EVENTS

Meet This Year’s Honorees

Dana Gershon and Rabbi Jonah Pesner

Rabbi Jonah Pesner serves as the Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and as Senior Vice President of the Union for Reform Judaism. Named one of the most influential rabbis in America by Newsweek magazine, he is an inspirational leader and tireless advocate for social justice. In 2006, he founded Just Congregations (now incorporated into the Religious Action Center), which engaged clergy, professional, and volunteer leaders in interfaith efforts in pursuit of social justice. Over the course of his career, he has also led and supported campaigns for racial justice, economic opportunity, immigration reform, LGBTQ equality, human rights, and a variety of other causes. During his tenure as a congregational rabbi at Temple Israel of Boston, Rabbi Pesner was a key leader of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization whose successful health care campaign led to access for hundreds of thousands of people and became a national model. Rabbi Pesner has trained and mentored students on all four campuses of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Rabbi Pesner serves as a board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, JOIN for Justice, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, and the New England Center for Children. He has served as a scholar for the Wexner Foundation, American Jewish World Service, the Nexus USA Summit, and Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1997. Rabbi Pesner was a congregational rabbi at Temple Israel in Westport, CT and is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the Bronx High School. Dana and Rabbi Pesner currently reside in Bethesda, MD and have four daughters who are Alumni of The Rashi School, Juliet ’12, Noa ’16, Bobbie ’19, and Cate ’19.

Gavin Alexander ’99

Gavin studied Theater and Mathematics at Wesleyan University, and he graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude in 2012. As a law student, Gavin worked with Massachusetts Transgender Legal Advocates providing pro bono civil legal services to low-income transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, and after law school, Gavin spent a year as a law clerk for former Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.  Gavin then worked at the law firm Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston from 2013-2020, where his work focused on complex corporate transactions.

More recently, Gavin has served as a Co-Chair of the Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association and as a member of the Board of Directors of the National LGBT Bar Association, and he presently serves on the Boston Bar Association’s Diversity & Inclusion Section Steering Committee and on the Board of Directors of The Leadership Brainery, a non-profit organized to help first-generation and diverse college student leaders prepare for and gain access to top graduate & professional schools.

Gavin was named one of the Best LGBT Attorneys Under 40 by the National LGBT Bar Association in 2017, selected as one of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s 25 “Up & Coming Lawyers” for 2019, and featured on the Massachusetts Super Lawyers “Rising Stars” list for 2018-2020.  He was also recently named a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation for his outstanding dedication and leadership both in the legal profession and in service to society.