As I glanced around a room of 25 C-suite leaders ahead of delivering a briefing on antisemitism, I thought, “What am I doing here?!”
In my head, I was still the cybersecurity professional, the IT guy. I had no business speaking about Jewish lived experience in the workplace. And yet, in that moment, I realized I was standing in a gap that needed to be filled.
Looking back over the past three years, the story sounds almost like a movie: A successful cybersecurity professional leaves his career in search of greater meaning, building a global Jewish workplace community.
In fact, if you’d told me as I lay in bed on Oct. 7, 2023, awoken by the sound of distant interceptions by the Iron Dome missile-defense system, that I’d be writing about my career pivot, I imagine I would have laughed so hard that I’d be admitted for hysteria.
Yet here I am. No longer solving tech problems but helping Jews around the world navigate something far more personal: how to show up at work as proud Jews.
My story, however, begins before Oct. 7.
In 2019, with a colleague in London, I started what was essentially a small Jewish social group at Amazon. We met for drinks once or twice before COVID-19 paused everything. We stayed in touch, even hosting a virtual gathering during lockdown.
Then came the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 and mandatory 2.5-hour diversity training. Jews weren’t mentioned once. That omission was a turning point. I realized that if we were not included, we had to organize ourselves.
I set out to build a formal Employee Resource Group (ERG). The resistance was immediate. I was told that Jews were just a religion, too small a minority, not an ethnicity. Even jokingly pointing to a DNA test result (thank you, pandemic boredom!) did not help the case. The answer remained no.
I built it anyway.
Without formal approval, we grew a grassroots community of more than 1,500 Jewish employees through mailing lists, Slack channels and events. What started locally quickly connected globally. Through that group, I was introduced to family, spouses and friends at other companies, all facing the same or similar challenges. Different industries, different countries, same story: a desire for community and a lack of institutional support or knowledge on what to do.
So I built another community ... one of leaders.
When I left Amazon in July 2023, that community of leaders came with me. We met online through the summer and then everything accelerated after Oct. 7.
On Oct. 12, I was in Ben-Gurion International Airport trying to get back to the United Kingdom. In one ear, I was answering detailed security questions. In the other, I was hearing real-time accounts from Jewish employees across dozens of companies describing fear, isolation and hostility at work.
When I landed, my inbox was overflowing. ERG leaders asking for help. Employees trying to start groups and being blocked. Individuals who did not yet grasp that the community they were searching for could exist.
By day, I worked in IT security. By night, I was supporting a rapidly growing, deeply affected global community.
In March 2024, with more determination than sense, I organized a small volunteer mission to Israel. Ten members joined for three intense days, visiting sites in the south, soldiers in hospital and meeting released hostages. That trip clarified everything for me.
When I returned, I knew I couldn’t do both. I left my career to focus on this work.
Two years on, that community—now called “JewishERGs”—has grown into a global network of more than 500 members representing Jewish communities in more than 230 workplaces across eight countries. We support the people who step up, often quietly and without recognition, to build Jewish life at work.
We have created what I think of as the “infrastructure behind the infrastructure”: a shared platform with resources, programming, speakers and guidance. We host leadership dinners and global events, both for the leaders and their communities. In London, we recently took 50 ERG members and allies to the Nova Music Festival exhibition, and in July, our annual mixer brought together 150 Jews from around the world for Jewish American and Canadian Heritage Month, and for the first time, UK Jewish Culture Month.
At its core, this work is actually not about overtly fighting antisemitism. It’s about empowering Jews to bring Jewish joy to work in order to counteract the hate.
In a time marked by uncertainty and tension, there is a tendency to focus only on defense. But we also have a responsibility to build leaders. To celebrate. To show up as proud Jews in the workplaces where other identities are acknowledged and supported.
When we do that, we offer our colleagues something powerful: a real, human understanding of what it means to be Jewish or a Zionist. Not the distorted versions found online, but lived experience.
After that recent antisemitism briefing, one attendee described it as “pole-axing.” Reading that feedback, I thought back to my earlier doubt: What am I doing here?
The answer is now clear. This is exactly where I am meant to be.
And let me promise you, JewishERGs, I am only just getting started.
