Grace Vogel

My brother was a DOFI at Berkeley Hillel before I ever became a student there.

Years later, I became one too.

DOFI stands for Director of First Impressions.

Essentially, you're the person at the front desk.

You're one of the first people someone sees when they walk into Berkeley Hillel.

At first glance, that might sound like a pretty straightforward job.

But for me, it became an important lesson in leadership.

Berkeley is enormous.

The Jewish community on campus is enormous too.

Hundreds—probably thousands—of people move in and out of Hillel over time.

As a DOFI, part of my responsibility was to make that big community feel a little smaller for the person who had just walked through the door.

The job was about being welcoming.

Helping someone figure out where they belonged.

Answering questions when I could.

And even when I didn't necessarily have the answers for myself, trying to help someone else find theirs.

I didn't always feel qualified to do that.

I think that was part of why the experience mattered.

It forced me to become comfortable in a role before I necessarily felt completely ready for it.

When you're the first face someone sees when they walk into a building, you can't really hide behind your uncertainty.

You have to smile.

You have to look confident.

You have to engage.

You have to make the other person feel like you're happy they're there.

Eventually, by practicing that confidence, I actually built it.

That was huge for me.

I had been involved in leadership before college. I served on my temple youth group board in high school, so Hillel wasn't the first place where I had taken on responsibility.

But Berkeley Hillel let me practice those skills on an entirely different scale.

Suddenly, I wasn't leading within a youth group I had grown up in.

I was navigating a huge university and a large Jewish community filled with people from completely different backgrounds.

That gave me a sense of agency.

I began to understand that even in a very large community, I could have an impact on the experience another person had.

Sometimes that impact was as small as making sure they didn't feel awkward standing alone near the front desk.

Sometimes it was helping connect them to a program.

Sometimes it was simply being someone they could talk to.

I think that's part of what made Hillel different for me.

There wasn't one prescribed way to participate.

People had very different levels of observance, different beliefs, and different relationships with Judaism.

Some students came to explore Jewish learning.

Some wanted fellowships about feminism or crafting or other interests.

Some were exploring Judaism for the first time.

There really was something for everyone.

And no one expected me to be more observant simply because I was highly involved in the building.

My level of religious observance was nowhere near the amount of time I spent at Hillel, and that was fine.

I had space to figure it out for myself.

The resources were there.

The people were there.

The invitation was there.

There just wasn't pressure.

Being a DOFI made me part of extending that same invitation to other students.

Come in.

We'll help you find your place.

That lesson has stayed with me beyond Hillel.

So has the confidence.

After college, I ended up taking a pretty unconventional career path and now I work in cookbooks.

When I eventually tried to break into publishing, networking became everything.

I spent about a year and a half networking constantly.

And I knew how to do it.

I had learned how to walk up to people.

How to start conversations.

How to connect.

In a strange way, some of that goes back to sitting behind the front desk at Berkeley Hillel.

I thought I was learning how to welcome people into a building.

What I was really learning was how to walk into the world with confidence myself.