Marisa Porter has demonstrated award-winning leadership with her involvement in JEWISHcolorado and Jewish Federations of North America National Young Leadership Cabinet. She has served on the Executive Committee of the JEWISHcolorado Young Adult Division (YAD) and was honored with the Charlotte B. Tucker Young Leadership Award. She has also shown her commitment to the Federation as a member of the Ben-Gurion Society.
Now, Porter has expanded her involvement in Colorado’s Jewish community as a newly appointed member of the JEWISHcolorado Board.
“I love Colorado, and I love the Jewish community, so joining the JEWISHcolorado Board brings the two together,” she says. “I have been getting more involved through the years, so this seems like the next step in my Jewish journey.”
In joining the board, Porter continues a multi-generational family legacy of investing time, talent, and treasure. When her grandfather returned to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after serving in the Air Force in World War II, he met a group of Holocaust survivors. He helped them learn English, find homes, and he offered many of them employment.
“Looking back, I realize that he wasn’t just offering people jobs,” Porter says. “He was helping them believe they could build a life again after unimaginable loss. That sense of responsibility to others has shaped our family ever since.”
Porter’s parents perpetuated what she calls “quiet action and care for others” into the next generation. They served on committees, chaired committees, and held multiple leadership positions in the Jewish community, the Jewish Federation of North America (JFNA), and the community-at-large. Her parents were recently honored for their involvement with Classrooms Without Borders, an organization in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Sarasota, that offers experiential trips and programming for teachers focused on Holocaust education, genocide, and tolerance.
“Growing up I didn’t think of community involvement as something my parents did—it was simply who they were,” Porter says. “From the very beginning my parents taught me about tzedakah, not by talking about it but by living it. They showed me that giving back means helping others in ways that genuinely make the world better.”
‘In the room where it happens’
In 2012, as a graduate student in Boston, Porter faced the challenge many young Jewish professionals face: If you want to get involved in the Jewish community, where is a good place to start?
She found the answer at Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the arm of JFNA in Boston.
“I liked the breadth of the Federation, its wide reach,” Porter says. “They do amazing work around the world, and it’s a great place to focus on an area you are passionate about.”
In 2017, she joined Cabinet, and that experience, she says, “clinched” her commitment to Federation. Through her Cabinet involvement, she has traveled to Russia, Argentina, Uruguay, Latvia, Hungary, Estonia, and Israel with small groups from around the country. She has found a community of like-minded friends which has reinforced her decision that Federation is where she wants to invest her energies.
“Through Cabinet, you meet people who care about and want to learn more about the Jewish world and the world-at-large,” she says. “They are committed to tzedakah and philanthropic actions. Together, you have experiences that you would never have otherwise. It’s incredible.”
In Cabinet, Porter met Whitney and Ross Chotin. When she moved to Colorado and started looking for a way to translate her global Cabinet perspective to local work, they introduced her to JEWISHcolorado and helped facilitate her involvement.
After years of working in marketing and branding for consumer packaged goods companies, Porter identified a need in the larger market and saw a way to fill that demand with her own consulting business.
“I work with both large and small companies with a need and desire for my expertise and skill set,” she says. “I like working as a consultant because I have a direct impact on organizations that really need me.”
Porter sees the Young Adult Division as an important way that JEWISHcolorado can offer programming to young people seeking an entry point for involvement in the Jewish community. She previously served on the PIN grant committee and has served for two years on JEWISHcolorado’s Finance Committee. She believes that she can offer the board a unique perspective from someone who is young and not a native Coloradan, and she looks forward to seeing “the bigger picture” of how JEWISHcolorado works behind the scenes. Quoting the musical “Hamilton,” Porter says she is excited to “be in the room where it happens”.