Dr. Mike Naftali
Board Chairperson

Michael (Mike) Naftali, is a social entrepreneur, social inventor and social activist. For more than 35 years he has taken an active part in advancing, managing and leading a wide range of social endeavors, including the formation of social entrepreneurship platforms, volunteering and civil society infrastructure programs, community based art programs and a variety of international development initiatives, to name a few.

Formerly, Dr. Naftali served as the chairperson of the National Council for Voluntarism in Israel. In addition, he is a co-founder of Natan – The Israeli Coalition for Disaster Relief and the founding director of Enosh – The Israel Mental Health Association and of Elem – Youth in Distress in Israel.

For the last three decades he has been teaching multiple topics on youth empowerment and cross-cultural intervention strategies in both graduate and post graduate courses.

Ronen Koehler
Board Member
Ronen is the Head of Staff of Outbrain (www.outbrain.com). He is a highly skilled inter-disciplinary executive and consultant. His background is both in the IT industry and across various Israeli military organizations. Over the past 13 years, Koehler served as an executive at one of Israel’s flagship IT companies, Check Point software technologies, including as Global head of HR. In this role, Koehler led organizational changes on a global basis, mergers and acquisitions and more. Koehler’s experience also comprises over 30 years in the Israeli Navy, including 17 years in active service and 14 years as a reservist.

Batia Mach Sheperd
Board Member
Batia has been in the high-tech industry for over 30 years. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of the startup, “Fitfully,” which develops a disruptive technology in 3D of human foot for virtual fitting on e-commerce platforms. Batia has been working with startups in the media, new media, mobile and computer vision industries for the last decade.She was the IT Development Manager at BSky-B, London, the News Corp flagship company, where she was in-charge of 120 development staff and responsible for $30M software development budget. For over a decade Batia also worked on Health Clinical Information systems on various national projects.

Jamal Alkarnawi
Board Member
Jamal dedicates his life to bettering the educational opportunities available to Bedouin children living in Israel’s Negev region. He is the Founder and Executive Director of A New Dawn in the Negev, an Arab-Jewish community development and coexistence organization based in Rahat, Israel. He holds a BA in Health Systems Management from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, a Master’s Degree in Social Work (MSW) from McGill University, and an MBA in Social Leadership from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev and the Mandel Institute.

Maria Radinski
Board Member
Currently Managing a Center for Youth at risk, In the past she has been consulting non-profit organizations with Community development and PR.
Social activ ist, graduated the “civil society” U.S Embassy program.
Worked in several local and national election campaigns.
B.A – Communication, Political science and International relations.
Volunteered for years in several projects: “kav-lezinuk”; Guiding youth to be tomorrow’s leaders, “elem” for youth at risk and in distress etc.
Anat Bennun
Board Member
Anat Ben Nun is the Director of Development and External Relations at Peace Now, Israel’s largest and longest standing movement advocating for peace and two states. Prior to her work at Peace Now, Anat worked at the Palestinian Israeli Peace NGO Forum, a platform for cooperation for over 80 Palestinian and Israeli peace NGOs. She is also an experienced facilitator and have worked with youth on issues of conflict and multiculturalism. Anat obtained her Master’s degree in International Conflict Resolution from the American University in Washington, and her Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from Brandeis University.

Avida Stern
Board Member