Staff and Board

Staff

From upper left clockwise: Dana Schneider, Sydney Levy, Cecilie Surasky, Rebecca Vilkomerson, Stefanie Fox and Alissa Wise. Not pictured: Jane Suskin and David Leskowitz.

REBECCA VILKOMERSON, Executive Director
Rebecca has over fifteen years of experience in community organizing, advocacy, program development and fundraising in the United States and Israel. Rebecca has been an active member of JVP since 2002, and lived in Israel with her family from 2006-2009. In 2010, the Forward recognized her as one of the 50 most influential Jewish leaders in the U.S.
Contact: 510-465-1777 rebecca-at-jvp.org

CECILIE SURASKY, Deputy Director
Cecilie joined the staff of JVP in 2003 as part of a Ford Foundation human rights fellowship following 15 years working with NGOs on advocacy communications. A videomaker, former newspaper columnist and talk radio host, Cecilie's analyses of Israel-Palestine politics have appeared in numerous media outlets around the world. Cecilie graduated from Brown University with a BA in Religious Studies with special honors for her work in Modern Culture and Media. She is the editor of Muzzlewatch, JVP's acclaimed blog documenting efforts to silence open debate about Israel-Palestine policy, and leads JVP's fundraising, media and online outreach efforts.
Contact: 510-465-1777 x 303 cell: 510-410-4202 cecilie-at-jvp.org

SYDNEY LEVY, Director of Advocacy
Sydney has worked for over 15 years in nonprofits advocating for LGBT human rights organizing for media justice, and assisting in the preparation of death row appeals. He is the son of Egyptian Jews who immigrated to Venezuela, where he was born. Sydney lived in Jerusalem for seven years, where he received his Masters degree in Jewish History from the Hebrew University. Sydney has been working with JVP--first as a volunteer, then as a staff member--since 2000.
Contact: 510-465-1777 x 302 sydney-at-jvp.org

STEFANIE FOX, Director of Grassroots Organizing
Stefanie has a masters in community organizing for public health from the University of Washington and more than a decade of experience in grassroots organizing for social justice. She brings well-tested enthusiasm to the task of sparking and sustaining movement leadership from her wide array of professional organizing experience--having managed electoral campaigns, organized new tenants unions, and mobilized with a broad spectrum of grassroots anti-violence organizations in the city of Seattle. Stefanie came on staff as a devoted member of the Seattle JVP chapter, and sees the position as a complete dream job and tremendous honor.
Contact: 510-465-1777 stefanie-at-jvp.org

JANE SUSKIN, Administrative Director
Jane is an old lefty, whose earliest activism stemmed from her public elementary school's policy prohibiting girls from wearing pants! Long active in justice, peace and feminist causes.  After many years working at a semiconductor laboratory, she is thrilled and honored to be able to spend her work week offering administrative direction to an organization whose goals she shares.
Contact: 510-465-1777 x 301 jane-at-jvp.org

ALISSA WISE, Director of Campaigns
Rabbi Alissa Wise has been an activist for justice in Israel/Palestine for over a decade in New York City with Jews Against the Occupation, on the West Bank with the International Women's Peace Service, and most recently as the founding co-chair of the JVP Rabbinical Council. Before training for the rabbinate, Alissa worked as a tenant organizer with the Fifth Avenue Committee in Brooklyn and was a participant in AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. As a rabbinical student, Alissa was the Education Director at Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) in New York City. Alissa graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia in 2009 where she received the Rabbinical Student Association's Tikkun Olam Award for her work with Palestinian communities.
Contact: 510-465-1777 alissa-at-jvp.org

DAVID LESKOWITZ, Administrative Assistant
David Leskowitz is grateful to land in such inspired company with JVP after some time as an itinerant mystic/bookkeeper/editor. Before his wanderings, David studied religion and music at Vassar College. The son of secular kibbutzniks, he is honored to work with those whose reporting guided him through a free trip that coincided with Operation Cast Lead.
Contact: 510-465-1777 david-at-jvp.org

JVP National Board 2011-12
ABBY OKRENT (Flagstaff) is a Reconstructionist Jew.  As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, she grew up believing that the cry "Never again is now" was a call to work for justice and human rights for all peoples.  She has been involved in the pursuit of peace in Israel and Palestine through human rights volunteer work and organizing in the Occupied Territories, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.  She works as a legal aid attorney in Northern Arizona and on the Navajo reservation.

CINDY GREENBERG, BOARD VICE-CHAIR (Brooklyn) is a new JVP member but longtime JVP supporter who got deeply involved with JVP through the organization's Moving Forward Process in 2008-2009. She has over 20 years of experience working in the progressive and national Jewish communities and has traveled to Israel and Palestine twice. She is an independent consultant to non-profit organizations, specializing in organizational development, fundraising, and project management issues, and is proud to be the President of Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives Congregation and a longtime member/leader of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice

DANA BERGEN(Bay Area) sees her work in Jewish Voice for Peace as an expression of her Jewish heritage of social justice activism. She has been active with JVP for seven years in a variety of roles, including developing literature, organizing educational events, coordinating outreach efforts, chairing the Chapter Coordinating Council, and serving on the Board during JVP's transition to a national organization.

JETHRO EISENSTEIN, TREASURER (New York) is a lawyer in private practice. Since 1971 he has been involved in the longest-running civil rights case in New York, which established a right to sue the NY Police Department to restrict surveillance of peaceful political activity. He received a Gideon Champion of Justice Award from the NY Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in 2000 for overturning a wrongful murder conviction. He has secured political asylum in the US for refugees from Sudan, Ghana, Haiti and other countries. He was drawn to JVP by what he learned, growing up, at Pesach: “Do not oppress the stranger. You know what it is like to be a stranger, having been strangers in the land of
Egypt.”

JORDAN ASH, SECRETARY (St.Paul) entered Brown University in 1985 at the height of the campus anti-apartheid movement and quickly became involved in the school’s divestment campaign.  He later dropped out of college to work as a union organizer for SEIU.  After 12 years working at ACORN, where he played a leading role in the group’s campaign against predatory mortgage lending, he returned to the labor movement and now works for SEIU again.   In 2007 he traveled to Israel and the West Bank and came back committed to working for a just and peaceful resolution of the situation and decided on Jewish Voice for Peace as the best avenue for his activism.  He is a member of Mount Zion reform synagogue in St. Paul, MN. 

LIZA BEHRENDT (Brooklyn) is happy to be expressing her Judaism through solidarity and human rights! She studied Politics and Peace, Conflict, & Coexistence Studies at Brandeis University, where she organized with JVP, Students for Justice in Palestine, and other activist groups. She now lives in Brooklyn as a member of Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps, working as a community organizer at Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

NOAH T. WINER (Philadelphia) was a founding campaign strategist at MoveOn.org from 2003 to 2010. He's an alumnus of the first Birthright Israel trip, AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, the Selah Leadership Program at Jewish Funds for Justice, and the Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation Program. Noah's love for Judaism, the Jewish people, and kvod habriot (human dignity) motivates his work for peace and justice in Israel-Palestine. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College in 2001. He lives in Philadelphia, where he's a member of Mishkan Shalom, a Reconstructionist synagogue.

REBECCA SUBAR, BOARD CHAIR (Philadelphia) is a mediator, organizational strategy consultant, and senior partner at Dragonfly Partners LLC. She teaches Peace and Conflict Studies at West Chester University, where her academic focus is on the relationship between unilateral and joint activities in organizational, civic and political conflict.  For thirteen years, Rebecca has advised and supported official and un-official political change-makers in dealing with conflict and organizational change.  Her firm has managed a consensus policy-development process for the State of Pennsylvania mental health department; facilitated a multi-party union/management health care negotiation; led dialogue among Jews in Chicago; taught negotiation to Palestinians in Ramallah and to political consultants in Northern Ireland.   She received her Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. 

STEPHANIE ROTH (Bay Area) served on JVP’s founding board for three years and rejoined in 2009.  She is a consultant and trainer with nonprofit organizations, focusing on fundraising, board development and meeting facilitation.  She lived on a kibbutz in Israel for 6 months in 1974, and it took another 25 years for her questions, then discomfort, and finally outrage, about the Occupation to move her to action.

Contact JVP's Board at board-at-jewishvoiceforpeace.org