The Women Who Walk With Me
Yael Eckstein | March 8, 2023
Writing for our friends at Charisma for International Women’s Day, Yael reflects on the women who inspire her each day—the women she works with at The Fellowship, as well as the women who The Fellowship helps:
Ahead of International Women’s Day, I was asked which women inspire the work I do at the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. And believe me, it is an honor and a privilege to be in the position—as President and CEO of a large international aid organization, as a wife, as a mother—of being asked to be a voice for women today.
So I started thinking about what women inspire me. So many world leaders who I’ve been blessed to meet. The biblical Queen Esther, who we just celebrated over Purim. Someone even suggested an inspirational Eleanor Roosevelt quote, like what you’d see on a refrigerator magnet. And these women do inspire me—all of the women who’ve come before me, who’ve done great things and made great progress and made our world what it is today.
But when I really thought about it, the women who inspire me—who inspire me today, in the present—have always been the women around me.
Raised in a family of three girls—by a rabbi who empowered his daughters—I was always inspired by my sisters and our mother. And now, leading the organization my father, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, of blessed memory, founded 40 years ago, I am inspired each day by the women I’m blessed to work with, and by the women we work for.
I’ve needed their inspiration along the way…