Michelle Lynn

Beam Foundation Fellow in Education and Jewish Studies

Michelle Lynn has had a career marked by both academic and professional accomplishments. She came The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development after serving six years as the Director of Education at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple. She was responsible for the educational program in a congregation with over 2500 members, a position previously held by much more senior educators.

“My role in the congregation,” she reflects, “was to be an educational visionary, a technical expert in areas of teaching and learning, and a public champion of life-long learning.”

Before attaining this position, Michelle majored in literature and society at Brown and earned a masters degree in Jewish Education at Hebrew Union College where she “learned about the relationship between values and educational leadership. I learned what it means to be a reflective practitioner and I learned how to be a deliberate leader.”

She is pursuing her doctoral studies in order to strengthen her research skills. By bringing the sociologist’s perspective on organizational behavior to the study of religious congregations, she hopes to design and conduct studies that will help communities and institutions analyze and understand their programs and policies.

Learn more about our Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Professions.