PresenTense Institute 2008

Our speakers in 2008 include entrepreneurs of every shade: social justice pioneers, authors, technologists, artists, and venture capitalists. Watch this space for our growing list.

Uzi Arad

Dr. Uzi Arad is the Founding Director of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC). At the Institute, he has established and chairs the annual Herzliya Conference, which has become the premier venue of discussion for Israel’s leaders and policy-makers concerned with national security, broadly defined, and the foreign and domestic policies of Israel. Dr. Arad is also Founder and Chair of the Atlantic Forum for Israel, and is advisor to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Prior to his work at IDC, Dr. Arad served in the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, for 25 years and eventually became Director of Intelligence. He later served as Foreign Policy Advisor to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Dr. Arad graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from Tel Aviv University and then earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations at Princeton University.

Asaf Baner

Asaf Baner is among the founders and the current director of the Israeli nonprofit organization B'Maaglei Tzedek, which works to create a just society operating in accordance with the values and ethics of Jewish Tradition. Among B'Maaglei Tzedek's widely acclaimed projects is the "social seal," a form of social kashrut that is accorded to restaurants that adhere to basic workplace ethics and standards. A Jerusalemite by birth, Asaf has a degree from the Hebrew University in psychology and business management.

Ruth Calderon

Ruth Calderon is the founder and executive director of the Alma Home for Hebrew Culture in Tel Aviv, an institution dedicated to the study and advancement of Hebrew culture. She was a co-founder and director of Elul, the egalitarian Bet Midrash for religious and secular men and women, in Jerusalem. Ruth also created HaCheder, a popular weekly TV series dealing with issues found in classic and modern Hebrew texts. Ruth has written and edited several books, and is a graduate of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership and is pursuing a doctorate in Talmud at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1997 Ms. Calderon was awarded the Avi Chai Prize in Israel.

Isaac Devash

Isaac Devash is a business and social entrepreneur with thirteen years of international private equity and venture capital experience and several years of experience as an international Investment Banker with Credit Suisse First Boston in New York, London and Tokyo. He founded two private equity funds and forged strategic alliances with large global institutions including, Hambros Bank Plc, Nomura Japan, Jafco Singapore and Israel Discount Bank. Among Mr. Devash's successful exits are: Morecom (enabling the transmission of the internet over cable TV- that was sold to Liberate for $561 million), Israel Direct Insurance global operations and Shahal Telemedicine (world leader in telemedicine that was listed in Swiss stock market and that received an investment of $40 million from Philips). Before founding these funds, Mr. Devash managed the $157 million Renaissance Fund. More recently, he co-founded a biotechnology start-up company called BiondVax Pharmaceuticals that is developing a multi-season/multi-strain vaccine against the Influenza virus. Mr. Devash is the Founder and President of the Wharton-Penn Club of Israel and of the Harvard Business School Alumni Association of Israel. Mr. Devash serves on the Executive Board of Wharton for Europe, Africa and the Middle East and as a member of Board of Governors of Ben Gurion University in the Negev and the Board of Governors of Jerusalem College of Engineering. Mr. Devash holds a MBA from Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration and an undergraduate degree from the Wharton School, Summa Cum Laude.

Elan Ezrachi

Elan Ezrachi is the Director of the International School for Jerusalem Studies, at Yad Ben-Zvi. Prior to this, Dr. Ezrachi served as the founding International Director of the MASA project, a joint initiative of the State of Israel and the Jewish Agency for Israel.He has also worked as the Executive Director of the Edgar Bronfman Mifgash Center and as an international lecturer on Jewish identity, education and demography.

Dyonna Ginsburg

Upon completing her BA in political science at Columbia University, Dyonna made Aliyah in 2002 and obtained an MA in Jewish Education from Hebrew University. From 2003-2006, Dyonna served as Director of Yavneh Olami, an international student organization. She currently a senior advisor in the Education Department of Jewish Agency and created and oversaw a widely acclaimed program empowering recent olim who work at the Jewish Agency's Kiryat Moriah. In her spare time, Dyonna sits on the board of Bema'aglei Tzedek, a social justice organization dedicated to promoting social justice in Israel, and is active in several Israeli nonprofits and grassroots initiatives.

Yoni Gordis

Yoni Gordis is the Executive Director at the Center for Leadership Initiatives. He is responsible for the strategic vision and implementation of CLI's various programs. While overseeing program design, Yoni maintains CLI's network of contacts with current and future leaders, assessing needs and working with the CLI team to determine methods of creating online and offline communities. Yoni has served for the past ten years primarily as a consultant to philanthropic foundations in Israel and in North America, offering skills that maximized the donors’ impact and their engagement with the heart of their philanthropic efforts. Before consulting work, he was a founding member of the Elul Beit Midrash in Jerusalem and a teacher in numerous educational institutions throughout Israel. A graduate of Columbia University, Yoni received private rabbinic ordination in Israel, has spent time as a midwife’s assistant, and is a teacher of Jewish text and creative writing, a translator of military history, and fan of live music.

Michal Govrin

Michal Govrin was born in Tel Aviv, the daughter of an Israeli pioneer father and a mother who survived the Holocaust. Working as a novelist, poet and theater director, Govrin has published eight books of poetry and fiction. Among her novels, The Name (HaShem, 1995), received the Kugel Literary Prize in Israel, and was nominated for the Koret Jewish Book Award in its English translation (Riverhead Books 1998; 1999). Snapshots (Hevzekim, 2002) was awarded the 2003 Acum Prize for the Best Literary Achievement of the Year. Govrin received her Ph.D. at the University of Paris for her thesis, Contemporary Sacred Theater, dealing with theater and religious ritual. Among the pioneers of Jewish experimental theatre, Govrin has directed Award winning performances in all the major theatres in Israel. She lives in Jerusalem.

Michael J. Granoff

Michael J. Granoff founded Maniv Energy Capital in 2005. MEC was the first investor in Project Better Place (www.projectbetterplace.com), a $200 million start-up founded by Shai Agassi to build and operate an electric charge network allowing countries to adopt electric cars. In March 2008 Mr. Granoff was named Head of Oil Independence Policies for Better Place. At present two countries, Israel and Denmark, have formally signed on to the Better Place model for oil independence.

Avraham Infeld

Avraham Infeld is President Emeritus of Hillel International, and has invested a lifetime building Jewish identity and strengthening the State of Israel. The founder and director of a succession of innovative educational institutions, Avraham was appointed President of Hillel in February 2004 after serving eight months as Interim President. He previously served as Hillel's Consul for Jewish Affairs, visiting more than 60 campuses on three continents. A native of South Africa, Avraham immigrated to Israel in 1959. He is married to Ellen Infeld, and they share four children and 10 grandchildren. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University in Bible and Jewish History, and of Tel Aviv University's Law School.

Shlomo Harel

Shlomo Harel serves on the Board of Directors of numerous Israeli companies, including Ofil Ltd., a global leader in UV imaging systems, and JPMed Ltd., a drug delivery company. In 2006, he established the Israel Technology Transfer Organization Ltd. (ITTN), the non-profit company representing the technology transfer interests of Israel’s universities and research institutions. Mr. Harel was instrumental in establishing the Carmel-Haifa University Economic Corporation Ltd. In 2002, and served as its CEO until 2008. Mr. Harel served as the head of Israel’s economic mission to North America in New York from 1991 to 1993. Mr. Harel holds a B.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering from the Technion (Haifa, Israel) and M.B.A. from the Tel Aviv University.

Deborah Harris

Deborah Harris moved to Jerusalem in 1979, after publishing positions at Book of the Month Club, Viking-Penguin and Henry Holt in New York. She co-founded The Domino Press, now an imprint of Keter Publishing House, and in 1991 she established The Harris Elon Agency, renamed The Deborah Harris Agency in 2005. The agency represents the international translation and film rights of approximately fifty Israeli and Palestinian writers and represents the Hebrew rights of over 200 world-wide publishers and agencies into Israel. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Jerusalem International Book Fair for twenty years and created the project, “Voices from Two Sides of the Bridge”, a day-long literary event bringing together Israeli and Palestinian writers and film makers, now a permanent program at the Book Fair.

Ronit Heyd

Ronit Heyd is the
director of the Social and Economic Justice Initiative at Shatil, the
New Israel Fund's Training and Empowerment Center for Social Change
Organizations. Ronit gives organizational consulting and training to
organizations, grassroots groups and coalitions working to ensure the
social and economic rights of groups in Israel, to promote
economic-community empowerment and to present alternatives to the
existing social and economic policies. Ronit holds an MA in Social
Psychology from the Hebrew University and lives in Jerusalem.

Sarah Kass

Sarah Kass, a Rhodes Scholar and graduate of
Yale University, founded one of the first charter public high schools
in the United States—City On A Hill, in Boston, MA—which inaugurated a
new model of results-oriented academics to prepare students for active
democratic citizenship. In 1998, with a major grant from the United
States Department of Education, she founded a school-based teacher
training program, which prepares teachers to hold themselves
accountable for student learning. Since 2004, Ms. Kass has been the
Director of Strategy and Evaluation at the AVI CHAI Foundation. At AVI
CHAI, she helps steer an overall philanthropic strategy for AVI CHAI,
works with all AVI CHAI grantees, and has launched new initiatives. Ms.
Kass writes and speaks frequently on matters of public policy; her
articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal and The Jerusalem
Post among other publications. She is a founding trustee of The
PresenTense Group.

Rabbi David Levin-Kruss

Rabbi Levin-Kruss holds a BA and
Teachers' Certification in English Literature and Jewish Thought from
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attended Pardes, and has rabbinic
ordination from the Joseph Strauss Rabbinical Seminary. Previously, he
served as the director of the overseas department at the Melitz Centers
for Jewish Zionist Education, and as the community director of Stanmore
Synagogue, in northwest London. Rabbi Levin-Kruss teaches Mishna and
Jewish Thought at Pardes, and sees himself as a bridge between Jewish
heritage and those seeking to connect or reconnect to that tradition.

Yoelle Maarek

Yoelle Maarek is the Director of Google Haifa Engineering Center, in Israel, which she opened in July 2006. The center is growing and is contributing to Google main products. Prior to this, Yoelle had been with IBM Research since 1989. While with IBM Research she held a series of technical and management appointments first at the T.J. Watson Research in New York, USA, and then at the IBM Haifa Research Lab in Israel until Feb 2006. Her two last positions were Distinguished Engineer and Department Group Manager in the area of search and collaboration. She graduated from the "Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees" in Paris, France, and received her DEA (graduate degree) in Computer Science from Paris VI University, both in 1985. She was a visiting PhD student at Columbia University in NY in 1986/87. She received her PhD in Computer Science from the Technion, in Haifa, Israel, in 1989. Yoelle's research interests include information retrieval, Web applications, and collaborative technologies. She serves on the program committees of several international conferences and has published over 50 papers and articles. Recently, she has served as vice-chair for several technical tracks at the WWW conference series and as Area Coordinator (senior PC member) at SIGIR 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. She also chaired and moderated multiple workshops and panels at both WWW and SIGIR conferences. She will serve as co-chair for the Panels track at WWW'2008 and has been invited to serve as co-chair of the General Program for WWW'2009.

Erel Margalit

Erel N. Margalit is Founder and Managing Partner of Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP). Under Erel’s leadership JVP helped build numerous technology companies and was part of the movement that helped position Israel as a central hub for technology innovation during the 90’s. Erel is also the chairperson of JVP Community, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a better Jerusalem through The Lab, a center of performing arts, which integrates theatrical art with cutting-edge technology, aimed at encouraging creative activity in Jerusalem and The Community Empowerment Program, which assists nearly 3,000 school children in more than a dozen schools in Jerusalem's poor neighborhoods. Erel holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Columbia University.

Hillel Milo

A native of Israel, Hillel Milo is a well-respected entrepreneur, investor, and humanitarian. He is currently a managing partner at Aquagro Fund, a venture capital fund in the field of cleantech.
Mr. Milo is one of the pioneers of the venture capital industry in Israel, who is personally responsible for over a dozen of successful exits.
Starting from the early nineties, Mr. Milo has initiated the foundation of Israel’s leading venture capital funds; amongst them is Walden Israel, one of the first venture capital funds in the country. In 1995 he co-founded Clal Venture Capital and was its CEO until 2002. Parallel to his role as CEO of Clal, he co-founded the Infinity VC in 1997 and acted as its managing general partner until 1999. In 2001 he joined Alice Ventures, a $220M European fund, as a managing partner until mid-2006.
Mr. Milo holds a B.Sc in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters degree in Management Sciences from the University of Alabama.
Amongst his many roles as a leading manager in the VC field in Israel, Hillel Milo is also involved in unique social projects. In 1997, Mr. Milo co-founded Kolot, an Israeli non-profit organization promoting Jewish identity and pluralism.
In 2003, Mr. Milo founded Parallel Lives, six years after his nephew, Major Nadav Milo, was killed during a military action in Lebanon. Mr. Milo is currently the Chairman of the Board at Parallel Lives.

Jacob Ner-David

Jacob is the Managing Partner of Jerusalem Capital I, LP, which is expanding the venture backed tech economy in Israel by going beyond core technology to "Technology Enabled Services." Jacob has been a successful serial entrepreneur for more than a decade, creating billions of dollars in shareholder value. In 2004 Jacob joined, as a founding member, the Aspen Institute Middle East Strategy Group. In the late 1980s and early 90s Jacob was deeply involved in a number of international political issues, traveling to over 20 countries, meeting with Prime Ministers, Presidents, and other senior political and communal figures. Jacob served on the executive of the World Jewish Congress and the World Union of Jewish Students. Jacob serves on the International Council of the Jerusalem Foundation and the New Israel Fund.

Yossi Tsuria

Yossi Tsuria focuses on software security and next generation television investments. In addition to his work with Jerusalem Global Ventures, Yossi serves as Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President for Strategy and Technology of NDS, a subsidiary of News Corporation (NASDAQ:NNDS), world leaders in digital TV infrastructure. Yossi has earned both national and international recognition for his achievements, including an Emmy Award for excellence in television. Yossi holds a M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from The Weizman Institute of Science, and a B.Sc. from Bar-Ilan University. Yossi holds more than 15 patents, several in the field of digital television.

Yossi Vardi

Joseph "Yossi" Vardi is chairman of International Technologies. In 37 years, Dr. Vardi has founded and helped to build some 40 hi-tech companies in Internet, software, telecommunications, electro-optics, energy, environment and other areas. He is the founding investor and former chairman of Mirabilis, Ltd, the creator of the instant messaging program ICQ, which pioneered internet-wide instant messaging. Veteran of a long civil service career, he previously served in the Government of Israel as, among other positions, the Director General of the Ministry of Energy, leading the oil related negotiations in the Israeli — Egyptian peace talks. He later led economic cooperation negotiations with Jordan and participated in the Wye negotiations with Syria. He is now an advisor on Middle-Eastern economic affairs to the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in the U.S., and serves on the board of governors of numerous institutions, including the Weitzman Institute and Hebrew University.

Tanya Zion Waldoks

Tanya Zion Waldoks is a community organizer with Kehilat Tzedek, an interdenominational training center for Jewish communal social activism in Israel. She works with Orthodox and unaffiliated/secular communities on leadership training and capacity building through hands-on consulting and material development. Previously, she was Co-Director of the Task Force on Human Trafficking at ATZUM fighting against trafficking in Israel as well as Educational Director at Mavoi Satum raising awareness of the agunot problem and advocating various solutions. She also led a nationwide educational campaign based on the award-winning documentary “Trembling Before G-d”.
Tanya holds a BA, magna cum laude, from Hebrew University in Jewish Thought and Gender Studies. She took a year off during her undergraduate studies to edit the volume Sippurei Reishit published by Yediot Ahronot. A past recipient of the prestigious Legacy Heritage Fellowship, she plans to continue her studies at Bar-Ilan University’s gender studies masters program in the fall. She also holds a certificate in reflexology from the Riedman College for Alternative Medicine in Jerusalem. During her army service, she served in IDF intelligence. Tanya serves on the executive committee of her feminist Orthodox synagogue, Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem, where she often leads services. Tanya was born in Jerusalem. She is married to Ehud and the mother of one year old Lia Revaya.

Linda Zisquit

Linda Zisquit has published three full-length collections of poetry, most recently The Face in the Window (Sheep Meadow, 2004), as well as translations from Hebrew poetry, including Wild Light (Sheep Meadow, 1997) for which she received an NEA Translation Grant, and Let the Words: Selected Poems of Yona Wallach (Sheep Meadow, 2006). Her translation of Rivka Miriam’s poetry will be published this year by Toby Press. She has recently completed a new manuscript of poems called “Porous.” Born in Buffalo, NY, she has lived in Jerusalem since 1978; she is Poetry Coordinator for the Shaindy Rudoff Creative Writing Program at Bar Ilan University, and runs ARTSPACE, an art gallery in Jerusalem representing contemporary Israeli artists.

Speakers from the PresenTense Summer Institute 2007

Roni Aloni-Sadovnik

Roni Aloni-Sadovnik is a serial social entrepreneur currently serving as the coordinator of the Campaign Against Human Trafficking in Israel. At the age of 30 she was elected to the Jerusalem City council and served, in time, as the Deputy Mayor of the city. Active in inter-religious causes, she was awarded the "Ambassador for World Peace" award for her work in bridging the Muslim-Christian-Jewish divides, and since then has devoted her time to raising awareness concerning the white slave trade in Israel and child rights issues. At the moment, Aloni-Sadovnik is embarking on two projects that aim to change the psychographic and geographic make up of Israel: one concerning woman's access to Torah and commentary, and another concerning the renovation of the graveyards at the entrance to Jerusalem.

Mel Alexenberg

Mel Alexenberg is author of the highly acclaimed book The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness and Professor of Art and Jewish Thought at Emunah College in Jerusalem. He is creating a new School of Art and Multimedia Design at Netanya College of which he will be dean when it opens next year. He is professor emeritus at the College of Judea and Samaria, and former professor of art and education at Columbia University and Bar-Ilan University, head of the art department at Pratt Institute, dean of New World School of the Arts in Miami, and research fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva University and earned his doctorate at New York University. As an artist, Alexenberg creates artworks that explore relationships between art in the digital age and Jewish patterns of thought, participatory art and community, and space-time systems and electronic technologies. His artwork is in the collections of more than forty museums worldwide.

Zvika Arran

Social entrepreneur of the Israeli charities rating, a non-profit joint venture of Meitav Investment House and Social partners. Lawyer. M.A. - the Public Policy Graduate School, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Former Fellow - The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. Founder and board member of the "Nachshon" Organization – the Israeli Institute for Social Leadership, a one year framework for high school graduates. He participates in BCI - a one month gathering of young Jewish leadership from around the world at the Brandies Bardin Institute, California, USA . Zvika served as an officer in the IDF National Radio Broadcasting Network ("GALEI-TZAHAL"). He was chairperson of the first National Student Council and a member of the Pedagogic Secretariat of the Ministry of Education. Married to Liat. Live in Haruv, a religious-secular community in the north of the Negev.

Benjy Balint

Benjamin Balint is a fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, where he is writing a book on Commentary magazine, neoconservatives, and American Jews (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). His articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Haaretz, the Forward, the American Scholar, the Weekly Standard, National Review, Wilson Quarterly, and the Claremont Review of Books. Balint served as assistant editor of Commentary and as associate editor of Azure.

Asaf Baner

Asaf Baner, 29, is among the founders and the current director of the Israeli nonprofit organization B'Maaglei Tzedek which works to create a just society operating in accordance with the values and ethics of Jewish Tradition. Among B'Maaglei Tzedek's widely acclaimed projects is the "social seal," a form of social kashrut that is accorded to restaurants that adhere to basic workplace ethics and standards. A Jerusalemite by birth, Asaf has a degree from the Hebrew University in psychology and business management.

Yehuda Ben-Dor

Yehuda Ben-Dor is completing his doctorate in Jewish thought at the Hebrew University. He has served as a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and as lecturer at the Elul Center for Jewish Learning. He is one of the founders of the Yesodot Center for the Study of Torah and Democracy. His area of interest lies in the interactions between Jewish thought and western Philosophy and literature--and he is a faculty member at the Mandel Leadership Institute.

Tsvi Bisk

Tsvi Bisk is an independent futurist, social researcher, and strategy planning consultant. He is director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking. With over 20 years of experience as a former senior associate of the Beit Berl Institute, Bisk has published more than one hundred essays and articles in English and Hebrew in a variety of publications as well as his first full-length book Futurizing the Jews (Praeger Press, 2003). His second book The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century (Maxanna Press, 2007) will be available in August, 2007. Bisk can be contacted at bisk@futurist-thinking.co.il

David Brinn

David Brinn is a veteran journalist who has lived in Israel for 18 years. He was a senior editor at The Jerusalem Post from 1990 to 2002. He joined ISRAEL21c as Editorial Director in 2003. Originally from the US, David is married with four children and lives in Ma'aleh Adumim.

Tal Cohen

Tal Cohen is the founder of Teach for Israel, a start-up modeled after the Teach for America programs in Israel and Great Britain. In his other life, Tal is an internal global auditor for AMDOCs, a long-time volunteer with the Make a Wish Foundation, and a Navy officer in reserves. Tal has an executive Master's Degree in Political Science, and an LLB from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzeliya.

Moty Cristal

Moty is a specialist in conflict research, negotiation and crisis management. Between 1994 and 2001 he served in various official positions in Israeli negotiation teams with Jordan, Syria and the Palestinians, and experienced years of cross-culture negotiations within the Israeli-Arab conflict. His last position was deputy head of the Negotiation Management Center in the PM’s office, and in this capacity attended the Camp David and Taba Summits. Since 2001, he teaches and trains negotiations and conflict resolution, as well as provides consultancy services in strategic planning, negotiations support, and mediation. He established IPNP (Israeli Palestinian Negotiating Partners), which aims to create a network of negotiators in the region, and is affiliated with several academic research institutions. Since 2003 he is writing his PhD in Negotiation Systems at the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and teaches International Negotiation at Tel Aviv University.

Roy Folkman

Roy currently serves as the CEO of Hebrew University Student Union. Born and raised in Tel Aviv. He served as a medic in the army and was a member of a group that settled in a new Kibbutz in the Arava. After his service he worked for the Society for Protection of Nature (SPNI). In recent years he worked for Arts high school in Jerusalem. He is also a part of a group of students that established the "New Spirit" association; they work to strengthen the affinity students to Jerusalem, and to encourage them to social activity. Roy has completed his BA in economics and Middle Eastern studies, and finishes his master's degree in the honors program in Public Policy this year.

Daniel Gordis

Daniel Gordis is Vice President of the Mandel Foundation Israel, and Director of the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem. Prior to assuming this position, Gordis served as Director of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows Program. Gordis was Founding Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. He also held the positions of Vice-President for Public Affairs and Community Outreach, and Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Gordis writes extensively about American Judaism and Israeli society, and is the author of, among other books, God Was Not in the Fire, Does the World Need the Jews, and his most recent book on the demise of the mid-east peace process, If a Place Can Make You Cry. A new version of the last book, Home To Stay, was published in October 2003.

Marco Greenberg

Marco Greenberg is an entrepreneur, PR guru and web video pioneer. Having worked extensively in the United States and in Israel, his expertise in strategic marketing communications was forged both in the private sector – where he held senior positions in two of the largest public relations and advertising firms, Burson-Marsteller, Gitam/BBDO, and his own successful ventures, NYPR and Reel Biography – and in the public sector, where he worked, inter alia, with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Israel Defense Forces, and the U.S. House of Representatives. He holds degrees from UCLA and Columbia University, and is an adjunct professor at Fordham Graduate Business School. This summer, Marco is launching his third start-up, Thunder11, conceived as a new resource for helping entrepreneurs reimagine their communication strategy with an eye toward new media. Rather than analyze the current state of “hasbara,” he will use his article “The End of Hasbara” as a jumping-off point to brainstorm with us on how Israel can combine creativity and technology to create a new era of “New Age Propaganda.”

Sarah Kass

A Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Yale and Oxford Universities, Sarah Kass founded one of the first charter public high schools in the United States-City On A Hill, in Boston, MA-and a companion school-based teacher training institute. She raised millions of dollars to launch and sustain these institutions, built alliances with over 100 community organizations, and published articles and gave speeches all over the USA on civic engagement, leadership, and accountability in education. After helping to design and launch several other schools, and providing strategic consultation to companies, leaders, and foundations, Sarah joined the staff of the AVI CHAI Foundation, where, since 2004, she has been serving as Director of Strategy & Evaluation. In 2006, Sarah and her husband and their two young daughters moved to Jerusalem.

Yossi Klein Halevi

Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow in the Shalem Center's Institute for Zionist History and Thought and the Israel correspondent of the New Republic. Halevi is the author of Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist (1995) and At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land (2001). He has been a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, a regular contributor on Israeli affairs to the Los Angeles Times, and a frequent guest on CNN and other national and international broadcast media. The 1983 documentary film, "Kaddish," directed by Steve Brand, focuses on Halevi's relationship with his father, a Holocaust survivor, and was named by the New York-based Village Voice as one of the ten best films of the year. Halevi is currently writing a book about the Israeli paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem in 1967.

Benny Levin

Benny Levin is acting Chairman of the dbMotion Board of Directors. Before joining dbMotion Mr. Levin co-founded NICE Systems, a worldwide leader of multimedia digital recording solutions for business interaction management. Mr. Levin served as NICE's President and Director from its inception and as Chairman and CEO from February 1998 to 2001. Under Mr. Levin's leadership the company achieved impressive growth and raised significant funds, both on NASDAQ and the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). Prior to founding NICE, Mr. Levin served in the Israel Defense Forces (the "IDF"), where he held various positions in Military Intelligence and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1978, he was awarded the Chief of Intelligence Award for Creative Thinking. Mr. Levin is also Vice-Chairman of the Israel Venture Network (IVN) and Chairman of the IVN's Education Initiative Steering Committee. The IVN is a venture philanthropy network of high-tech entrepreneurs and executives from Israel and the U.S. with the goal of increasing Israel's national competitiveness by advancing its educational systems and by promoting a culture that values volunteerism and philanthropy. He holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Jacob Ner-David

Jacob is the Managing Partner of Jerusalem Capital I, LP, which is expanding the venture backed tech economy in Israel by going beyond core technology to "Technology Enabled Services." Jacob has been a successful serial entrepreneur for more than a decade, creating billions of dollars in shareholder value. In 2004 Jacob joined, as a founding member, the Aspen Institute Middle East Strategy Group. In the late 1980s and early 90s Jacob was deeply involved in a number of international political issues, traveling to over 20 countries, meeting with Prime Ministers, Presidents, and other senior political and communal figures. Jacob served on the executive of the World Jewish Congress and the World Union of Jewish Students. Jacob serves on the International Council of the Jerusalem Foundation and the New Israel Fund.

Shlomi Ravid

Shlomi Ravid, a native and life long Kibbutznik, has been involved in Israel Diaspora relations for the last 20 years. Shlomi was a Kibbutz Secretary, a national Shaliach for the Kibbutz Movement in New York, a consultant to a number of Jewish Agency departments, founding director of the San Francisco Israel Center and founder of the Center for Israel-Diaspora Cultural Relations. Shlomi has earned a doctorate in Philosophy from Tel Aviv University and his dissertation on the changing of the Kibbutz in Israel was published in 1999. His academic and public work in the last few years has focused around the challenges of community building in Israel and the Jewish world. In 2002 Shlomi resumed his position of Executive Director of the Israel Center at the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco and the Bay Area. Upon his return to Israel in 2006 he became the director of the International School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies at Beth Hatefutsoth.

Michael B. Oren

Michael B. Oren is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center's Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of the award-winning Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2002; Heb. ed., 2007), the critically acclaimed Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East from 1776 to the Present (2007), as well as dozens of scholarly and popular articles on the history and politics of the Middle East. His writing has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, Commentary, and the Wall Street Journal. He is a veteran of both Lebanon wars and was an Israeli liaison officer during the Gulf war. He also served as a representative of the Prime Minister's Office to the Jewish underground in the Soviet Union and as an advisor to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Sherman Rosenfeld

Sherman Rosenfeld is a biologist and science educator who, for the last three decades, has worked intensively on design, implementation and evaluation of innovative educational programs. His overall goal is to help promote constructive change with students, teachers, schools and learning communities. He directed an interactive science museum in California, designed award-winning educational software, developed curricula for pre-college students and prepared hundreds of Israeli middle school science teachers to guide their students to engage in original research and development projects. This past school year (2006-7), Sherman co-directed an educational effort in which about 30 science teachers guided hundreds of their students to investigate water quality, in the Arab town of Kalanswa. In 1982, not long after he received his Ph.D in Biology and Science Education from the University of California in Berkely, Sherman and his family made aliyah. Since then, he has worked as a science educator at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.

Neta Sher-Hadar

Neta Sher-Hadar has completed her doctorate in public administration at the Hebrew University where she teaches undergraduates. She teaches Policy at the Mandel Leadership Institute.

Miriam Warshaviak

Miriam Warshaviak is a Program Officer at the AVI CHAI Foundation, a private philanthropy dedicated to strengthening Jewish identity and commitment and to encouraging mutual understanding and sensitivity among Jews of different backgrounds. At AVI CHAI since 2000, Miriam is now based in Jerusalem and oversees a diverse portfolio of the Foundation's Israel efforts, which include programs related to pluralistic Jewish study, Jewish Peoplehood and to developing a cadre of J-inspired Jewish leadership. In addition, by the end of June 2007, Miriam will have completed her MBA from the Kellogg Recanati Executive MBA program (a joint degree from Northwestern and Tel Aviv universities) and is interested in the nexus between business and philanthropy. Prior to her aliyah in 2004, Miriam was involved in the Foundation's efforts in both North America and in the former Soviet Union and before that worked with YUSSR, a student-run organization that sponsors Jewish educational programming in the FSU, in Minsk, Belarus, directing a Jewish youth center and a number of winter and summer camps.