COEJL Staff

Sybil Sanchez, Director

Sybil Sanchez, a veteran human rights advocate with broad experience in Jewish communal leadership, comes to COEJL from the Jewish Labor Committee where she served as executive director. Having been director of United Nations affairs with B'nai B'rith International, and worked with other national Jewish organizations on international human rights and related advocacy for nearly ten years, Sanchez is also a recent graduate of the UJA-Federation of New York’s Muehlstein Institute for Jewish Professional Leadership. She holds a masters degree in international affairs from Columbia University and has previously worked for the United Nations and overseas in the Balkans. She speaks Hebrew, French, and Serbo-Croatian. Sanchez is a vegetarian and member of her synagogue's Greenfaith Committee, which is the first Conservative synagogue to join the Greenfaith certification program.

Rabbi Steve Gutow, CEO and President JCPA

Rabbi Steve Gutow, after working for nearly 30 years as an attorney and in Jewish and political activities, focused his career on his faith and community and attended the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where he received his ordination in 2003. Gutow, who spent more than a decade practicing law in Texas, served as chair of the Dallas Jewish Community Relations Council and then went on to serve as the founding regional director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Southwest Region, where he forged alliances with Republicans and Democrats. He went on to become the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, where he led national groups in formulating strategies to maintain First Amendment religious freedoms. Following his ordination, Gutow became the first full-time rabbi at the Reconstructionist Minyan of St. Louis where he served as the St. Louis Rabbinical Association representative to the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis. At the same time, he served as Adjunct Professor of Law at St. Louis University Law School teaching a seminar on Jewish law. His article “Tikkun Olam: A Public Policy Focus” in the Fall 2001 issue of The Reconstructionist journal expressed his understanding of the underpinnings of the Jewish rationale for social justice and environmental sustainability - - something so central to Steve’s being that in 2001 he was awarded both the Reconstructionist Student Association Prize for Social Action within RRC, and the Rabbi Devora Barnoff Memorial Prize for Spiritually Motivated Social Action.