Duquesne cybersecurity analyst chosen for Hadassah Evolve Leadership Fellowship
Duquesne cybersecurity analyst chosen for Hadassah Evolve Leadership Fellowship
Publish Date: 2026-02-04 13:28:00
Source Domain: jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com
Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
Pittsburgh’s Ellie Greenwald has been chosen as a 2026 Evolve Leadership Fellow with Hadassah. This marks the fourth year Hadassah has selected a class of Jewish women representing its values of education, advocacy and youth development, and Greenwald is among a diverse cohort of women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, ranging from doctors to full-time homemakers.
Greenwald is a cybersecurity analyst for Duquesne Light Company and leads the Pittsburgh branch of Evolve Hadassah: The Next Generation, a youth development group. She originally heard about the fellowship at the 2025 Midwest Chicago conference Hadassah puts on every year and felt her drive to serve the Jewish community aligned with its values.
But beyond Hadassah’s universal values, Greenwald feels a strong connection to its specific Jewish and Zionist core.
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“Hadassah is a Zionist organization — it’s Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America — so its commitment to Israel is at the center of its mission,” she told the Chronicle. “I’m a Zionist, an American watching the surge in antisemitism around the world, and as someone who has experienced trauma, I care about our society’s most vulnerable.”
After a traumatic experience as a young person, Greenwald became passionate about helping at-risk youth cope with trauma.
“I want to use what I’ve learned through my own journey and what I’ll learn through the Evolve Leadership Fellows program to support and advocate for the teens and pre-teens in Hadassah youth villages,” she said. “They arrive with all kinds of challenges, like having lived in poverty or abusive homes or struggling with learning issues and emotional scars.”
The two youth villages in Israel that Hadassah sponsors are home to students of all backgrounds — Druze, Arab, Ethiopian, Russian, and Eritrean refugees — and include programming like audio workshops, animal therapy, pre-army preparation and carpentry. During wartime, villages like Hadassah Neurim and Meir Shfeuyah are an important resource for giving young people the tools to cope with the violence around them.
At a time when many Jewish organizations struggle to connect with the Gen Z and millennial demographic, programs like Hadassah’s Evolve: The Next Generation are both a way for younger Jewish women to connect with each other and to their faith, and to connect to the culture more broadly.
“Being part of Hadassah, which has made such a difference for so many, makes me want to give back and to honor the women who came before me by helping to keep this important work going,” Greenwald said.
Greenwald is also an advocate for women in the workforce of the Professional Women’s Network, a Pittsburgh-based organization that helps women thrive both personally and professionally. Women make up only 22% of the cybersecurity workforce, so Greenwald has direct experience being in a male-dominated industry. She stays up to date on national conversations about her field by being an active member of ISACA and EUCI, two national governing bodies around cybersecurity and energy.
Carol Ann Schwartz, Hadassah national president, expressed excitement about the new class of fellows, saying that she was “delighted to see younger Jewish women eager to take up the mantle of leadership to help advance Hadassah’s mission.”
In the next year, Greenwald and her peers will meet with Hadassah leadership to discuss how they can best serve their community through the fellowship. In the second year of the fellowship, fellows pair up with a Hadassah mentor and take on a leadership position in their local Hadassah chapter — in Greenwald’s case, that will be Hadassah of Greater Pittsburgh.
“As someone lucky enough to be chosen for the Fellows program, it’s my responsibility to work as hard as I can and learn as much as I can so that when the program ends, I’m ready to take what I’ve learned and put it into action,” Greenwald said. PJCEmma Riva is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.
