By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Fresh out of law school and newly arrived in Seattle, Etan Basseri needed to find a job, but he also wanted something more: connections. He has found work in the year since he and his wife landed here from Northern California, and he’s also gone one step further: Basseri recently created a networking group of young Jewish professionals so others in his position as career-minded young adults can have access to others in their fields.
J-Pro had its inaugural event in April, with a second lunch in July. Another event is in its planning stages for September, with a program based upon the High Holidays.
“The basic idea is to create a system of professional networking in Seattle that provides a very easy entry point for people to develop their careers in the early years,” said Basseri, 26.
Prior to finding his current job as an associate specializing in landlord/tenant issues at the law office of Evan Loeffler, PLLC — which he said he found through Jewish connections — Basseri said his most successful networking was through other Jewish professionals.
“I found some of the best opportunities were in the Jewish community,” he said. “It was hard to find those things out until I’d picked a lot of people’s brains.”
So rather than watch people go through the same arduous process in making those connections that he went through — and likely thousands before him — Basseri decided to do something about it. J-Pro started on the popular Facebook social networking site, based upon a similar group founded by a friend of Basseri’s in Los Angeles. The infrastructure needed to move from a ready-built online venue to face-to-face lunches and a mentoring program that Basseri hopes to initiate, however, are all his.
What he envisions is an active, growing group that meets monthly, but from there creates professional relationships that expand outside of the confines of the organization. For Basseri, however, there are benefits to such a group that he sees as bigger than simply networking.
“The overall premise of the organization is that…it’s important to support Jewish organizations through charity,” he said.
The group’s Web site, when launched, will also host volunteer opportunities throughout the Jewish community. In this way, Basseri believes, J-Pro is distinctly Jewish.
“In the for-profit sphere, when you send business to another Jewish person, that person is going to be presumably giving charity, supporting causes and things like that,” Basseri said. “We want to create a culture that encourages philanthropy, and we also want to encourage the enabling of philanthropy by sending business to each other.
“The idea of that is not to be insular, but eventually to support the organizations that make Jewish life thrive.”
Basseri hopes to tap into local organizations such as the Jewish Federation, Hillel and Jewish Family Service to find board members or volunteers who would be willing to share their knowledge of their respective fields with people just getting started. It’s a match J-Pro would facilitate.
“Mentorship is a very key component of anybody’s personal development early in their career, and there’s no shortage of Jewish professionals who are seasoned and experienced and have a wealth of knowledge to share,” Basseri said.
At this point, work is Basseri’s priority, so building the organization has been slow going.
“If I had 40 hours a week to devote to this, it would be very different. The organization itself is what I’m doing when I have a minute,” he said. “I just want to put my heart into it.”
Still, he has begun to build a board, and plans to obtain 501(c)3 status, with members paying dues and a full-time staff member running the day-to-day operations.
Financial adviser Adam Droker is one of four board members Basseri plans to install later this summer. Droker, 28, organized professional networking programs for Hillel’s Jconnect group of local Jews between the ages of 22 and 32. He said that while he enjoyed the lunches, they became more of a social program.
“I was looking for a way to network for business purposes with other Jewish young adults,” Droker said, “because frankly, I’d like to keep some business within the tribe.”
Though Droker hopes to use contacts from J-Pro to grow his own business, he looks forward to the availability of local professionals for himself and others as the organization grows.
“I can’t be an expert in everything,” he said. “Having good resources to refer to in the Jewish community is a wonderful opportunity.”
At the July lunch, Basseri broached the idea of having a program that would enable members to gain Continuing Legal Education credits, an annual requirement for practicing attorneys, for instance, or similar credits for other professions — but perhaps in a Jewish context. The goal, he said, is all in the interest of people helping others.
“This is a nonpolitical, nonreligious organization,” Basseri said, “but at the same time we are guided by the teachings of our Bible and especially the teachings of Maimonides, which teach that the highest level of charity is actually to help another person in their livelihood…. The idea of teaching a man to fish instead of giving a man a fish.”
For more information on J-Pro, contact Etan Basseri at jproseattle@gmail.com.