Sophia Gluck

At Berkeley Hillel, I was a DOFI—a Director of First Impressions.

The name is a little funny.

But the idea behind it has stayed with me.

One of the phrases we talked about a lot as DOFIs was "audacious hospitality."

The idea was that when someone entered a new space, our job wasn't simply to be polite.

It was to make them feel genuinely welcomed.

Make them feel noticed.

Make them feel that they had a place there.

That's a person-to-person skill, but I think it's also a leadership skill.

Today, I work at a cybersecurity company and lead its climate program.

My work involves building consensus across people and teams, influencing people who may have different priorities, and trying to bring people into a conversation around environmental impact.

I work remotely, so a lot of that happens through a screen now.

But the underlying question isn't actually that different from the one I was thinking about as a DOFI:

How do you bring people into the room?

How do you help them feel like they belong in the conversation?

How do you create an environment where people want to participate?

Leadership isn't only about having the right answer.

A huge part of leadership is knowing how to connect with people.

It's listening.

It's understanding who is in the room.

It's helping people find common ground.

It's creating enough trust that people can contribute honestly.

I think Berkeley Hillel gave me a lot of opportunities to practice that.

And that mattered especially because Berkeley itself is enormous.

At a school that large, Hillel gave students a smaller community within the bigger university.

College is a time when you're asking enormous questions about yourself.

Who am I outside my family?

What kind of person do I want to be?

What kind of work do I want to do?

What kinds of friendships do I want?

How do I want to show up in the world?

Those aren't questions you answer all at once.

You wrestle with them.

You try things.

You meet people.

You change your mind.

You figure yourself out in conversation with others.

Berkeley Hillel gave me—and so many other students—a place to do that safely.

And part of what made that possible was the feeling that many different kinds of people could walk through the door and be welcome.

Jews.

Non-Jews.

People who had spent their whole lives immersed in Judaism.

People who were still figuring out what connection to Judaism meant for them.

People who practiced differently.

People who thought differently.

People who disagreed.

There was room.

I think you could feel that almost immediately as a student.

It was part of the culture of Berkeley Hillel.

You walked in and understood that diversity wasn't a problem the community needed to solve.

It was part of what made the community valuable.

Different perspectives made the conversation better.

More voices made Judaism richer.

I experienced that not only socially but intellectually.

Some of the most valuable conversations I had in college were with people who saw things very differently from me.

I changed some of my own perspectives because of those conversations.

That's another kind of hospitality.

It's not just saying, "You're welcome to enter."

It's saying, "Your perspective belongs in this room too."

Those are very different things.

And I think that lesson matters even more now, when so much conversation happens online.

Online spaces make it very easy to flatten people.

You see an opinion.

You react.

You put someone into a category.

Real community asks more of us.

You have to sit across from someone.

You have to hear them.

You have to recognize the nuance in what they're saying.

You have to find empathy for another human being, even when they don't think exactly the way you do.

Hillel gave me a place to practice that.

I think that's one of the reasons I care so much about Berkeley Hillel today.

I met so many friends there.

I have so many memories in that building.

It shaped the Jewish community I continue to build in my own life.

And it taught me something that extends far beyond Jewish community.

When someone enters a space you're responsible for, don't just leave the door unlocked.

Welcome them.

Bring them in.

Make space for their voice.

Help them feel like they belong in the room.

That's audacious hospitality.

And years later, I'm still practicing it.