Idit Klein (she/her) is a national leader for social change with more than 30 years of experience in the non-profit justice sector. From 2001 to 2025, she served as the founding CEO of Keshet. Idit built Keshet from a small, local Boston organization into a national force with offices in six states. Under her leadership, Keshet supported tens of thousands of rabbis, educators, and other Jewish leaders to make LGBTQ+ equality a communal value and priority for action. Idit also spearheaded the creation of leadership development programs for queer Jewish teens and mobilized Jewish communities nationwide to fight for LGBTQ+ rights. In addition, she served as the executive producer of Keshet’s documentary film, “Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School.”
Prior to leading Keshet, Idit worked in the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement and social justice sector in Israel. She was a leader in the Israeli LGBTQ+ community and helped envision the Jerusalem Open House. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale University, Idit earned her Master’s in Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a focus on social justice education. Idit publishes frequently in the Jewish and LGBTQ+ press and has been honored by Jewish Women International, the Jewish Women’s Archive, Mayyim Hayyim, Brandeis University’s Hornstein Program in Jewish Professional Leadership, the Safety Respect Equity Network and JFNA, Hebrew College, and the Forward as one of its ‘Forward 50,’ a list of American Jews who have made enduring contributions to public life. As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Idit sees their endurance, resilience, and steadfast hopefulness as the foundation for her justice work and faith in a better world. She lives in Boston with her family.
Debbie Heller, a native of New York, is a graduate of Lehman College and holds graduate degrees from Michigan State University and Johns Hopkins University. She has worked as coordinator of student activities at the University of Detroit, director of student activities at Georgetown University and assistant director of the middle school at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day, but she considers her greatest and proudest job to be that of stay-at-home mom to her three sons, Adam, Daniel and Jacob. All of Heller’s jobs have involved creating inclusive and safe communities for students. At Smith Jewish Day School, she focused her efforts on combating bullying, which served as a segue to her advocacy work on behalf of the LGBTQ community. Heller was part of the volunteer team that created the Keshet Parent and Family Connection, which she continues to spearhead in the Washington, D.C., Metro area. She is on the board of directors of Kol Shalom, in Rockville, Md., where she focuses on programming. She also volunteers with Project Knitwell, a group that teaches knitting to children and adults who are in stressful situations. Heller and her husband, Jamie, live in Chevy Chase, Md.
Nathan Render has worked in the Jewish, foundation, non-profit, and innovation communities for the past several years. He currently works at Mockingbird, a premium direct-to-consumer baby gear company, leading their Customer Experience team. Previously, he worked at CIC, one of the largest clusters of start-ups in the world and whose mission is to fix the world through innovation. At CIC, he managed strategic initiatives for the CEO and served as Director of Operations CIC’s sister non-profit organization, Venture Café, dedicated to connecting innovators to make things happen.
Nathan began his career as the Bronfman Fellow at Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life in Washington, DC and later worked at the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, a family foundation committed to helping people get along better. Most recently, he managed training for the northeast region of EverFi, an education technology company focusing on cultivating critical skills from financial literacy to critical thinking. He received his B.A. from Tufts University in Anthropology and Child Development. He currently serves on the board of the Columbus JCC and on the Executive Board of Temple Israel, Columbus. Nathan lives in Columbus, Ohio with his husband Tal, and their daughters Orly and Naomi.
Rabbi Laura Abrasley joined the Temple Shalom clergy team in July 2015. She grew up in Houston and graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in psychology. Her path to becoming a rabbi began with many summers spent as a camper and then counselor at the URJ Greene Family Camp in Texas. After college, Rabbi Abrasley worked in education and technology sectors in Boston, most recently serving as Youth Educator at Temple Israel.
In 2007, Rabbi Abrasley began her rabbinic studies in Jerusalem and continued at the HUC-JIR campus in Los Angeles. She served as a student rabbi at several congregations in California – Visalia, Culver City and Tarzana – as well as Boston. She also was the rabbinic intern at the Jewish Home of San Francisco and for the HUC DeLeT Summer Institute. With a strong commitment to Jewish learning, she earned an additional Masters in Jewish Education and was an education intern at Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles. Upon ordination in 2013, Rabbi Abrasley served for 2 years as the Director of Lifelong Learning at Congregation Beth Or in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
In her role as one of the rabbis at Temple Shalom, Rabbi Abrasley is committed to inspiring and implementing active, engaged opportunities for connection and community. She believes deeply in partnering together to pursue the work of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, and providing rich moments for Talmud Torah, the pursuit of lifelong Jewish learning.
She and her wife, Julie Childers, recently celebrated their 12-year wedding anniversary and have an adorable 10-year old son, Noah. They are thrilled to be back in Boston where wearing Red Sox hats is the norm!
Angel (he/him) is a transformational leader who specializes in scaling organizations and building robust operational infrastructures that drive systemic change. Throughout his career, he has consistently developed and implemented organizational frameworks that enable nonprofits to expand their impact and better serve their missions. As Chief Operating Officer of Repair the World and Senior Director of Operations for the Jews of Color Initiative, he architected systems that allowed both organizations to significantly expand their reach while advocating for racial equity in the US Jewish community.
With over two decades of nonprofit leadership experience, Angel has distinguished himself as a changemaker who combines strategic vision with operational excellence. His unique approach draws from his diverse educational background in Business Administration from St. Mary’s College of California and Graphic Design from the Art Institute of California, San Francisco. This multidisciplinary perspective informs his innovative solutions to organizational challenges.
Angel’s commitment to creating lasting change extends to his board service with organizations like Kavod v’Nichum, and Recustom, where he continues to shape organizational strategies and structures. Based in Los Angeles’s Pico-Robertson neighborhood, he shares his life with his wife, Danielle Natelson, finding joy in their community and traditions, including baking challah for their weekly Shabbat celebrations.
Alan Cohen has worked for more than 25 years in the international and domestic non-profit, foundation, and corporate social responsibility sectors. Alan currently serves as the chief program officer at JASA. In the past, Alan served as the chief of staff at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC); the director of global corporate social responsibility at Henry Schein, Inc., a Fortune 500® company; as the senior director for strategic planning and organizational resources at UJA-Federation of New York; and as a program officer for JDC’s Former Soviet Union Team. Alan is also on the board of Plaza Jewish Community Chapel. Alan graduated from Brandeis University Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, having studied politics and Russian language and literature. After graduating, Alan was awarded the Dorot Fellowship in Israel and spent five years living in Jerusalem. He received a Master of Public Policy and Administration from Columbia University. Alan participated in the Selah Leadership Program for a national cohort of social justice leaders and received AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps’s Partner in Justice Award. Alan lives in New York City with his husband, Robert Bank.
Gali Cooks is the President & CEO of Leading Edge, an organization formed in 2014 by foundations and federations to influence, inspire and enable dramatic change in attracting, developing and retaining top talent for Jewish organizations. Gali’s professional experience spans the public, private and nonprofit sectors.
Her career began as a speechwriter at the Embassy of Israel and a Legislative Assistant at AIPAC. She then joined the Harold Grinspoon Foundation as Founding Director of the PJ Library. From 2007-2013, Gali was Executive Director of the Rita & Stanley Kaplan Family Foundation. In the private sector, Gali was VP of Operations at an education technology startup.
Gali holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.B.A. from the NYU Stern School of Business. In 2016, she was named one of the Forward 50, an annual list of the top 50 Jews influencing American life, for her efforts to build the next generation of leaders. She lives with her wife and two children in Chicago, IL.
Bennett Decker is originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a student at the Joint Program between the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University where he received dual BAs Political Science and Talmud. Bennett currently combines his desire to make the world a more just place and Judaism during his day job at T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.
Bennett got involved with Keshet for the first time as a participant on the Keshet Teen Shabbaton during his senior year in High School. Since then, Keshet has helped him to find queer Jews to be thought partners, teachers, justice-seekers, and friends together in unique community with. He has also fallen in love with the work that Keshet does, particularly for teens and youth; helping Queer Jews unite those two parts of their identity that Bennett feels are the two most essential parts of his.
Oren Henry has been connected to the Jewish community his entire life. His grandfather a rabbi, his Israeli grandmother a Hebrew school principal, and his mother a Hebrew teacher, Oren’s synagogue in suburban Chicago was his second home while growing up, particularly once he became a Hebrew tutor and religious school aide there. While attending the University of Pennsylvania, Oren served as a lead intern for the Jewish Heritage Programs, an alternative to Hillel that aims to engage students in Jewish life, and he also interned at the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago. Most recently, Oren served on the recently formed UJAPride committee of the UJA-Federation of New York. After more than fifteen years on the East Coast (attending UPenn in Philadelphia and Georgetown University Law Center in DC and starting his legal career at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York City), Oren now resides in New Jersey with his husband.
Robert Holgate is an interior designer who has had his own design firm for nearly twenty years. A humanitarian as well as a designer, Robert is dedicated to critical social issues, with an emphasis on those affecting the LGBTQ community. With his hands-on approach to philanthropy and social justice, he supports the advancement of local and national social causes with both financial donations and design services. He has offered his design expertise to several San Francisco organizations, including the LGBT Center, Glide Memorial and New Conservatory Theatre Center. Robert has been on the New Conservatory Theatre Center board of directors since 2016, he was a co-chair of the annual major gift campaign of the National Center for Lesbian Rights for two consecutive years, and he consulted on fundraising strategies for the National AIDS Memorial Grove.
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