Joy Sisisky
President & Chief Executive Officer
Jewish Federation Bay Area

Joy Sisisky has served the Jewish community for twenty-five years as a professional dedicated to advancing philanthropy, social justice causes and women’s issues. Known as an optimistic thought-leader and innovator in progressive Jewish philanthropy, Joy was appointed President & Chief Executive Officer at the Jewish Federation Bay Area in 2022; previously, she served as Chief Philanthropy Officer. In the last ten years alone, Joy has stewarded nearly $2 billion in philanthropic capital through the Federation, one of the largest community foundations in the country with more than $2.4 billion in assets. Joy is one of just five women to ever serve as chief executive at a large-city Federation in North America over the last 100 years.

Earlier, Joy served as the Executive Director of the Jewish Women's Foundation of New York, working to advance the status and well-being of women and girls in the Jewish community in New York. Joy is a former Ralph I. Goldman Fellow at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee where she spent a year living and working in in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is the founder of Do Good Ukraine! the first organization dedicated to building civil society through volunteerism and still operating across the country during this time of crisis. Joy was the first national co-chair of JDC Entwine, the organization’s young adult platform, and serves on the Board of JDC. Prior to that, she worked at AIPAC and Israel Policy Forum.

Joy graduated from Brandeis University and earned dual-master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Public Administration and Hebrew Union College in Jewish Communal Service. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union College in May 2025 in recognition of her longstanding work. She grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and currently lives in San Francisco.