Staff
Sami Sinclair is the Principal at Sinclair Strategies, a nonprofit consulting firm specializing in strategic and financial resource development. Prior to that role, Sami served as the Chief Advancement Officer for JCC Greater Boston for nearly a decade. In this role, she oversaw the strategic direction, growth, and execution of the Annual Campaign, including all targeted and programmatic fundraising, and Our Campaign to Re-imagine the JCC, a comprehensive capital campaign effort that raised more than $16M during her tenure. As a member of the Senior Management Team, she played a lead role in the organization’s messaging and strategic development, including how to create entry points and pathways to engage demographically and geographically diverse populations in meaningful Jewish life.
Sami joined the JCC in 2012 after six years at Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Boston’s Jewish Federation, where she served as Director of Development, Affinities, overseeing the mid-level Annual Campaign and supervising Women's Philanthropy and the Professional Network teams. Prior to moving to Boston, she was a Campaign Associate and Manager of Women's Philanthropy for the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas following a career working on Democratic political campaigns in Nevada, Oregon, and California.
Sami is a recent graduate of the Mandel Executive Leadership Program through the Mandel Institute for Nonprofit Leadership. A native of New Jersey, Sami graduated from the University of Virginia and recently spent 5 months living in Barcelona with her family. She lives in Needham, MA with her husband, three daughters, two cats and a puppy.
Raya is a New York native and a graduate of the George Washington University where she was a University Honors student and studied international affairs, political science, and sustainability. During her undergraduate tenure, Raya worked on programming, advocacy, and engagement within a number of political and Jewish organizations, including GW Hillel, the Abba Eban Institute of International Diplomacy, and the National Peace Corps Association. Raya completed her undergraduate studies a semester early and spent the spring of 2021 working virtually as the programming and engagement associate for Lehigh University Hillel, engaging students on a hybrid campus in the height of the pandemic.
Prior to joining JDCA, Raya was selected as one of 60 fellows nationally to complete the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs. During the fellowship, Raya was based out of St. Louis where she learned experientially about the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of policy and the public sphere in a deeply red state. Raya is thrilled to bring her experience to the growing JDCA team to help educate and mobilize our democratic Jewish base.
Alan Shulman is a native of both Michigan and New York. He was the first person in his family born in the United States, with his family fleeing the Soviet Union in the 1990’s. Alan graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor's in International Relations in 2020. He was deeply involved with MSU Hillel, including organizing the 2018 Michigan Holocaust Commemoration event in the Capitol building in Lansing and running Spartans for Israel. He also founded and ran Spartans for Biden and was a member of the National Youth Leadership council on the Biden campaign. He played a very active role on campus, working hard to make the university more accountable to the student population in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal. This included but was not limited to passing legislation through student government, authoring op-eds with other student leaders and successfully lobbying the MSU administration to make changes at the Department of Institutional Equity (OIE). Alan is passionate about building strong coalitions and bringing people together. He has done research for three different MSU professors, is a veteran of four different political campaigns and interned in both the Michigan House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
Get in touch with Alan and our Outreach team.