Although Allison Kahn-Pauli considers herself shy and introverted, she has never had trouble speaking up and advocating on behalf of others.
Kahn-Pauli, 39, brings a long career in advocacy and nonprofit work to her current role as the associate regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington, D.C., office. She worked at CASA DC for 11 years, using her background in advocacy and children’s law to help youth in foster care or the juvenile justice system.
She studied communications and prelaw at Goucher College before earning her juris doctor at Pace University. Kahn-Pauli now lives in Arlington with her husband and 2-year-old daughter.
Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
I think my Jewish background has really been a journey. I never considered myself to be a religious person, but Judaism as my culture and community has always been extremely important to me in a way that I fully realized when I was much older. I went to a Jewish preschool in Baltimore growing up and I later returned to work there. I was a volunteer as a teenager, and then I taught late stay for the preschool when I was in college. It was such an incredible community to be a part of in my early career. I also worked [as a counselor and drama instructor] at a Jewish summer camp in Baltimore and it’s the source of some of my absolute favorite childhood memories. As a teenager, I really struggled to fit in in most places and I never felt that way when it came to being at camp.
When I think of my Jewish upbringing and background, it always really ties into my daughter. Now she’s at a Jewish preschool, and even though we’re fairly secular, she has fully embraced Judaism. She tells us that she wants to be a rabbi. She strums her little guitar she got for Chanukah and sings Shabbat songs, so it has really come full circle for me. I’ve always considered Judaism, for me, to be about culture, community and family.
I have a really small, close family, and I put together what we’ve always considered a “social justice Haggadah” for my family many years ago, and we update it every single year since to embrace everything from societal changes to incorporating children that have been born. I like to think that I’m a driving force in my family to help everyone find personal resonance in our tradition and culture.
What are your responsibilities as the associate regional director of ADL D.C.?
One of the things I get to do is manage and oversee our assistant regional directors, who, along with myself, make up our operations team. We get to be on the ground every single day working in the region and community. I engage in local-level government relations and advocacy; there’s so many vital things that happen on that local level and I have the honor of getting to do that work. I also help coordinate and lead speaking engagements.
How does your legal background help you in your current role?
Being at ADL has allowed me to carry out those skills that I learned in persuasive writing, in being able to advocate for causes and to communicate complexity into clarity to help elevate a better understanding of antisemitism and hate and extremism.
Why is your work important to you?
One of the very first steps on the path that brought me to the ADL really ties into my daughter and about what happened in Charlottesville, [when Nazis marched and chanted] “Jews will not replace us.” It was right after I had gotten married, and my friends and I were all starting to think about having families for the first time. It was also the first time that antisemitism became loud and clear to all of us. Suddenly, we were in the position where we were all thinking about families, and we were all talking about the implications of bringing a Jewish child into this world, which suddenly seemed a lot scarier when hate had suddenly seemed to peek out of the shadows. When my daughter was born in 2022, I realized that I’d been advocating for children really my entire professional career and that I really had to advocate for my own child, my family and friends and so many other children to speak out against that hate and extremism and antisemitism for a better future.
I was fortunate enough that growing up, I never really encountered antisemitism. And then over my career, prior to coming to the ADL, I experienced multiple instances of antisemitism in different forms and [from] different sources. It became real to me for the first time, in addition to what we were seeing on the more national landscape where antisemitism was becoming louder. It was really that personal experience, along with that reality of starting families in a time [when] antisemitism has started to feel much more real, and when Oct. 7 happened, the importance of that increased exponentially.
What are your goals for the upcoming year?
I’ve always considered myself someone who is a mediator at heart, so for me, the greatest goal is certainly continuing to help empower people to better combat antisemitism, help people better understand antisemitism. Most importantly, it is to find ways to help continue building bridges for greater empathy and understanding.
