Lindsey Jacobson is proud to start a career at the very synagogue where she and her husband were married and her grandfather had his bar mitzvah.
She is the chief development officer at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C., a role she began in late January, continuing her family’s Jewish Washington legacy.
Before joining Sixth & I, Jacobson served as chief advancement officer at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School. She brings more than 15 years of development experience to the role.
Jacobson loves to fundraise and build community. She and her husband live in Bethesda with 11-year-old twins. They belong to Bethesda Jewish Congregation.
Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
My roots are in Washington, D.C. My mom was born here, my grandparents were born here, I was born here and then we moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, when I was only 2 years old. I grew up in a relatively small Jewish community in Knoxville, and I was able to have a whole separate social circle within my Jewish community [there] and with my BBYO friends and also have my school friends and my Hebrew school friends. For me, I found within the Jewish community this really close connection and also a way to express different facets of my identity with different groups of people, which was important to me in my teenage years.
I’ve been living and working in Washington since 2004, but my family’s roots go back much farther than that here.
What brought you back to D.C.?
I moved here after college not really knowing what I wanted to do, like a lot of young people. I was really lucky that my grandparents were still living here, and so it felt I had enough familiarity with Washington that I knew the city well. It felt like home to me. I knew there was a lot of opportunity and, like a lot of fundraisers I know, I just sort of stumbled into it. I started doing political fundraising early in my career, and basically learned that that wasn’t for me, so I started doing nonprofit work, which I found to be incredibly rewarding.
Before I came to Sixth & I, I spent about 13 years working in independent schools here in Washington, at Milton [Gottesman] Jewish Day School. That was where I found my niche and where I was really able to translate my passion for philanthropy and create the intersection between philanthropy and community building. Sixth & I is a really great place to be able to do that.
What are your responsibilities as Sixth & I’s chief development officer?
I oversee all of our fundraising operations, so our relationships with individual donors, major donors and our foundation partners.
What is it like working for an institution that carries so much family and personal history?
I was really drawn to the position in the first place because of my own connection to Sixth & I. I was married at Sixth & I and my husband and I were drawn to it because my late grandfather had his bar mitzvah at Sixth & I in the 1940s, so that immediately piqued my interest. And I believe really passionately in creating inclusive Jewish communities and in creating inclusive communities overall. Learning more about Sixth & I and the commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and radical inclusivity, in terms of welcoming Jews of all stripes and Jewish-adjacent people, really was meaningful to me and aligned with my personal values, which is important when you’re doing this kind of work.
This past Friday night, we had more than 350 people show up at Sixth & I for Mardi Gras Shabbat, which we do in partnership with Dupont Brass. My grandmother loves brass music; she loves New Orleans. And I said, “Hey, we’re going to Shabbat services. There’s Mardi Gras Shabbat at six. Do you want to come?” My husband was there, my kids were there, my grandmother was there, and I was sitting in between my grandmother and my daughter saying the Shema in this sanctuary where my family had worshiped generations before. I was just so overwhelmed and it was such a beautiful experience. And there was that incredible spiritual element to it, but also it was a joyful, uplifting musical service. We were dancing around the sanctuary, following the brass band. It was such a fun night, and that, to me, was an encapsulation of why Sixth & I is so special.
What are your upcoming goals?
Looking forward, we’re eager to continue to build on the strength of what we’re offering in terms of Jewish life. We’re trying to provide access to as many people as possible to engage with our programming and we’re continuing to be the place that people can go to stop [in] for the hottest author [or] the latest book, to be on the cutting edge of what’s happening on the culture side.
I have 11-year-old twins in Hebrew school and we’re thinking about their b’nai mitzvah and look forward to being able to host it at Sixth & I and add to the list of family simchas that have taken place in that space.
