This month, Chanel Dubofsky joined the Pursue team as the New York Program Associate. You may already know Chanel from her previous blog posts for Pursue – but here’s another chance to get to know your friendly Pursue staff!
What were you doing before you joined the Pursue team?
Literally, the moment before, I was on 14th Street looking for a coffee shop with an outlet, which I am wont to do. More broadly, though, I was writing pretty much full time (and for the most part putting the “free” back in freelancing), group leading for AJWS, and I spent some time in Israel. I had worked for Hillel for a long time prior to that, at Oberlin and at Columbia/Barnard. I like the feeling of having lived a lot of different lives.
What social justice issues are you passionate about?
My social justice vision is about removing obstacles that stand between people and their potential, or in their ability to be the best version of themselves as they see it. Manifestations of sexism (for not-so-surprising trivia, I was voted “Class Feminist” in high school), homophobia and classism, specifically in the Jewish community, are big for me. Also, helping folks to understand how these things intersect with one another and impact the world is vital.
What do you enjoy most about the Pursue community?
It’s a place of imagination, curiosity and engagement that’s also about challenge.
What are you looking forward to in your new role?
I’m excited to be able to impact programs that as a non-staff Pursuer, I’ve had a crush on for a long time, like Justice and Jewish Thought, where people help each other to have challenging and provocative conversations.
For fun: Tell us the story behind your name (truth or fiction!).
This is seriously true: My mom found my name in a magazine and just liked it. She didn’t think about what would happen to me in middle school, when people realized all the ways you can torment someone with permutations of their name.
Check out Chanel’s full bio here.
