Avenya
Maja Loncar
Secretary & Co-Founder
Maja Loncar currently works in Administrative Services at the Public Works Department for Marin County. She previously worked as a Business Manager for a social start-up called Heartwood Educational Collaborative that is a Waldorf inspired public program for K to 5th grade students. In her prior position, Maja Loncar was also employed as a Bay Area Wexner Alumni Coordinator at the Jewish Community Federation, where she spearheaded development of new programs and events that educate and connect top leaders in the Jewish community.
While attending graduate school at George Mason University in the Washington DC metro area, Maja interned at the United Nations Association (UNA-USA). Shortly after completing her master’s degree in International Commerce and Policy, Maja worked for the International Organization for Migration (IOM). There she partnered with almost a dozen professionals, and helped to restructure this complex organization, from reactive and perpetual catch-up mode – into a streamlined cohesive global entity that delivered results for refugees and war victims around the world. Maja was instrumental in creating complex filing system and administrative guidelines from scratch for the German Forced Labor Compensation Program. This program provided compensation for more than 20,000 World War II victims that included former slave and forced laborers. Maja ensured that the private information disclosed was handled with the utmost discretion and professionalism.
Given such accomplishments, Maja was then recruited by Hadassah, the Women’s Organization of America, with 300,000 members nationwide and over 5,500 members in the Washington Area. Maja served as the director of Hadassah Washington Chapter for over four years. Maja partnered with the Chapter President and the Board to develop and implement membership marketing and fundraising campaigns. Maja oversaw financial, staff, marketing, and administrative activities of the Chapter on a daily basis. She advised key Program Event Chairs to ensure that fundraising, membership and educational components of the organization’s mission were successfully operational.
Maja approaches professional managerial teamwork the way she thrives in her happy marriage as wife and mother. Years of experience have taught her that relationships are about building trust and productivity by navigating and compromising to maintain positive forward momentum in the complex maze of life.
She was born and lived her formative years in Slovenia but has lived her later childhood and adolescence in Belgrade, Serbia (all former Yugoslav republics). In the early 1990s, right before the breakup of Yugoslavia, she came to the United States as an exchange student. Following her country’s breakup and impending civil war, she decided to stay in the United States where she further pursued her studies and made a new home.