We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jennifer Starrett. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jennifer below.

Jennifer, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Years ago, I started a media company to connect people with our local Jewish community. I knew that people wanted to connect to Jewish life but often heard that they had trouble finding out about events and programs when searching online. By myself, I was limited by time and capabilities, but I was determined to find a way to make my vision come alive.

I built strong relationships with other Jewish professionals and was able to help them connect to people in the community in a variety of aspects from marketing to event planning. When most of my consulting business slowed down after the pandemic started, I found myself pivoting back to my original vision and devoting more time and energy into building an online community.

I was able to almost double my audience and became recognized as a top influencer within the first year of this refocus. As I became more successful, I began to think about the next steps for turning what I was doing into a full-time living away from consulting. Reaching out to some local leaders, I became aware of an incredible opportunity that would allow me to do just that.

Our local Jewish Federation and Jewish Community Foundation were getting ready to build a brand new website that would create a new way to connect to Jewish life in Phoenix. I began discussing what my role in this new project would look like with these leaders and a few months later landed a full-time position with the organization to bring the new JewishPhoenix.com to life.

Now as we are getting ready to launch this Spring, I pinch myself at how lucky I am to have landed my dream job of being a community connector. I know that the hard work I put in over the years, relationships I built and experience I earned helped set the path to this new role. I honestly wouldn’t have changed the process of getting to this point, because I have learned so much along the way and feel more than capable of taking on this exciting, but massive, project on.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As an Arizona native, I’ve been an active member of the Phoenix Jewish community since my youth. For the past six years, I’ve been working primarily as a consultant helping to plan, execute, and market Jewish events and organizations in our local community.

In October 2021, I began a full-time position with the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix and the Jewish Community Foundation as the content manager for the soon-to-be launched community website. JewishPhoenix.com. This new site will unite all of Phoenix’s Jewish voices in one cohesive space where people will be able to connect to community organizations, find upcoming events, discover volunteer opportunities, and enjoy lifestyle content.

Outside of work and volunteering in the community, I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, reading, writing and baking.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

There is nothing I love more than connecting people, and that has been the driving factor in everything I have done in my professional life.

Now, I have the opportunity to help connect even more people to life in our Jewish community in ways that I only imagined were possible. JewishPhoenix will provide an accessible and enjoyable user experience that allows people across all backgrounds to find organizations that they relate to, events and volunteer opportunities that they can participate in, and content that helps them connect to Jewish life in Phoenix.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

After the pandemic, I had to really think about what was next in my professional career. Like many people, I had to get creative and rethink how I conducted business and the types of consulting I was doing. Event consulting wasn’t happening since people weren’t meeting in person and many of the businesses and nonprofits that I had been building relationships with were pausing all of their programming so they didn’t have as much to share with the community.

Through my passion for storytelling and reach on social media, I was able to share important resources and reframe the content I was producing to put myself a bit more in the center. Making myself the face of my business wasn’t easy, and made me very uncomfortable in the beginning. However, without doing so, I wouldn’t have gained the large following and community support that I did, which led to my new position and being given a larger platform to share.

I’ll still be a part of the new project, but I get to sit a bit more on the sidelines now that programs are beginning to restart and events happening once again. I can start to get back to promoting all that our community has to offer and continue connecting people with Jewish Phoenix.

Contact Info:

• Website: jewishphoenix.com
• Instagram: jewishphoenix
• Facebook: jewishphoenix