A top Democrat in the Colorado General Assembly is resigning to take a new job.

President Pro Tem Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet of Commerce City, who has served in the General Assembly since 2017, will become the director of the David and Laura Merage Foundation for Combating Antisemitism.

Her last day is this Friday. The announcement was made at an off-site caucus luncheon.

In a statement, Gov. Jared Polis called Michaelson Jenet an “incredible leader” who has championed several issues — from mental health to school lunches to education. Polis also noted her work against antisemitism.

“She has been a champion for the Jewish community, and she will continue that important work with the Merage Foundation. I look forward to working with her in her new capacity, fighting antisemitism.  I wish her the best in this next chapter and know she will continue giving back to her community and her state,” the governor said.

Michaelson Jenet was first elected to the House in 2017, serving from 2018 through the 2023 session.

In August 2023, she was named by a Senate District 21 vacancy committee to replace Sen. Dominick Moreno, who left that position to join the administration of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.

She has sponsored dozens of bills in the area of mental health, including new state laws to require better support for individuals dealing with mental health issues.

Among them is a program that provides six free counseling sessions to youth 18 and under. She also cited the program offering free meals to all K-12 students, which voters passed in 2022. The program has struggled financially, with more demand for meals than the funding provided in the ballot measure. It has provided more than 600,000 meals daily, according to EarlyMilestones.org.

In a 2024 profile for Colorado Politics, Michaelson Jenet talked about her Jewish roots.

A native of Tel Aviv, Michaelson Jenet is the oldest of seven children in a blended Jewish Orthodox family. The family moved to the U.S. when she was a child. By age 14, she had decided to pursue a different path, partly because she enrolled in a performing arts high school in Cincinnati. The artistic director informed her she had to participate in rehearsals or shows on Friday nights.

When she pointed out she was Orthodox, he responded, “Go find yourself another school.”

“I decided if God gave me talent, maybe I was supposed to use it,” she said.

That was hard on her family, but they were “outwardly supportive,” she said.

In addition to Cincinnati, she spent her formative years in New York and Philadelphia.

Michaelson Jenet returned to her Orthodox roots for college, attending Yeshiva University’s Sterns College for Women in New York. 

She’s also authored three books, including “Peanut’s Legacy,” about losing a baby at 20 weeks, and “It Takes a Little Crazy to Make a Difference,” published in 2015 and based on a year she spent traveling to all 50 states to find and share stories of ordinary people solving problems in their communities.

She said her epiphany for the book came from a visit to South Dakota and from learning about how people build community and engage when they don’t do so through religion, which she said is becoming more common.

The community center is the answer, she said. 

The third book, “Three Speaking Methods,” is based on TEDx events she’s done over the past 15 years on public speaking training.

Michaelson Jenet’s resignation means another vacancy in the General Assembly. That brings the total to 29 vacancies among current lawmakers who gained their seats — some more than once — through the vacancy process.