Ordained in 1979 from Hebrew Union College, Rabbi Jan Caryl Kaufman was among one of the first women admitted to the Rabbinical Assembly (professional organization of Conservative rabbis) in the first year it admitted women in 1985. She spent the first part of her career in Jewish education – the first two years at Hillel at the University of Maryland and then ten years on the faculty of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School of Greater Washington. In 1991, she became the founding principal of the Solomon Schechter High School at the Jewish Theological Seminary and then for almost two decades was the director of special projects at the Rabbinical Assembly.