For Liz Lebeaux Vantine, her new position as Deputy Director of JEWISHcolorado’s Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) is more than just an exciting opportunity.
It’s a chance to expand what she calls her “chosen family,” the people in her Jewish professional life who feel like they are more than colleagues and more than friends. They are family.
The granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors who met in a displaced persons camp after WWII, Lebeaux Vantine grew up in New York watching her mother serve as a social worker who “always worked in the Jewish world.” Whether she was serving Holocaust survivors, older adults, or people in need, Lebeaux Vantine’s mother made connections and, Lebeaux Vantine says, “Her clients and her colleagues became our extended family.”
“I didn’t know at the time how significant it was, but when I entered the Jewish professional space, I realized that one of the most beautiful parts of working with people who are committed to this work is that we have chosen to be together, whether to celebrate or to mourn,” she adds. “That community has propelled me for the past nine years.”
Now, Lebeaux Vantine has brought multiple years of experience as a communicator and fundraiser, along with an Executive Master of Public Administration (EMPA) from Baruch College, to her role with the JCRC where she can combine her dedication to serving the Jewish community with her interest in advocacy strategy and policy implementation. She also has experience in crisis communications which she learned on the job in real-time at Columbia University in the days and weeks after October 7th.
Trial by fire at Columbia
Lebeaux Vantine graduated from Hunter College with a B.A. in English Literature. She began working in fundraising, communications, and event management in 2017 at Columbia/Barnard Hillel at The Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life. In 2018, she moved to The Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at New York University, taking on more responsibilities, and about a year later, she returned to Columbia/Barnard Hillel as a Director of Development.
“The Executive Director at the Kraft Center was an incredible fundraiser and mentor,” she says. “From him, I learned how nonprofits run, how to partner with stakeholders, and I connected with the idea that the only way we sustain our organizations is to make them fiscally responsible.”
Lebeaux Vantine had been promoted to Senior Director of Development and Communications and was continuing in a traditional fundraising role until October 7th changed her professional trajectory. On October 12, 2023, the first large pro-Palestinian protest and pro-Israel counterprotest took place on the campus of Columbia, and the Kraft Center building—with more than 200 students and staff members—was placed on lockdown.
“It was a very challenging day,” Lebeaux Vantine recalls. “It was the first time we realized the university was not well-prepared to manage what was happening and what was to come. We also realized that the rest of the world was going to be watching what we were doing.”
In the weeks and months to come, fundraising at Columbia/Barnard Hillel took a backseat to more pressing needs—crisis communications, media relations, and supporting Jewish students. Columbia has a large population of Israeli students, many of whom have returned to school after serving in the IDF.
“For this community, October 7th hit close to home,” Lebeaux Vantine says. “At one point in time, one of my jobs was keeping a running list of students, donors, and alumni who had lost family and friends on October 7th.”
As the Executive Director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel was pulled into a more public role, handling national media, serving as a public face of Columbia’s Jewish students, and holding the university accountable, Lebeaux Vantine started to take on more duties managing internal operations and external relations, creating a position that had never existed before—Chief of Staff. That was her title when she arrived in Denver, ready to make a geographic and professional change.
A new family in Colorado
When Lebeaux Vantine got married in June 2024 and finished her EMPA the same month, she and her husband saw an opportunity to leave the only place she had ever lived and try something new. The beauty of Colorado won the couple over. It also helped that East Coast friends she had met working at Hillel had already moved to Colorado. She continued her Chief of Staff duties after the move, working remotely and traveling frequently to New York. But at the same time, she started exploring local options.
“I didn’t understand the Jewish landscape in Denver and Colorado, and I didn’t know what the Federation looked like here,” she says. “I felt like the professional world I had dedicated my career to wasn’t going to exist in the same way.”
When she stumbled onto the JCRC position listed online, she had an “aha” moment.
“Most of the tasks listed were things I had already done for different organizations and especially with the Chief of Staff work I was doing, this looked like a good fit professionally,” she says. “I like managing internal operations, working with lay people, and actualizing the goals of an organization.”
In her first months on the job, Lebeaux Vantine has come to believe that the JCRC’s most impactful mission is its role as a convener of more than 40 member organizations.
“We can take a bird’s eye view and say, ‘These are the major issues that are impacting the Jewish community and the communities that Jewish institutions serve,’” she says. “Whether it is the rise of antisemitism, health care accessibility, federal funding concerns, or immigration policy changes, the JCRC brings the Jewish community together with a unified voice and shared purpose.”
To her new position, Lebeaux Vantine brings lessons learned. From her time at Hunter and Baruch, she learned the importance of stepping outside your bubble and supporting those who experience the world differently.
From her time during difficult days at Columbia, she learned the importance of partnerships with an understanding of shared concerns and needs, without which, Lebeaux Vantine says, we cannot have a civil society.
And finally, from her mother, she learned the importance of a “chosen family.”
“Colorado is now the place where I am building my family,” she says. “I want to have an impact, and I want to be part of the community we live in now because I plan to be here for a long time.”