Joan Grayson Cohen is celebrating an impressive milestone: She is in the midst of her 30th year working at Jewish Community Services.
Starting out as part of Jewish Family Services, one of the four local organizations incorporated into JCS in 2008, Cohen originally worked as an educator and coordinator of its child abuse and neglect prevention project and worked her way up to serving as JCS’s executive director.
Cohen’s work at JCS began because of an ad her friend saw in the Baltimore Jewish Times. The friend thought Cohen’s background in social work, particularly with survivors of child abuse, would be perfect for JFS. Cohen’s been there ever since, through all of the changes that JFS and later JCS went through over the past 30 years.
“There’s a lot of ability to grow at our agency, and to evolve to fill a variety of positions,” Cohen said. “And I’m an example of that.”
Cohen, 63, lives in Pikesville with her husband and dog. The two of them have three adult daughters, a son-in-law and a few grandchildren, including one who was just born recently. They are also members of Beth El Congregation, and Cohen said they are connected to their synagogue’s community.
Cohen grew up in the Bronx in New York City. Her father worked as a principal at a public school in South Bronx and after school hours as a principal at a Hebrew school. Her maternal grandparents were immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, and her mother grew up speaking Yiddish as her first language.
Cohen recalls having conversations with her grandparents where they would talk to her in Yiddish, and she would respond in English.
There wasn’t any particular event that made her want to become a social worker — Cohen describes social work as being something she always knew she wanted to do. She had a particular interest in working with child abuse survivors, so she volunteered at a local psychiatric hospital for children while in high school.
In college at Boston University, she shadowed an experienced social worker, which left a profound impact on her.
“During one of the days I was shadowing her, she was in court and was testifying [in a child abuse case]. I knew the facts of the case, and since there was no jury, I was asked to sit in the jury box to observe. I remember exactly where I was sitting,” Cohen recalled. “She was put on the stand to testify, and the attorney who was defending the parents was very skilled and wouldn’t let her tell all the facts of the case.
“I remember thinking that I can’t do this,” Cohen added. “I really have to be able to tell those stories and defend children.”
Afterward, Cohen attended law school and social work school at the University of Maryland. She became an attorney specializing in children and family issues. These past experiences serve her well at JCS because of the breadth of its human services-related work.
Her starting a career at JFS was almost a coincidence. Her friend told her about an ad she had seen in the Jewish Times about an open coordinator position for the organization’s child abuse and neglect prevention project.
“I was doing some work for Family and Children’s Services of Central Maryland [now Springboard Community Services]. And she saw this ad and said, ‘This has your name written all over it. You have to apply,’” Cohen said. “I almost said no, because I had three little kids and wasn’t exactly ready to get back to work. And she said ‘Just apply,’ and that started my whole trajectory.”
Cohen started out educating the Jewish community about child abuse and neglect, though her work later expanded to supporting older adults. Later, she was the attorney for JCS’s Adoption Support Services, which provides resources to parents who have adopted children and those who have given up their children for adoption.
“It’s truly one of my greatest gifts and I’m so proud of it, because we were able to make matches for Jewish families who weren’t able to have children on their own,” she said. “My niece was adopted from our agency, so it’s very close to my heart. It puts children who might have had a very different kind of life with families who want to give them wonderful lives.”
Even after 30 years at JCS, Cohen shows no signs of slowing down. She aims to continue meeting the community’s needs with the agency’s offerings, with her other goal being taking care of the staff as they take care of others.
“Baltimore is a very wonderful and unusual Jewish community,” she said. “It’s a community that just embraces you. You can’t go anywhere without knowing somebody. You’re never standing alone.”
05/01/24: This article has been updated to correct a number of errors, including where Cohen grew up and her grandparents’ place of origin. In addition, Cohen did not continue working in JCS’s Adoption Support Services after she became executive director.
