By Diana Brement,
JTNews Columnist
After a five-year tenure as executive director of National Council of Jewish Women, Seattle section, Lauren Simonds was both sad and excited to inform the community that she had taken a new job as executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington. Lauren announced her job change to NCJW members and friends in an e-mail in mid-March.
NARAL board president Peter Sagerson said the organization was “thrilled” to have selected Lauren after an “exhaustive, nation-wide search.”
Lauren’s interest in NARAL is no surprise, nor is theirs in her. Lauren has long been involved in advocacy for reproductive rights, as a student, a volunteer and a professional. In fact, Lauren worked for NARAL once before, more than 15 years ago, as a student intern under then-executive director Esther Herst (currently executive director of Temple Beth Am), “about six months before current retiring executive director Karen Cooper came on,” she recalls.
Under Cooper, the local NARAL office has grown from a staff of two to 10 with a budget of over $1 million.
“It’s a job that opens only once every one or two decades,” Lauren says. It was “an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
“One of the greatest things about NCJW,” Lauren told me, is “it’s the only Jewish organization that puts reproductive rights at the forefront of its platform…. NCJW strongly believes, and so do I, that a lot of the restrictions around reproductive health issues come from a religious viewpoint and to impose one religious viewpoint on everyone jeopardizes the Constitutional guarantee on religious liberty.”
Lauren holds an MSW from the University of Washington’s School of Social Work in administration and social change, which she was awarded in 1993, along with a certificate from the same program in working with women and women’s agencies. She worked at two different women’s health clinics and served as program director at Temple B’nai Torah from 1998 to 2003, before taking the NCJW job.
Lauren leaves NCJW April 30 and she’ll start at NARAL in mid-May after taking time off “to make sure I am well-rested and able to start with a full reserve of energy and fresh ideas,” and to “take care of things people do between jobs.”
Lauren and husband Christopher Holmes have a 7-year-old son, Reuven. Founding members of their synagogue, Kol HaNeshamah, Lauren is currently on their rabbinic search committee. She spends most of her free time with family and reading fiction. Mysteries are a favorite, which she says surprises people who assume her work in social justice means she’s intense or highly intellectual.
“When people find out that I read for fun, they’re surprised I’m not reading news!” she says.
Building a separation between work and personal life ensures that “I don’t get burned out,” she said.
But that being said, Lauren notes that “part of the reason I do the work is because it fulfills me…I get involved in political issues that are meaningful to me.”
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Scott Michelson’s firm, SDM Marketing Group, earned a Summit Emerging Media Award (Summit EMA) for their redevelopment of the Web site for Zookbinders, a company that produces books of photos for professional photographers and their clients.
SDM has been around for 16 years, but don’t look for their offices in a building somewhere.
“It’s a virtual ad agency/design firm,” Scott explains, “and as I need people I bring them in.”
This also helps save clients money — they’re not paying for the firm’s overhead.
Before he started his own company, Scott worked in advertising and design, and had been the manager of a PIP printing store in Los Angeles.
“I saw how ad agencies worked with clients,” he says. “I thought clients could get a better value.”
Of course, advances in the Internet have made life easier for firms like SDM, but Scott still likes to see his clients in person a few times a year. “Being able to send e-mails and PDFs makes it easier and cheaper…but it’s also important to have face-to-face with clients.”
Originally from Chicago, Scott moved first to L.A. and then to Seattle when he tired of the Southern California traffic and lifestyle.
“Los Angeles is a “˜wannabe’ city,” he explains, where everyone you meet wants to be something—or someone—else.
He’s been in the Seattle area for 20 years and lives with his wife, Karen, and their 2-year-old son Matan. They belong to Herzl-Ner Tamid, and are also involved with the Queen Anne-based Kavana Cooperative. Matan is now taking a Hebrew music class, Scott told me, part of Kavana’s outreach to preschoolers and their families.
Scott is also president of the board of this newspaper and will finish the last of three two-year terms this summer.
“I’ve been involved in Federation and Young Leadership, and I thought it would it be interesting to be involved in the paper,” he says about taking on the job five years ago.
Any time for outside interests? “Our son is our hobby,” quipped Scott.