Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something, Founder & Former Executive Director of Dress for Success
As CEO of Do Something, Nancy Lublin helped turn a struggling organization into one of the largest and most successful Internet youth volunteer groups in the world. Leveraging social media and pop culture to help teens “rock causes they care about,” in 2010 Do Something allowed over one million teens to take action through their programs. Her deep understanding of teens and technology has led her to advise corporate social cause campaigns such as Chase Community Giving and Pepsi Refresh.
After receiving her BA from Brown University, an M.Litt from Oxford University, and a NYU law degree, Lublin became the founder and CEO of Dress for Success at age 23. Essentially, she turned a $5,000 inheritance into a global franchise. Providing interview suits and career development training to women in need, in a few short years Dress for Success expanded to more than 70 cities in four countries.
By drawing on personal experiences as well as her interviews with other “rock star” leaders of flourishing not-for-profits, in her book, Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business (released June 2010), she shares what for-profit businesses can learn from not-for-profits by doing more with less. Her book, DO SOMETHING. CHANGE THE WORLD! A Handbook for Young Activists, was released in November 2010.
Selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Nancy also was named one of Glamour magazine's Women of Worth, and Woman of the Year by NYC Women's Commission in 2000. Additionally, Nancy has been awarded various honors from Forbes magazine, Ms. magazine, and Fast Company magazine. She has been featured on Oprah, 60 Minutes, The Today Show, CNN, and in People magazine, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist.
By 2009, the parent company of Do Something had raised over 15 million dollars. And the following year the Do Something Awards hosted by actress Jane Lynch was broadcast on Vh1. In 2011 the Non-Profit Times voted Lublin into the top 50 of their Power and Influence list. At this year's Do Something Awards, the grand prize winner will receive roughly $100,000 to help fund their project.
Rae Ringel, President, Ringel Group
Rae Ringel is a PCC certified executive coach and leadership trainer with an expertise in transforming professional performance of mid-to-senior level management to drive greater business excellence. As President of The Ringel Group, Rae is nationally renowned for her outstanding repertoire of skills and interpersonal acumen.
Rae engages her clients in proven methodologies that promote professional growth on individual, team and organization-wide levels. Her esteemed and varied clientele, which include fortune 500 companies, not-for-profits, U.S. government agencies and entrepreneurial start-ups, have benefited from the profound influence that Rae has had on the vitality and productivity of their improved workforce.
Prior to opening The Ringel Group, Rae was the Director of Professional and Volunteer Development at United Jewish Communities (UJC), a two-billion dollar annual enterprise that provides humanitarian and development assistance around the world. Rae devised an award-winning interactive web-based training program and other inspiring workshops, retreats and conferences to train and educate a national network of over 20,000 professionals and volunteers.
The Ringel Group serves a growing list of executives in U.S. and global corporations. Rae has devoted years to train and coach executives to become more effective managers, better public speakers, enhance their “presence” and help chart a clear course of personal and business growth.
Rae’s clients include executives at Microsoft, Management Concepts, MarketResearch.com, The Goldstar Group and others. Rae also currently works with officials at the White House as well as officials in other government agencies.
Rae is globally recognized as an innovator in the field of not-for-profit fundraising and board development. In economic downturns and financial turmoil, foundations around the world have turned to the Ringel Group to reevaluate their mission, structure, board, and professional base. Rae has designed cutting edge coaching programs to advance professional performance at all levels of an organization. Through these programs, The Ringel Group has enabled foundations and corporations to do more with less. Rae also serves as a lead coach for PEJE (Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education) and a consultant for Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.
Rae is a sought after facilitator and trainer of facilitation skills for both the private and public sector. The Ringel Group, in cooperation with the Center for Leadership Initiatives, developed and implements a six-month facilitation-training program in the U.S. attended by executives and small business owners from across the U.S. and the Middle East.
Rae is a Phi Beta Kappa Graduate of University of Rochester. She received her Master’s Degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, and earned her Executive Coaching certification from Georgetown University. She was a recipient of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship. Rae is a mother of four and resides with her husband in Washington D.C.
Dr. Charles “Chip” Edelsberg, Executive Director, Jim Joseph Foundation (Moderator)
Charles (Chip) Edelsberg, Ph.D. is the founding Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, an $800 million dollar private foundation whose mission is to support education of Jewish youth in the United States--one of the largest foundations of its type in North America. Previously, Dr. Edelsberg served as Director of Endowments and Vice President for the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.
Dr. Edelsberg currently serves as a Director on the boards of Jewish Funders Network and The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE). His professional writing for publication and conference presentations focuses primarily on Federation/private Jewish foundation relationships and contemporary trends in Jewish philanthropy.
Dr. Edelsberg spent fifteen years in education as a teacher and administrator in Ohio. Edelsberg received numerous teaching and administrative awards, among them being selected as one of the country's top 100 educators (awarded by the American Association of School Administrators).
Dr. Edelsberg received a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from Brown University. His BA in English and liberal arts and PhD in Humanities education were conferred by the Ohio State University. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude with honors as an undergraduate and received his doctorate as a university fellow with honors.
Chip and his wife and life partner of more than 30 years, Leslie, are proud parents of three 20-somethings: Eric and twins Allie and Zack.
Richard M. Joel, President and Bravmann Family Professor, Yeshiva University
Richard M. Joel was inaugurated as Yeshiva University’s fourth president on September 21, 2003, and, in April, 2010 he was named Bravmann Family University Professor. His presidency is the latest chapter in the illustrious tradition of Yeshiva University presidents, beginning with Dr. Bernard Revel (1915-1940), Dr. Samuel Belkin (1940-1975), and Dr. Norman Lamm (1976-2003).
Founded in 1886, Yeshiva University (YU) is America’s oldest and most comprehensive institution combining Jewish scholarship with academic excellence and achievement in the liberal arts, sciences, medicine, law, business, social work, Jewish studies and education, and psychology.
Since assuming the presidency, President Joel has provoked an era of growth at Yeshiva University. He has catalyzed a renewed focus on academic excellence, enriched student life and broadened service to the Jewish and wider communities. He has also added faculty positions throughout the university, and spurred wide-ranging improvements to campus life.
President Joel believes in modeling education based on the notion of an integrated life, and speaks of a Yeshiva University education as ennobling and enabling a generation of leadership. In realizing this mission, President Joel established a Presidential Fellowship program that provides training and professional development to recent graduates to further their path toward communal leadership.
As Yeshiva University president, he motivates students to excel at liberal arts, business and the sciences while developing depth and breadth in Jewish learning, thereby engaging students to take responsibility for the Jewish people and humanity. President Joel is renowned nationally as a talented leader and gifted speaker. He has traveled the globe giving talks on topics of Jewish leadership and identity.
Prior to his appointment, he served as the president and international director of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, where he was the driving force behind an extraordinary renaissance of Jewish life on campus. During his tenure he built numerous new facilities, partnered in the creation of Birthright, and focused the community on reaching Jewish youth through the engagement and empowerment models.
Richard M. Joel received his BA and JD from New York University where he was a Root-Tilden law scholar, and has received honorary doctorates from Boston Hebrew College and Gratz College. He was an assistant district attorney in New York, and Deputy Chief of Appeals in Bronx, NY. His career continued as associate dean and professor of law at YU’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
President Joel’s family has a deep connection to the Yeshiva University community. He and his wife, Esther, who holds a Ph.D. from YU’s Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, have six children, all of whom have attended Yeshiva University.
Rabbi David Ellenson, Ph.D., President, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Dr. David Ellenson, President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) and I.H. and Anna Grancell Professor of Jewish Religious Thought, is a distinguished rabbi, scholar, and leader of the Reform Movement. He is internationally recognized for his publications and research in the areas of Jewish religious thought, ethics, and modern Jewish history.
He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1981 and was ordained by HUC-JIR in 1977. He has been a Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jerusalem, a Fellow and Lecturer at the Institute of Advanced Studies as well as a Lady Davis Visiting Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and has been a Visiting Professor at both UCLA and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Rabbi Ellenson's extensive publications include Tradition in Transition: Orthodoxy, Halakhah and the Boundaries of Modern Jewish History (1989), Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer and the Creation of a Modern Jewish Orthodoxy (1990) (nominated for the National Jewish Book Council's award for outstanding book in Jewish History, 1990), Between Tradition and Culture: The Dialectics of Jewish Religion and Identity in the Modern World (1994) and, After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity, which won the National Jewish Book Council's Award as the outstanding book in Jewish Thought in 2005.
His work, Pledges of Jewish Allegiance: Conversion, Law, and Policymaking in 19th- and 20th-Century Orthodox Responsa, co-authored with Daniel Gordis, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in December 2011.
Arnold M. Eisen, Chancellor, The Jewish Theological Seminary
Arnold M. Eisen, one of the world's foremost experts on American Judaism, is the seventh chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary. Since his appointment in 2007, he has increased JTS's impact on the communities it serves by transforming the education of religious leadership for Conservative Judaism; articulating a new vision for JTS; guiding the formulation of a strategic plan to implement that vision; and developing innovative programs in synagogue arts and practices, adult education, pastoral care, Jewish thought, interreligious dialogue, and the arts. Chancellor Eisen has become a leading voice for Judaism and the "vital religious center" of North America.
By 2011, the chancellor's Mitzvah Initiative, which has already resulted in an enhanced commitment to individual and collective observance and a new appreciation for Conservative Judaism, will involve some 75 congregations in a process of reflection upon "commandment, commandedness, and the Commander." Additional initiatives spearheaded by Chancellor Eisen to meet the evolving needs of North American Jewry include new curricula for, and synergy among, all of JTS's five schools; the Institute for Jewish Learning at JTS and its flagship program Context—developed to strengthen Jewish lives and communities via the integration of rigorous academic scholarship and teaching with outreach initiatives; the Center for Pastoral Education at JTS—established to teach students, rabbis, and ordained clergy of all faiths the art of pastoral care; and the Tikvah Institute for Jewish Thought—a forum created to explore Jewish philosophy as it relates to some of the deepest concerns of human experience.
Before coming to JTS, Chancellor Eisen served in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University, the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, and the Department of Religion at Columbia University. The chancellor earned a PhD in the History of Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, a BPhil in the Sociology of Religion at Oxford University, and a BA in Religious Thought from the University of Pennsylvania. An award-winning writer and advocate for the Jewish community, the chancellor's publications include (from the University of Chicago Press) Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community and (from Indiana University Press) Galut: Modern Jewish Reflection on Homelessness and Homecoming; The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America (with Steven M. Cohen); The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religious Ideology; and Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America, a personal essay.
Chancellor Eisen sits on the board of directors of the Tanenbaum Center, the Covenant Foundation, and the Taube Foundation, and chairs the steering committee of the Academic Consortium. He is a lifelong member of the Conservative Movement, and married to Dr. Adriane Leveen, a scholar of Hebrew Bible. The couple has two children, Shulie and Nathaniel.
Natan Sharansky, Chairman, The Jewish Agency for Israel
Natan Sharansky is the Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. In the FSU he was a human rights activist and a prisoner of zion. He was jailed in the FSU on trumped up charges of espionage and spent nine years in prison. On the same day he was freed he made aliya and arrived in Jerusalem to join his wife Avital. He founded the political party Yisrael B’Aliya to accelerate the absorption of the massive numbers of Russian immigrants into Israeli society and to maximize their contribution. From 1996-2005 Mr. Sharansky served as Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in four successive Israeli governments. Following his resignation from the government in 2005, he established the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. Mr. Sharansky is the recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal in 1986 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006. He is the author of three books: Fear No Evil and The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Freedom and Terror, and Defending Identity, Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy.
Lenore Skenazy, Founder, Free-Range Kids
Lenore Skenazy is founder of the book and blog, “Free-Range Kids” (freerangekids.com), which launched the anti-helicopter parenting movement. A guest on talk shows from Dr. Phil to The View, she speaks internationally, and has written for everyone from The Washington Post to Mad Magazine. Yep. The Mad Magazine. She also invented “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day,” now celebrated internationally. In January she will host a new reality TV show helping overprotective parents loosen the reins. Lenore lives in New York City with her husband and two sons, who are half Free-Range, half Facebook addicts. One thing she understands: None of us is a perfect parent -- and that’s okay.
