Rabbi Ari Witkin is a member of Cohort II of the Created Equal Educators Fellowship of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and serves as the Director of Leadership Development at the Jewish Federation of Metro Detroit where he integrates his passions for Jewish wisdom and tradition with the work of organizational development and operations. Rabbi Witkin received his rabbinic ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow, and an MS in Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania. He brings to his role in Detroit a diverse set of experiences as a communal professional having worked at Drexel University Hillel, in the pulpit at Germantown Jewish Center, as an experiential educator at the Pearlstone Center, as well as a variety of other roles. He is particularly passionate about working with Jewish organizations to help advance their ability to actualize their values in pursuit of their missions. He lives in Huntington Woods, MI with his wife Liz Traison, their son Hadar, and 3 backyard chickens.