St. Louis Diaspora is a Jewish Light series about people who started in St. Louis and went on to do interesting things elsewhere — and the hometown that helped shape them.
From Creve Coeur to the Meadowlands
Jill Kotner Hirsch grew up in Creve Coeur and was part of the close-knit St. Louis Jewish community that helped shape her early life. She attended the John Burroughs School before heading east to the University of Pennsylvania.
Growing up, she said she was surrounded by family and a tight-knit Jewish community where everyone seemed connected — especially her friends’ parents, who always seemed to know exactly what was going on. As a teenager, she joked, it sometimes felt like “a mild form of surveillance.” Later, she came to see it as something else entirely.
Community.
“I was fortunate to have four grandparents growing up, which is rare and very special,” she said.
She describes a childhood shaped by close family relationships and time spent with grandparents who played an active role in her life.
She celebrated her bat mitzvah at Congregation Shaare Emeth, another touchpoint in her St. Louis Jewish upbringing. She later came to know Rabbi Susan Talve, whose approach to Jewish identity and social responsibility left a lasting impression.
“It was about doing something with your values,” Hirsch said. “She wasn’t asking you to choose between your faith and your conscience. She was showing you they were the same thing.”
Those lessons would travel with her long after she left St. Louis.
A path east
College took her to the University of Pennsylvania, her first extended time away from home. But life eventually brought her back. After experiencing the loss of loved ones, she returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University, earning both a law degree and a master’s degree in social work while staying close to family.
New York came next.
At the Legal Aid Society, she represented children in abuse, neglect and delinquency cases — work she described as emotionally difficult but deeply meaningful.
“I truly loved that work,” she said.
She later worked in adoption law, continuing a career focused on children and families, before eventually settling with her husband and children in Montclair, New Jersey.
The next chapter of her career began in an ordinary place: a school bus stop.
A bus stop and a campaign
That’s where she met Mikie Sherrill, years before Sherrill would become a member of Congress or governor of New Jersey. At the time, they were simply neighbors, parents and friends.
“I didn’t meet Mikie through politics,” Hirsch said. “I met her at a school bus stop.”
When Sherrill decided to run for Congress, she asked Hirsch to help build the campaign from the ground up. She accepted and became campaign’s political and outreach director
Hirsch admits she wasn’t immediately sure she was the right person for the job.
“I was skeptical of my ability to do it since it was new to me,” she said. “But we did it pretty successfully and here we are.”
What followed were kitchen table meetings, a campaign announcement in her backyard and an early fundraiser down the street — the kind of grassroots beginning that rarely looks inevitable at the time.
“We launched that campaign essentially from scratch,” she said.
Hirsch eventually became the political and outreach director, helping organize volunteers, build coalitions and navigate the realities of New Jersey politics. After the victory, she stayed on as district director and later served as statewide political director during Sherrill’s run for governor.
“Mikie has called me her ‘Day One,’ which I find genuinely moving,” Hirsch said.
That path eventually led to her current role as president and CEO of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority. In the role, she oversees the agency responsible for the Meadowlands complex, including MetLife Stadium, and helps coordinate major events that bring global attention and economic activity to New Jersey.
Hirsch laughs at the irony. Someone who once tried to avoid gym class now helps oversee the stadium home of two NFL teams.
Still St. Louis
Time and distance haven’t weakened her connection to St. Louis.
“Judaism for our family isn’t a chapter that closes when you move away,” she said. “It’s a living, breathing, multigenerational commitment.”
She said she still sees the influence of her St. Louis upbringing in the way she approaches her work and family life.
“I think about it constantly,” she said. “St. Louis made me who I am.”
About the St. Louis Diaspora series
St. Louis has been quietly sending people like Hirsch into the world for generations. The Jewish Light plans to find more of them.
Know someone who belongs in the St. Louis Diaspora series? Send suggestions to Jordan Palmer at [email protected].
