Rabbi Denise L. Eger
PCC · Executive Coach & Leadership Advisor
About & Biography
I have held the authority, carried the institution, and navigated the complexity myclients face now.
I’m an executive coach, leadership advisor, and the founder of Eger Leadership & Advisory. I brings nearly four decades of senior leadership experience to this work learned in boardrooms, governance crises, and organizational turning points.
I created the EGER Leadership Framework™, that helps senior leaders align expectations, governance, environment, and results so their authority holds.
The title transferred; the authority didn’t. That gap is my entire practice.
Discretion isn’t my policy. It was my profession.
My executive leadership began when I founded Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, California, one of the first LGBTQ-affirming synagogues in the country. I served as its Founding Senior Rabbi for more than thirty years, through growth, crisis, and long-term sustainability. Raising capital, building culture, managing boards, holding a community through change: that is the foundation of how I coach.
I later served as President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the oldest and largest rabbinical organization in North America, becoming the first openly LGBTQ rabbi in nearly 140 year history to hold that office.The work sat where governance, policy, and public leadership meet, and the decisions reached far beyond one organization.
I have chaired or presided over boards for most of my career, including the Southern California Board of Rabbis, where I was the first woman elected president. I served as interim executive director of a national nonprofit. I held it steady, and I helped its board face the hardest decision a board can make: that it was time to close.
I built the EGER Framework from those seats because it didn’t exist when I needed it.
Today, I work with senior executives, nonprofit leaders, law enforcement executives, faith-based institutions, and C-suite leaders at moments of inflection. Often it’s when performance is strong but authority is diluted, when success is visible but sustainability is uncertain, or when the next steps requires rethinking the role itself. My clients have included leaders at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Episcopal Church Foundation, Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Center, Wondros, and organizations across the Jewish communal world and nonprofit sector.
I hold the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential from the International Coaching Federation, certification in interim ministry from the Interim Ministry Network, and two certificates in nonprofit management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
I am co-wrote Seven Principles for Living Bravely with Rev. Neil Thomas, edited Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells (CCAR Press); and co-edited Gender and Religious Leadership: Women Rabbis, Pastors, and Ministers (Lexington Books). I hold two honorary doctorates, from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The Huffington Post named me the #1 LGBTQ Clergy Person in America. The City of Los Angeles has honored me twice as an LGBTQ Hero and as a Jewish Woman Trailblazer.
I’m based in Austin, Texas, where I also serve on the Austin Public Safety Commission. I coach and advise leaders throughout the United States and Canada.
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