Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner is the founding Director of Just Congregations of the Union for Reform Judaism. The URJ represents 1.5 million Reform Jews across North America, in more than 950 synagogues. Rabbi Pesner works with synagogues pursuing social justice across the country and teaches on all three campuses of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. He has led congregations and organizations in successful campaigns for health care access, affordable housing, public education, gay and lesbian rights, workers rights, and living wage. As a leader of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, Rabbi Pesner was the chair of the GBIO effort in the Massachusetts "Affordable Care Today!" coalition that successfully secured health care for more than half a million uninsured residents of the Commonwealth.

Rabbi Pesner chairs the board of the Jewish Organizing Initiative and has served on the boards of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Jewish Memorial Hospital. He has written several journal articles, and wrote a chapter entitled "Redemption for Radicals" in the anthology, "Righteous Indignation." He served as the Assistant Rabbi at Temple Israel in Westport, Connecticut and then Associate Rabbi at Temple Israel of Boston. He was the Meyer W. Nathans Scholar at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion where he was ordained in 1997. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Rabbi Pesner is married to Boston attorney, Dana S. Gershon. Together they have four daughters, Juliet, Noa, Bobbie and Cate.

Lila Foldes is the Assistant Director of Just Congregations. Lila works to increase and deepen the participation of Reform synagogues across the country in community organizing across lines of faith, race, and class. Previously, she worked for two years as the Assistant Director of Jewish Organizing for the Jewish Funds for Justice, where she planned the first-ever national gathering of involved congregations. She trained as a community organizer with the Organizing Apprenticeship Project in Minnesota. Her past organizing experience includes three and a half years as a community organizer in Minnesota. She graduated cum laude from Barnard College.

Julie Chizewer Weill is the Coordinator of Institutional Advancement for Just Congregations. She has worked to strengthen synagogue life and in the field of Jewish social justice for the past 15 years as a staff member of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs in Chicago, and both the Union for Reform Judaism and the Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ) in New York. While at JFSJ she initiated its program to engage synagogues in congregation-based community organizing and planned the first-ever national gathering of involved congregations. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and received a Masters Degree in Social Work and a Certificate in Jewish Communal Service from Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work. She and her husband, Rabbi Jeffrey Weill, live in Deerfield, IL and are the parents of Betsy, Ruthie, and Samuel.