Re-Onboarding After Parental Leave: Finding Grounding in Our First Principles

Last spring, I returned from my second parental leave. Like my first leave, returning after significant time away was full of personal, professional, and global emotions and experiences. However, something felt different this time. It seems that over my six years at the Foundation we’ve experienced a lifetime of change, from a global pandemic to October 7^th and more. In an environment that continues to feel more uncertain and complex, finding a sense of grounding is difficult. I’ve been holding onto some VUCA mindsets the past few years that help me live with a readiness to adapt and act. As parents, friends, workers, and members of the Jewish community, we march on.

Since the Foundation adopted five first principles a few years ago, I’ve increasingly leaned on them. These principles—a guide for the Foundation team’s approach—offered me a playbook and structure during a fast-moving, evolving re-onboarding period at the Foundation over the past six months. At a time when keeping a north star bright was more challenging, marching onward grounded by these first principles was both a meaningful and productive path forward. Others in the field coming back from an extended time away may find this approach helpful as well.

1. First Principle: Center Young People – Our work focuses on young people and those who work with them. We center them as end-users as we forecast and solve for unmet needs and challenges. Their ideas and actions will shape the future.
Re-Onboarding Principle: Reconnect with Young People and Learning – Upon my return to the Foundation, I was encouraged to prioritize site visits to reacquaint myself with the Foundation’s diverse audiences up close and personal. It was both inspiring and an important reconnection to our work to experience powerful Jewish learning experiences side by side with educators and learners. I spent a day in Berkeley with Jewish Studio Project’s Studio Immersive, attended a number of learning sessions with the Shalom Hartman Institute, and am excited to join thousands of teens at BBYO International Convention 2026.

2. First Principle: Build Meaningful Relationships – Connecting meaningfully to other people and organizations honors our shared humanity and accelerates the change we seek. When we know our partners in genuine ways, we can better support efforts toward a common good.
Re-Onboarding Principle: Reestablish Relationships with Care and Intentionality – I was eager to jump back into my work after time away. While there was much to do, I was encouraged to spend my first few weeks back slowly wading into the flow of work. I was even invited to work with a coach to support my re-integration. This personal and professional investment in my re-onboarding, centered in relationships, rooted me back into a vibrant team culture that is premised on trust among the team and our partners across the country.

3. First Principle: Look Around Corners – Bold and transformative solutions come from peering into the future and being eager to take risks. Failing is part of our risk-taking and experimenting. Learning from failing leads to new ideas and greater impact.
Re-Onboarding Principle: Lean on Your Team and Think Big – Over the last two years, our Grantmaking team has taken intentional time to retreat a few times a year to center connection, meaning, and purpose into the fabric of our team and work. Our June 2025 retreat, Mashmaut (meaning), was fortuitously scheduled within my first few weeks of returning to the Foundation. The day was full of meaning in every sense – including a fail forward session – a discussion of some of our hardest experiences, challenges, and learns over the year. It was an opportunity to listen and learn from what my colleagues experienced while I was away and hold space for normalizing that things don’t always work despite our best efforts. This was followed by an exciting, boundless big ideas brainstorm, which reminded us all that failure and growth come hand in hand.

4. First Principle: Be Curious – Our journey to creative ideas and smart planning is steeped in a diversity of perspectives, research, personal stories, and results from our work in the field.
Re-Onboarding Principle: Ask Big Questions, Listen, and Learn to Go Further – Rigorous independent evaluation and research has always been a part of the Foundation’s DNA. Often, these projects stem from the professional team asking hard questions. As I settled back into the flow of work, multiple research studies crossed my desk. Our Director of Research and Learning, Stacie Cherner, hosted a Team Learning session to bring eight studies to life. Of note were Strength, Stress and Support: A Portrait of American Jewish Teen Wellbeing by BeWell at JFNA with Stanford University, and Jewish Families Today by Rosov Consulting. Both reports were timely and rich with learnings, helping to reorient me to how best to serve and support our diverse audiences through our investments in Jewish education organizations.

5. First Principle: Leverage Time – In different contexts, we use time to create urgency or provide space for deeper thinking and learning. Going fast or going slow is a choice we make with intentionality.
Re-Onboarding Principle: Be Open to New Ways of Working – A growing team can often open new opportunities for optimizing how we work. People might feel beholden to the ways things have always been done, until new team members help to widen the aperture and create an openness to change.  While I was on leave, my newer Program Officer colleagues, Orly and Leah, championed our adoption of new project management systems. This was an instance of going slow to go fast. A very thoughtful research process and training process has now materialized in our team’s ability to streamline projects, meetings, and conversations.

Re-onboarding is a journey, with its own distinct cadence, interpersonal experiences, and important moments for learning and adapting. Planning with these principles in mind strengthens the re-onboarding experience for you and your team. Now, back with the team, I’m stepping into 2026 with fresh tools, sharper insights, stronger relationships, and renewed energy.

Rachel Shamash Schneider is a Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.