12 | JANUARY 6 • 2022

OUR COMMUNITY

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more accessible to everyone, in good
times and bad.
“I have teens, and they’re going
through a really bad week right now.
The fact that there’s something for me
to log onto to get help, and that our
community even creates such events,
is amazing,” she said. (Yaker was
interviewed the week of the Oxford High
School shooting, to which JFS, We Need to
Talk and the Jewish Community Center’s
JTeen team, among others, responded with
emergency outreach programming.)
“And then the fact that there’s a
place now where people can go to
find it. You don’t have to know who’s
hosting what.”
We talked with Yaker at Federation
headquarters to learn more about
Jlive, as well as her journey in the
Jewish community and how she, in her
own hamish way, epitomizes the start-
up mentality. Here are her thoughts:

“I LIKE CHANGE”
I thrive on reinventing my career. I’ve
worked at a PR agency downtown.
Then I completed a 12-month master’s
program at Michigan, student-
taught in Detroit and worked as an
elementary teacher in Bloomfield
Hills. It was so enriching. I stopped
when my daughter Alexandra was
born.

In 2006, when my dad
passed away, Hebrew Free
Loan asked me if I wanted to
take his spot on the board.
I thought, “This is a way to
honor his values — he just
believed in giving back.”
I really got involved with
Federation because I was invited
to go on the Grosfeld Leadership
Program. Then — it was actually in
this building — I heard Judy Loebl
speaking about a new program they
were thinking about starting here for
new parents. I went up to Jeff Lasday
and I said, “I am the person you are
going to hire for this program.” And
I ended up getting the job as the first
director of JBaby Detroit.
I did that for a couple of years. I
worked with the team at Federation,
and we created the structure, the
classes, the logo, the name, the whole
thing. I loved it. But then, you know,
along the way, I’d been having people
ask me to help them plan their events,
and I’d always wanted to have my own
company. So I opened EyeCatcher
Events. I plan corporate, now mostly
nonprofit, and bar and bat mitzvahs.
I planned Israel@70 downtown and,
this past October, I did JARC’s cool
Rick Springfield fundraiser.
The event planning is still going

on, but I’ve hit
pause on taking new clients. Jlive has
quickly become a full-time role. I still
have plenty of events to keep me busy,
but my three kids are getting older.
My daughter Allie is in college, my
son Noah is a senior in high school,
and Levi is in eighth grade. I enjoy
spending time with them on the
weekends, especially if it’s a Michigan
football weekend.

JLIVE … EVERYTHING
ROLLED UP INTO ONE
In summer 2020, I was talking to
some friends, Scott Kaufman, Brian
Siegel, Ted Cohen and Robert Wolfe.
They told me about their new project
— Jlive. I thought, “OK, I don’t
know what this is.” But I knew it had
to do with events, with the Jewish
community, and that — like Jbaby —
there was an education component. So
it seemed like everything (I had done)
rolled up into one.
So I started working on Jlive in

LEFT: Visit Jlive at
jlive.app
BELOW: Young
Adult programs
featured on Jlive.
app