Name Shawn Landres Role Author | Organizations founded Jumpstart | |
Shawn landres jewish contribution to a global world
J. Shawn Landres (born 1972 in Los Angeles, California) is a social entrepreneur and independent scholar, and local civic leader, known primarily for applied research related to faith-based social innovation and community development. As the co-founder of Jumpstart, a nonprofit philanthropic research organization, he has worked with the White House on Jewish affairs and issues related to faith-based social enterprise. The Jewish Daily Forward named Landres to its annual list of the 50 most influential American Jews in 2009.
In 2013-14, Landres chaired the research team and co-authored five of Jumpstart’s six Connected to Give reports, which “map[ped] the landscape of charitable giving by Americans of different faith traditions.” Connected to Give was credited by Indiana University as a “breakthrough finding” distinguishing giving to religious congregations and giving to “religiously identified organizations.”
A co-founder (with Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman) of Synagogue 3000's Synagogue Studies Institute, Landres is credited with creating the term "Jewish Emergent," which describes new spiritual Jewish communities that have an institutional dynamic in which "relationship, not contract or program, is the driving metaphor;” the term “Jewish Emergent” reflects similarities in organizing philosophy with a parallel movement in the Christian church. A 2007 report Landres co-authored with sociologist Steven M. Cohen and others linked Jewish Emergent communities to social networking rather than institutional structures. They argued that "Jewish Emergent" encompasses both the independent minyan movement (which was supported by Synagogue 3000) and so-called "rabbi-led emergent" communities such as IKAR and Kavana Cooperative. In 2006, Landres co-convened the first gathering of Emergent church and "Jewish Emergent" leaders in a meeting co-led by theologian Tony Jones, who recounted the episode in one of his books. In 2016, a network of rabbi-led emergent communities established the Jewish Emergent Network, crediting Landres for coining the concept behind its name.
In July 2012, the White House invited Landres, representing Jumpstart, to speak as a "spotlight innovator" at its Faith-Based Social Innovators Conference.
In 2013 Landres was awarded the Liberty Hill Foundation’s NextGen Leadership Award.
Landres currently chairs the City of Santa Monica’s Social Services Commission, having previously chaired the Santa Monica Public Library’s Innovation Technology Task Force. He is a commissioner on the Los Angeles County Quality and Productivity Commission and chairs Los Angeles County’s Productivity Investment Board.
UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs appointed him as a Civil Society Fellow in 2015. He chairs the board of Impact Hub Los Angeles, part of the global network of co-working centers supporting social entrepreneurship.
Landres graduated from Columbia University and received a Masters degrees from Oxford in Social Anthropology and the University of California, Santa Barbara, in Religious Studies, as well as a Doctorate in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Landres' work on ethnographic methodology has been cited in handbooks for the study of the sociology of religion. In 2004, Landres took a public role in shaping the interreligious response to the film The Passion of the Christ.
Bill Clinton has identified him as the "young man" who suggested "Don't Stop" as the future president's 1992 campaign theme song.