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 Joel Kushner 
Dr. Joel L. Kushner serves as Director for the Institute for Judaism and Sexual Orientation at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. The IJSO provides a myriad of resources and services, including LGBT liturgies and life-cycle rituals, field internships, academic conferences, and consulting to community groups.
He brings to this position a unique educational background and professional experience. Dr. Kushner has a 17-year history of dedication to counseling, training, and education and a passion for cultural issues and diversity. He has multiple graduate degrees in counseling and clinical psychology from Columbia University in New York and from Rutgers University in New Jersey. For the last nine years, Dr. Kushner has worked as a consultant to both profit and non- profit organizations as a behavioral healthcare consultant focusing on crisis management, performance, training, and policy development. Dr. Kushner has a lifelong interest in pastoral care developed originally from coursework at New College, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He completed an extended unit in CPE at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City and continued in its on-call rotation for two more years as a lay chaplain. For eight years, Dr. Kushner co-led education bereavement groups for adults at St John's Medical Center in Santa Monica, CA. In the mid 1980s, Dr. Kushner volunteered for GMHC in New York, participated in several of the first AIDS education programs conducting outreach as well as led groups focused on education and behavior change. He also volunteered with the Deaf AIDS Project focusing on curriculum design to help bring information to a population that, at that time, had no access to AIDS education. In Los Angeles, Dr. Kushner served for three years on the Board of Directors of LAGPA, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy Association. Dr. Kushner and his partner David Wolff, M.D., have a 7-year old son. Education
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