Building Brighter Futures:
UPstanding to Repair our World

Wednesday, September 1
11:30 am -1:00 pm

On Zoom

Ticket Price: $10


You are invited to the NCJW Dallas Opening Meeting, where a panel of the Greater Dallas community leaders will discuss how upstanders drive change. The conversation will explore how individuals and organizations apply the lens of the upstander to making choices, responding to inequality, calling out injustice, and speaking up for victims.

Up-stand-er (n.)

•    Stands up for other people and their rights.
•    Combats injustice, inequality, or unfairness.
•    Sees something wrong and works to make it right.

NCJW Greater Dallas’ mission calls us to be Upstanders. For 109 years, NCJW Dallas has been standing up, marching, sometimes shouting, and always taking action to repair our world.

PANEL MODERATOR

Mary Pat Higgins, President and CEO of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.  According to Harvard Business School Club of Dallas, Ms. Higgins “has a national reputation for being an innovative, strategic and passionate leader in the nonprofit sector.” Before joining the museum, she was CFO and Associate Head of the Hockaday School for Girls. She has served as President and CEO of the museum since 2013 and has led a successful capital campaign, designed and built a new facility. Ms. Higgins oversaw an expansion of the Holocaust Museum’s focus to include a broader perspective on Human Rights with the theme of Upstanders as a core concept.

PANELISTS

Erika Beltrán, Chief of Policy and Advocacy, Leadership ISD. Ms. Beltrán started her career as a Teach For America corps member and spent five years in Washington, D.C., where she worked as a senior education policy analyst at the National Council of La Raza.  Since returning to Texas in 2012, Ms. Beltrán has worked with several nonprofits focusing educational equity.  Ms. Beltrán also served as an elected member of Texas State Board of Education representing District 13 (DFW).

Mona Kafeel, Executive Director, Texas Muslim Women’s Foundation.  Ms. Kafeel became the Executive Director of Texas Muslim Women’s Foundation (TMWF) in 2020, bringing a wealth of organizational experience and community leadership to the position.  She has served TMWF since 2007, including as its Chief Philanthropy and Operating Officer. TMWF provides culturally sensitive, trauma-informed and evidence-based domestic violence programming as well as relief services targeting ALL women and children. 

Rabbi Nancy Kasten, Chief Relationship Officer, Faith Commons. Rabbi Kasten joined Faith Commons, a Dallas-based organization promoting public discourse rooted in the common values of many faiths, in 2019. She is a past Co-Convener of Faith Forward Dallas (FFD) at Thanksgiving Square. Ordained by the Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion in 1990, she served as Hillel Director, Associate Chaplain, and Adjunct Professor of Biblical Hebrew at SMU, Associate Director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations Southwest Council, and Campus Rabbi and Head of Jewish Studies at the Wise Academy, a Reform Jewish Day School. She is a community educator, volunteer and activist, as well as a certified Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher.