Rabba Melissa Scholten-Gutierrez

Rabba Melissa Scholten-Gutierrez is an engaging Jewish educator, community builder, and visionary leader. She works to ensure that our Jewish communal organizations are more intentional - more intentionally Jewish, more intentionally diverse, more intentionally equitable.

Rabba Melissa currently serves as the Director of Family Education and Engagement at the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta and in a number of communal volunteer roles. She is on the Executive Committee for the Jewish Women’s Fund of Atlanta, and was amongst the first cohort of women in their ACT: Agents of Change Training fellowship. Rabba Melissa is also the Clergy Advisory Chair for MACoM: Metro Atlanta Community Mikvah, on the National Council for Jewish Women’s (NCJW) Rabbi’s for Repro Advisory Board, and is the inaugural Board Chair for A Mitzvah to Eat.

Rabba Melissa received semikha (rabbinic ordination) from Maharat in 2018 and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Illinois in 2006. She has also learned intensively at Nishmat and Pardes in Jerusalem and worked for JEWISHcolorado, JCC Manhattan, Hillel International, and Global Day of Jewish Learning. Rabba Melissa enjoys writing in her “free time” and has been published in a number of print and digital forums.