Phylisa Wisdom comes to NYJA with a life-long commitment to service that she acquired growing up in a tight knit Reform temple community in San Diego. With that anchor, she has rooted all her professional commitments thus far in the deeply-held value of tikkun olam. Her Ladino-speaking Sephardic grandmother from The Bronx instilled in her a deep appreciation for New York City, and the diversity of Jewish communities here. Since she was a little girl, she has understood our community to be diverse, pluralistic, and dedicated to the pursuit of social justice. One of Phylisa’s earliest political experiences was lobbying for reproductive rights with the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center and she has nurtured that same spirit of activism and commitment to social justice throughout her career.
Phylisa’s leadership in New York’s political scene spans several positions and roles as a staff person, board member, and advisor. She has volunteered on numerous political campaigns in New York and beyond, and is an elected Brooklyn Democratic County Committee member. She has extensive experience in New York’s education sector at organizations working on educational equity, literacy intervention in public elementary schools, and efforts to address COVID-era literacy challenges, as well as ensuring educational equity for students attending nonpublic schools, specifically yeshivas.
Phylisa’s leadership of NYJA builds on years of experience on a wide range of issues. Phylisa attended California State University and King’s College London, where she earned a Master’s in Public Policy (thesis topic: the role of personal narrative in the United States abortion policy discourse). Phylisa began her career as an educator, working with students with special educational needs. She learned quickly that the quality of education and individualized support a student got depended on deeply entrenched systems; particularly poor students of color were not given what they needed to thrive. She opened an educational intervention center in Melbourne, Australia, and Tokyo, Japan with a private service provider. At the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, she was engaged in public affairs, supporting youth anti-violence programming and working with a coalition to improve LGBTQ+ public health experiences.
Phylisa has a deep appreciation for small, nimble nonprofits that are able to make big impact. She is proud to lead NYJA into its next phase, and to work with our incredible board to offer liberal, pluralistic Jewish New Yorkers a home and advocacy body they can count on and see themselves in.