Washington, DC office, Alissa managed much of the region's diplomatic outreach for important programs and conducted research for our Middle East Affairs Department’s initiative to promote business partnerships between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. 

In her first year with AJC LA, Alissa managed the region’s young leadership initiatives, where she connected LA high school students with Israeli students on the Israeli periphery to better understand how to build relationships across cultural divides. She hosted programs with vital community partners in the Japanese American and Black communities to promote mutual understanding, allyship, and partnership on local issues. Alissa led a series of happy hours for Black and Jewish young professionals to discuss the past, present and future of Black/Jewish relations, which has resulted in strengthened relationships with the leading Black advocacy organization in Los Angeles. She also coordinated an overnight pilgrimage to Manzanar, one of ten incarceration centers for Japanese Americans in the United States, for a cohort of 50 people, half of which were partners in the Japanese American community. This pilgrimage increased our communities’ understanding of one another and has allowed for deepened relationships, and friendships, to flourish. 

Alissa is dedicated to community partnership and coalition building with every fiber of her being. She has dedicated unbelievable amounts of her time and energy to build bridges so that the Jewish community, and other communities, can be empowered, secure, and protected.

B) In what ways has the nominee demonstrated exceptional leadership and commitment to their work in bridging divides?

Alissa is currently organizing Los Angeles’ first-ever diverse coalition of Jewish organizations in the hopes of establishing a unified Jewish collective to fight hate, deepen connections outside the Jewish community, and improve Diaspora relations. 

The purpose of this collective of non-profit organizations is to understand the cultural differences within the Jewish community that can often sow division, find overlapping goals and mission, create unity over those areas of interest, and in doing so strengthen relationships outside of the Jewish community. 

With this group, Alissa will strengthen Jewish community relationships in Los Angeles, organize cross-community educational programs, activate networks to promote legislative priorities that affect our many intersecting communities, and coalesce on local city and county-wide issues. Currently, no other such groups exist in LA. This collective offers a unique opportunity to utilize our relationships within the community to bolster our relationships with others. 

This project was born out of a conversation outside of work hours with a friend of hers, and was initially intended to be a personal passion project. When realizing she could harness AJC’s resources to improve the quality of the work, expand the outreach, and broaden the scope of the mission, she pitched her project to me and I was quickly sold. It is now an initiative that will become part of the fabric of our regional work. This initiative is highly characteristic of Alissa’s work ethic - she is a self-starter and thrives on collaboration. She not only understands the benefits of partnership but enjoys collaborating with others to enhance her work with nuanced and diverse perspectives.

C) How has the nominee's work impacted the Jewish community and beyond?

Alissa has increased the visibility of AJC’s young leadership work significantly during her time here, bringing in young professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds to support AJC’s work. She has identified leaders outside of the Jewish community who are dedicated to fighting hate and brought them into AJC’s vital work in Los Angeles. 

In her political outreach, Alissa regularly works with other community organizations to pass vital city and county ordinances, motions and resolutions, spanning from the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in the city of Los Angeles, to the commission of a study of the state of antisemitism in Los Angeles County, to a governance reform measure that will expand LA County’s supervisorial leadership to allow for further government transparency, accountability, and representation. 

Alissa is a natural community leader and organizer. She votes with her feet, shows up for others when it matters, and as such has become known fondly by her peers as the “Mayor of Jewish LA”. Alissa has a bright future ahead of her and it will undoubtedly be defined by her unique ability to build bridges, create coalitions, and as a result develop truly lasting relationships on a personal and professional level. Alissa is incredibly deserving of this award. She demonstrates a level of poise, professionalism, commitment, and dedication that far surpasses her age. I can think of no better person than Alissa to receive this prestigious award.