Yolanda Savage-Narva

In this position, Yolanda plays a crucial role in AJWS’s ability to build community through enterprise-wide strategies that strengthen belonging, foster inclusivity, and deepen engagement with communities that support our work in the U.S. and around the world. Yolanda oversees outreach, leveraging her decades of strategic leadership, partnership cultivation and experience building spaces that welcome Jews and non-Jews and individuals and communities across all distinctions of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, and other categories.

Yolanda is the former vice president of Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Union for Reform Judaism. Earlier in her career, Yolanda collaborated over more than 20 years with Tribal governments to strengthen public health systems, promoted pedestrian safety and advocacy and coining the phrase, “Walking is a civil right,” and advancing health equity in states and territories. Most recently, she was the executive director at Operation Understanding DC, an organization dedicated to promoting understanding, cooperation, and respect while fighting to eradicate racism, antisemitism, and all forms of discrimination.

Yolanda is an alumna of the Union for Reform Judaism’s JewV’Nation Fellowship and a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority as well as an immediate past member of the Religious Action Center’s Commission on Social Action.