The Boston Team
This program is made possible by the hard work of our volunteers and staff.
THE STEERING COMMITTEE
Michelle Black, Co-chair
Michelle founded Hands-On San Francisco, a non-profit based on the national City Cares model, that makes volunteering easy and accessible for busy young adults. She attended Harvard Business School with a focus on Social Enterprise - interning with Community Wealth Ventures in DC, helping non-profits develop self-sustainable fundraising strategies and worked (briefly) with Citizen School, New Profit and other local social enterprise local non-profits. She has been involved in Young Leadership at CJP, National Young Leadership Cabinet, Women's Philanthropy, Jaffa Society and currently serve on the CJP Board. She is currently the VP of Tikkun Olam at Temple Beth Elohim and lives in Newton with husband, Darren & 4 kids.
Jessica Bloom, Co-chair
Jessica works in knowledge sharing at Root Cause, a nonprofit research and consulting firm that informs and enables people and organizations in all sectors who are addressing issues of social impact. She is also on the CJP's Young Adult Planning Committee, and has volunteered with the Workmen's Circle klezmer efforts and with GesherCity.
Ari Applbaum
Ari served as Steering Committee Member (PR) for the first-ever PresenTense Institute in 2007 and currently serves as a Core PresenTense Volunteer and Steering Committee Member for CJP's YJLC. With an M.A. in Security and Diplomacy (TAU) and B.A. in Communication & Journalism and Middle East Studies, Ari serves as Middle East Analyst/Educator and Marketing & Communications Manager for The David Project by day. By night, he is a passionate writer, CJP YJLC Steering Committee Member, Mideast news junkie, Facebook stalker, twin baby photographer (just his), technophile, husband and music listener, not necessarily in that order.
Andrew Becker
Andrew has been volunteering within the Boston Jewish community in various forms for 10 years. In his real life he works as a management consultant... but in his dreams, he's a soccer player with Manchester United.
Jamie David
Jamie was born in Atlanta, grew up in private Jewish everything (!), went to school in Oregon, rediscovered her love of Am Yisrael, was a fellow at PTI summer '08 in Jerusalem, started non profit Shomer Achi, graduated U of Oregon, moved to Boston. She now works as Director of Public Diplomacy at Consulate General of Israel to New England and is married to her best friend Ben. They plan to make aliyah in the next three years. Jamie loves learning, loves volunteering at/ ith new interesting places/organizations, wants to learn yiddush, doesn't eat meat, and has a slight obsession with Jews.
Josh Fialkoff
Josh helps companies and organizations market themselves online through search engines, social networks and blogs. He volunteers on a number of Jewish community groups, including JewishBoston.com, PresenTense and the American Jewish Committee.
Erin Fogel
Erin Fogel recently served as the project manager at Isovera - a consulting firm specializing in internet strategy, software development, website design, and search engine marketing for nonprofits. She holds an MBA from Babson College where she focused on social entrepreneurship. Erin grew up in Montreal, Canada where she was very involved in the community's JCC summer camp, Combined Jewish Appeal, and the March of the Living.
Howie Hecht
Howie is a high-tech entrepreneurial executive with a background in management consulting and extensive startup experience in product management, product marketing, business development, and strategic partnership roles that has proven to be a wild ride. For the past 5 years he has worked for Corporate Reimbursement Services, Inc., which he helped start by designing and managing the development of the production systems that make up the core service offering of the 35+ person financial services firm. Before CRS, Howie worked at security giant Symantec via their acquisition of system management firm Altiris, Inc., which had acquired local security auditing firm Pedestal Software. Prior to that, Howie also had the pleasure of managing the flagship products of Boston's own Akamai Technologies and the resulting spin-off company Sockeye Networks. Howie graduated from MIT's Sloan School of Management in 1996 with concentrations in information technol ogy, computer science, and psychology - a combination he has used to create game-changing products and services. While Howie is originally from New York, he show's his Boston colors by proudly stating that he is a Red Sox fan and may occasionally be seen pursuing his photography hobby by volunteering to shoot many CJP and local community events.
Eva Heinstein, Marketing Workstream Leader
Eva currently works for the New Center for Arts and Culture as the Program Coordinator. Before moving to Boston, she was living in Jerusalem and studying towards a M.A. in Ethnomusicology at Hebrew University. During her time at Hebrew U, she worked as a researcher at the Jewish Music Research Center. She received her B.A. from NYU in Hebrew Literature and Musicology. At NYU, she helped to found the Middle East Sustained Dialogue Group, dedicated to facilitating dialogue among Jews, Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, Christians and interested others within the NYU community.
Miriam Katz
Miriam is a Career and Life Coach who supports ambitious professionals in Generations X and Y in creating the career and life of their dreams. She volunteers for various Jewish and nonprofit community committees, and enjoys shaping a diverse and thriving community.
Lauren Kleinman
Lauren works at United Way in Boston. She studied entrepreneurship at JWU in Providence, RI. She is a very active volunteer in the Boston Jewish community, co-chairing the Birthright Israel NEXT Committee, participating in YLD's Kadimah program, and much more.
Emily Leventhal
Emily is a Portfolio Advisor in the Client Management Group at Athena Capital. She graduated from Brown with degrees in Computer Science and Visual Arts, and has an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. She previously worked as a Consultant for Cambridge Energy Research Associates and a Systems Engineer for The MITRE Corporation.
Josh Plavner
Joshua Plavner joined Berkshire Partners in 2009. Prior to joining Berkshire, Joshua was an analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co. He received a B.A. from Northwestern University in 2007.
Eric Ritvo
Eric is proud to volunteer and assist with PresenTense this year. He's been volunteering with CJP since 2001 and has served in a variety of roles - Israel Mission leader, Chair of the Young Leadership Division and most recently, co-leader of Kadimah helping others learn about Federation and preparing them to be on the YLD Board. In the real world, he serves as General Counsel to a staffing company, Signature Consultants, and worked with many startups in his prior life as a law firm attorney.
STAFF
Elana Boehm, Boston Coordinator
In addition to serving as the Coordinator for the CJP/PresenTense Boston Social Entrepreneur Fellowship, Elana is the Planning Associate for Young Adults at Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston. Since graduating from Williams College in 2006, Elana has worked closely with Boston-area young adult organizations and leaders (volunteer and professional) to promote community collaboration and programs of excellence. Just under a year ago she helped create the Young Jewish Leaders Council, an ongoing forum that brings together young leaders from over 40 Boston-area young adult Jewish organizations to network, build skills, and share resources. With a group of volunteers, she founded and manages the Young Adult Community Grants Program, which provides grants to support innovative programming and capacity-building assistance for promising young adult Jewish organizations in Boston. She is thrilled to be helping to build the cutting-edge CJP/PresenTense Boston Social Entrepreneur Program. In her free time, Elana is an avid ultimate frisbee player.
Ariel Beery, CEO of PresenTense
Ariel Beery is the co-founder and director of the PresenTense Group, as well as editor and publisher of PresenTense Magazine, and co-founder of the PresenTense Institute for socially-minded entrepreneurs. Ariel is also a widely-published columnist in over a dozen papers around the world including the Forward, the London Jewish Chronicle, the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. Ariel teaches and lectures at conferences worldwide, focusing on issues pertaining to the Jewish People, Zionism, and the impact of the Information Age on human communities. A summa cum laude graduate of Columbia University, and a graduate student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Jewish Philosophy, receiving a Masters in Public Administration from New York University in Nonprofit Management and a Masters in Judaic Studies, Ariel was named one of the 10 Jews to Watch by the World Jewish Digest, along with Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and was a finalist in the Brandeis University search for a Visiting Professor for Jewish Communal Innovation.