Abigail Michelson Porth
executive director
Abigail Michelson Porth is Executive Director of the LSP Family Foundation. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, a public affairs and government and community relations organization representing the Jewish community’s interests. She has more than two decades of experience with advocacy, government relations, coalition building, strategic planning, organizational development, and crisis management and communications.
Abby served as a Mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, providing oversight of City efforts to address systemic racism, inequity, barriers to access services, and discrimination of all kinds. She is co-founder of the Memory Garden, the nation's first-ever sacred Jewish memorial space for those grieving from neonatal and other fertility losses.
Abby serves on the Board of Directors of the Brandeis School of San Francisco. In addition, she consults with the leadership of Bay Area youth-serving programs, helping to advance their strategy and fundraising, deepening their work with marginalized and vulnerable children.
She previously served on the Boards of Directors of San Francisco Head Start, the San Francisco Interfaith Council, Congregation Emanu-El, and Scattered Among the Nations, which documents and assists politically and geographically marginalized Jewish communities in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. Abby’s first “real job” was managing a Boston-based juvenile hate crime offender program that diverted children out of the criminal justice system and into an educational rehabilitative setting. She earned a Master of Management degree from the Heller School for Social Policy, and a Bachelor of Arts in African and African-American Studies, and Sociology at Brandeis University.