After 20 years of working in commercial real estate, Vanessa Sax knows a thing or two about building community.
Wanting to combine her Jewish identity with her professional life, the Glen Echo resident made the shift to working with the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, where she’s been the senior director of strategy and community building for northern Virginia since December.
“[This opportunity] brings me back to Judaism in a way that I haven’t had in about 20 years,” Sax said.
Many locals are surprised that more than 40% of the Washington area’s Jewish population lives in northern Virginia, according to Sax.
“What this role is designed to do is to break down silos within northern Virginia, create and have Federation be the connective tissue for organizations, lay leaders, philanthropists in northern Virginia,” Sax said.
The Jewish “ecosystem” exists in the region, Sax said. It’s just a matter of building more connectivity and cooperation between institutions, lay leaders and community members.
Sax lived in northern Virginia herself — Reston — as a newlywed for seven years. Both of her daughters were born there.
“When I saw this opportunity with Federation, understanding the northern Virginia landscape … and knowing the skill set that I have in commercial real estate — building community, having deep relationships, understanding the depth of relationship that’s needed to be able to accomplish things — [I thought] that [was] a really cool opportunity,” Sax said.
She spoke to the area’s infrastructure, which differs from that of the district and Maryland.
“There are so many different pockets [in northern Virginia] and they’re thriving,” Sax said. “If we can find a way to pull people together to understand the richness and the resources that they have available to them, it brings a sense of pride for me … This is a community effort. [I] look to the community to say, ‘How can we help do this?’”
These days, Sax is often found engaging in conversations with local rabbis, Pozez JCC staff members and other Jewish leaders, something she enjoys: “A lot of the work that I’ve been doing in the last 90 days [is] just listening.” Then she reflects on the common themes she hears.
“I have met many, and there are still several executive directors, presidents of boards and leaders that I need to meet, all of whom have several connection points back into the community,” Sax said.
Another aspect of her work is developing a communications strategy, focusing on how the Federation delivers its message.
“We have done a ton of work in the region, so [I make] sure [our] impact is appropriately communicated [to the community],” Sax said.
The job is fulfilling to her due to its front-facing nature.
“There’s a huge level of excitement that is underfoot, and people are really yearning for that connectivity and connection,” Sax said. “Walking into a room and hearing people express the level of excitement and the things they want to see in the community, it’s inspiring, because Federation and I can step in to help do that work and bring it forward.”
Though she began in this new role several months ago, Sax is not new to D.C.’s Jewish community. She was the first employee at Sixth & I: The Historic Synagogue from 2003 to 2005 after graduating from college.
“I was really the first employee to step foot [in] and help form the organization, work [on] forming the board, figuring out what the professional group was going to look like,” Sax recalled.
She created and implemented “6th in the City,” an adult programming series at the synagogue, some of which is still running today. Sax also helped determine what Sixth & I’s services, b’nai mitzvot, weddings and fundraising would look like.
“It was a brand new organization, so I got a very good taste of what it means to be a new Jewish institution and nonprofit,” she said.
Sax then worked in commercial real estate with Zuckerman Gravely Management in Chevy Chase, serving in various leadership positions and eventually working her way up to vice president.
But something was missing. In summer 2024 to 2025, Sax was working for a different developer when one of her colleagues joked about Jewish people “committing genocide” in Gaza.
“There was nobody around for me to be able to make eye contact with, to have a conversation with, to even acknowledge what he had just said,” Sax said. “It was in that moment where I thought, ‘OK, I have to find my way back to Jewish professionals, to be in that environment where I can have that commonality and that same level of understanding.’”
She is now gladly working among fellow Jewish community members at the Federation: “You can have a difference of opinion on politics, but the understanding of that underlying religion and the culture and Judaism is there — it’s just baked in.”
Over the next six months, Sax hopes to build upon the relationships she’s fostered and begin to see her work contribute meaningfully to Jewish northern Virginia.
“[I want to] identify new grantees, come up with new donors, figure out a deeper bench for our leadership and start to identify those opportunities in the community and have more connectivity within organizations, so leaning on our leadership, our lay leaders, bringing in the right people to have those conversations so it’s not just [us] doing the work, but we are creating an ecosystem that is self-sustaining,” she said.
