Abby Michelson Porth is Associate Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin, Sonoma, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. The JCRC is the central public affairs and community relations arm of the organized Jewish community, and provides a forum to develop consensus positions on important public policy issues that affect the Jewish community. 

As Associate Director, Ms. Porth directs JCRC's coalition building programs with other ethnic communities, manages the organization's fundraising efforts, the community's security planning project, and directs or supervises other operations of the organization such as strategic planning and the Tikkun Olam Projects of JCRC, including its literacy, environmental, leadership, and intergroup initiatives.

Ms. Porth serves on the Board of Directors of Scattered Among the Nations, an organization dedicated to educating the Jewish and non-Jewish world about the diversity of the Jewish people, assisting geographically and politically isolated Jewish communities in continuing their religious and cultural practice, and preserving their heritage by documenting these isolated communities, many of which are on the verge of disappearance.

Prior to joining JCRC in 1999, Ms. Porth worked for the Anti-Defamation League of Boston. There she worked in the civil rights department, running a rehabilitation program for juvenile hate crime offenders, and managing the civil rights/anti-Semitic incident caseload for the organization.

Ms. Porth received her Master of Management degree from the Heller School at Brandeis University, and her B.A. in African and Afro-American Studies and in Sociology from Brandeis University, where she received awards from the Student Senate and Faculty for her intergroup and interfaith coalition building activity.