Rachel Sklan 

Rachel has 10 years experience in Youth and Community Development as well as being an accredited master trainer in the field of NLP ( Neuro Linguistic Programming). Rachel has a strong youth movement background as well as a passion for social action. She was involved in setting up a unique cultural exchange project called the Tibetan Jewish youth exchange, which worked with Tibetan exiled youth in India and Jews living in the Diaspora, dealing with shared themes of empowerment and cultural preservation. After making aliyah from Britain in 2005 she directed a gap year program for Noam masorti youth. She is passionate about ensuring young leaders who come to Israel have the drive, vision and the skills to truly make a difference. With this in mind she set up a training company called pioneer leadership which runs workshops and mentoring for all sorts of teams and groups. Rachel lives in Gedera and has been the program facilitator for the Yahel Social Change Program. 

Max Klau

Dr. Max Klau is the Director of Leadership Development at City Year, Inc., a U.S. based service program based in Boston, Massachussetts. He helped to design a comprehensive leadership development experience that was rolled out network wide in the 2008-09 service year. His recent efforts have focused on creating The Idealist’s Journey: The City Year Leadership Development Guide and Workbook.

Max received his doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2005. He focused his studies on leadership education, exploring the connection between individual action and systemic change.

Max has had extensive experience as a participant and group leader of service programs. He was a fellow on Project Otzma, a ten-month full-time service program in Israel. He later returned for another year as a group leader for that program. He has been both a participant and a group leader for Panim el Panim, a high-school service and leadership program for Jewish youth based in Washington DC. As a group leader for American Jewish World Service’s International College Corps (IJCC) program, he has led Jewish college students on trips to Honduras, Ghana and the Ukraine. He has served as an educator for Operation Understanding DC (OUDC), a Civil Rights tour for high school students involving travel to historic locations across the U.S. South, and has been the lead educator at Genesis, a residential summer youth leadership program at Brandeis University.

Jenny Goldstein

Jenny Goldstein works at American Jewish World Service (AJWS) as a Senior Development Officer. In this role, Jenny recently launched a new program, Global Circle, for young philanthropists in NY and DC. Jenny manages the growing program to build a strong network of people in their 20s and 30s who are actively involved with AJWS. She has been in this role since summer 2008, but has been involved with AJWS for several years. She previously served as a group leader for AJWS service delegations to Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua from 2004 to 2006. Previously, Jenny worked at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem as a Development Associate, and at NYU at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service as a program coordinator. Jenny was a Wexner Graduate Fellow and earned her Master of Public Administration in 2007 from NYU Wagner and an M.A. in Hebrew and Judaic Studies, at NYU, also in 2007. Passionate about Jewish service, she spent a year with the JDC in Izmir, Turkey, organizing Jewish leadership and implementing community programming. She graduated from Brandeis University and is originally from Dallas, Texas and Scottsdale, Arizona.

Rabbi Gail Diamond

Rabbi Gail Diamond is the Associate Director of the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem.  She has spent the past nine years working with young adults on short and long term programs in Israel.  Gail is experienced in all phases of program administration including program and curriculum development, student support, alumni relations, supervision and professional development for staff, budgeting, fund development, data management and evaluation.  Gail was ordained in 1993 from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and served for seven years as rabbi and educational director of Congregation Agudas Achim in Attleboro, Massachusetts, before making aliyah.  She also teaches for the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the Bat Kol program, and Project Oded of the Center for Conservative Judaism.  Gail lives with her family in Tzur Hadassah, Israel.

Susan Monas 

Susan Monas works in her own private practice as a licensed clinical social worker in Seattle, WA. She is the immediate past president of the conservative synagogue Congregation Beth Shalom in Seattle and has been on its board for six years. She is also chair of the shul's membership committee. Susan's interest and commitment to Israel goes back to 1977 when she worked on a kibbutz and met her husband. In 1997 she went with her husband and three children on a sabbatical to Metulla, Israel where her children became fluent in Hebrew and attached to the land. Her oldest child, Shoshana, made every opportunity to return to Israel and was in the first Yahel volunteer cohort in 2010/11. Inspired by Shoshana's experiences of living and creating community in Gedera, Susan would like to draw upon her background in group facilitation, writing, and fundraising to make her own contribution to Yahel. Susan's own passion for social justice and cross-cultural understanding began as a college student when she volunteered with Canadian Crossroads International for three months in St. Lucia. In 2008 she also participated on a week-long adult service project to El Salvador with AJWS. She recently returned from a two month sabbatical with her husband to Umea, Sweden, where she became involved with the Jewish club, a small group of Jews and non-Jews identified with Judaism and Israel. All of these experiences as well as her yearly visits to Israel, add to Susan's understanding of the complexity of cross-cultural experiences and her desire to create bridges with people of diverse views.  When she isn't working, volunteering or traveling, Susan likes to read, garden and write. She has published op-eds about Israel and stories, poems, and essays about family and identity.

Rabbi Lisa Goldstein

Lisa has been the Executive Director of Hillel of San Diego for almost twelve years. Originally from a small town near Pasadena, she studied history at Brown University and then went on to Rabbinical School, where she also earned a Masters in Jewish Education. She has lived in five cities across the United States and has also spent significant time in Germany and Israel. She tries to travel abroad at least twice a year, sometimes with students and sometimes on her own. She also loves hiking, reading and great conversations (preferably over coffee). She spent the 2009-2010 academic year in Jerusalem as part of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellowship, where she used her sabbatical to work on a project involving social justice and spirituality. Currently, Lisa is the Executive Director for the Center for Jewish Spirituality in New York.

Dr. Ezra Kopelowitz

Ezra is the CEO of REST – Research Success Technologies. He is a sociologist specializing in Jewish education, Israel-Diaspora relations and Jewish Peoplehood.  Ezra is a pioneer in research on Jewish Peoplehood, developing intellectual frameworks and conducting applied research in the area. Ezra's recent publications are the books, Building Jewish Peoplehood: Change and Challenge (2008, co-edited) and Cultural Education-Cultural Sustainability: Minority, Diaspora, Indigenous and Ethno-Religious Groups in Multicultural Societies (2008, co-edited).  He is also the author of a widely read position paper titled:  "A Framework for Strategic Thinking about Jewish Peoplehood" (2007). Ezra resides on Kibbutz Hannaton.