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Bet Tzedek names Jessie Kornberg new CEO

About two years ago, Jessie Kornberg was litigating a trial for the law firm Bird Marella, and when it ended, all the attorneys were waiting to speak candidly with jurors about what they thought the lawyers did well and what they didn’t do well.
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October 28, 2014

About two years ago, Jessie Kornberg was litigating a trial for the law firm Bird Marella, and when it ended, all the attorneys were waiting to speak candidly with jurors about what they thought the lawyers did well and what they didn’t do well. Eight months pregnant, Kornberg could barely move, let alone bug jury members.

When she walked out of the courtroom, she was met by the entire jury. They were waiting for her, and they all wanted to know: was it a boy or a girl?

“They felt they understood who I was,” Kornberg, 32, said in an interview with the Journal. “That was a very good lesson about making yourself relatable, finding opportunities to help tell people who you are because that’s how people want to engage in our profession, in any profession.”

Those are lessons she aims to keep front and center now that she has been named the first female CEO of the legal services nonprofit Bet Tzedek. The announcement was formally made Oct. 28.

Founded in 1974, Bet Tzedek offers pro bono law services in matters involving consumer rights, elder law, housing, public benefits and workers’ rights to low-income, disabled and elderly people of all racial and religious backgrounds. The organization has a network of hundreds of attorneys across the country who offer legal help to Holocaust survivors.

Kornberg will run a staff of 60 lawyers and others who work everyday toward the fulfillment of Bet Tzedek’s motto, “Tzedek tzedek tirdof,” (“Justice, justice you shall pursue”) when she starts in December.

Kornberg expressed enthusiasm about taking on the Bet Tzedek post. One of her goals, she told the Journal, is to bring awareness about Bet Tzedek that is commensurate with how much the organization accomplishes.

“There is incredible work being done everyday here, real victories, huge cases, huge success, huge impact, and I want to broadcast that achievement to the press, to public partners, to private supporters, much, much more,” she said. “Spreading the message about what Bet Tzedek does is really important to me.”

Kornberg will be tasked with overseeing an annual budget of approximately $7 million and working with a board of directors that includes 70 people, many prominent attorneys, including Bet Tzedek co-founder Stan Levy, who told the Journal he expects Kornberg to be “phenomenal” in the new position.

Relatability will be essential for Kornberg as she takes the helm. The CEO is the face of the organization, charged with maintaining relationships with a wide range of individuals, groups and institutions, from Jewish community organizations to clients, pro bono lawyers, donors, foundations, state and city government officials and others, according to Mitchell Kamin, Bird Marella principal attorney and a former Bet Tzedek CEO.

Bet Tzedek conducted a national search for its new CEO, working with the consulting firm Johnston and Company. The process involved several months of whittling down candidates until the organization selected Kornberg, according to a spokesperson for the organization.

“I think that she is a really dynamic creative thinker, and she’s coming along at a time when that kind of vision is going to be incredibly valuable, and I just see a world of opportunity for her to bring her dynamism to this organization,” David Lash, a member of Bet Tzedek’s board of directors and one of the organization’s former CEOs, told the Journal in a phone interview.

As CEO, Kornberg’s responsibilities will include setting “the policy direction of the board, raising money [and] supervising the staff,” Kamin said. “I guess the way I always looked at the job is you are responsible for many different stakeholder groups and making sure the organization is serving those needs and responsible to them.”

Bet Tzedek counts 2,400 pro bono volunteers who contribute about 85,000 hours each year to deliver legal assistance to the poor, according to a press release. They will be under Kornberg’s leadership, as well.

Kornberg and Kamin met while the former, a graduate of Columbia University and of UCLA Law School, was working among the volunteer pro bono attorneys at Bet Tzedek. Kamin was impressed and recommended Kornberg for a position at Bird Marella, where she has been working since 2011.

During her time at Bird Marella, a boutique law agency that specializes in white-collar crime, Kornberg litigated six trials. Standing up in the courtroom provides a rush that she’ll miss, she said during an interview at the Bet Tzedek offices in Koreatown.

Raised in Palo Alto, Kornberg is the daughter of a mother poet and a father architect, and she has two younger siblings, Her grandfather was a “victim of anti-Semitism, as many Jews of his generation were,” she said.

“That colored his response to the civil rights movement. He was a staunch supporter of civil rights advocacy and made sure in St. Louis, post-desegregation, after Brown v. Board of Education, that his sons continued in public school when no other white children did,” she said. “Because he understood the insidious effect of racism, he had been on the receiving end of it … he would not participate in that going forward and … he would stand for something different, and I think about that, I think about that a lot.”

Another goal, she said, is to serve as a megaphone for a staff that, in the past, has come into conflict with management over compensation. Bet Tzedek employees formed a picket line in 2011 and again in 2013, over issues related to, respectively, their pay and to health care benefits. Kornberg said she looks forward to working with a unionized work force that she believes has resolved its issues with management.

“There is real alignment and collaboration between the union leadership, between staff management and the board. I’m not sure, as I talk to more and more people on the board and on the staff, that there’s ever been a time at Bet Tzedek where those stakeholders were so closely aligned,” she said. “There has been a real coming together in the last, I don’t know, three or four months, where the union and management have signed onto shared interests and are going to be moving forward, collectively, so I lucked out, because I played no role in that but I get all of the benefits.

“It is a very powerful thing. At a time when unions are really struggling … the union here at Bet Tzedek is embraced and working together with management on Bet Tzedek’s future success, so I feel very fortunate about that,” she said.

Her appointment continues a pattern of young leadership for the organization. With the exception of Kornberg’s immediate predecessor, Sandor Samuels — who resigned this past summer and was 58 years old when he was hired in 2010 — previous leaders have been in their 30s or even younger. Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, a former Bet Tzedek CEO, was in his late-20s when he was hired to head the nonprofit.   

Throughout her career, Kornberg has channeled her energies into advocating on behalf of women in the legal arena. This includes blogging about sexism in law school and about gender-based discrimination among the faculty at law schools. Her blogs appear on the website of Ms. JD, an online forum she founded that gives voice to women in the legal world. She also served as the nonprofit’s executive director and remains a board member emerita.

Married and the mother of 14-month-old named Asa — after African-American labor leader and social activist A. Philip Randolph — Kornberg was quoted in a 2012 New York Times article about how to achieve work-life balance. She told the reporter that she considered it a priority to help mothers in the workplace find time to juggle both worlds.

That was before she was a mom herself. Today, with Elissa Barrett as Bet Tzedek’s vice president and general counsel, Kornberg’s recent hiring means that women occupy the top two leadership roles at the organization. Barrett, who has been serving as interim CEO for the last few months, is anticipating a great work experience.

“She brings a great deal of energy and vision to the position,” Barrett said of Kornberg. “It’s a very positive development. Placing women in leadership is a progressive step for Bet Tzedek.”

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