Biographies

Speakers listed in alphabetical order (partial list).
 

Shmuel Abramzon is an Israeli financial economist who is currently working as an Assistant Policy Analyst at the RAND Corporation and is a Doctoral Fellow at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His work at RAND focuses on strategic socioeconomic policy planning, energy policy, sovereign debt management, and international development.

Prior to joining RAND, Abramzon served as a senior economist in the National Economic Council at the Prime Minister's Office in Israel. While there, Ambrazon was part of a team that advised the Prime Minister on economic matters and formulated medium and long-term economic plans for the State of Israel. His specializations include financial markets, macroeconomic policy, and budgeting. He was a member of the 2009 Macroeconomic Policy Team of the Caesarea Forum, Israel’s most influential economic policy conference. He has also worked as an economist in the Israel Debt Management Unit, which was involved with managing the government’s debt portfolio and maintaining the State’s relationship with international credit rating agencies.

Abramzon holds an M.A. in Financial Economics and a B.A. (magna cum laude) in Philosophy, Economics and Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Alon Aranya is an award-winning television and film producer, writer, and director. Most recently, he was a co-writer and producer of the American television series Hostages, a show based on the Israeli series B’nei Aruba, for CBS. Aranya has been actively involved in the adaptation of many Israeli and foreign dramas and storylines for US audiences. His production company, Scripted World (co-owned by Rob Golenberg), has set up seventeen dramatic shows at US studios and networks in the past few years. Among these shows are several based on Israeli formats and developments such as The Naked Truth at Lionsgate / HBO and Pillars of Smoke (aka Midnight Sun) at Universal/ NBC. Scripted World is currently in production on two network pilots for ABC and the CW, based on an Israeli project entitled Identity. The company is also developing a new slate of shows at Fox, Starz, and TNT. Alon is also the co-creator and Executive Producer of President X (Hitorerut in Israel), a political thriller with a storyline based on the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Previously, Alon served as a faculty member in the Dramatic Writing Department at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts teaching screenwriting. A native of Tel Aviv, he received his BFA from Tel Aviv University and an MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Mor Assia is Founding Partner of iAngels, the first equity crowdfunding platform in Israel which allows you to invest with the top tier angel investors in Israeli high-tech startups. Assia has an extensive technological and business background. Prior to iAngels, she held several corporate positions including Corporate Strategy Associate at Amdocs, Business Development Associate at SAP and Strategy Associate at IBM Global Business Services. Assia holds a BA in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and an MBA from Columbia University, where she specialized in Strategy and Business. She is also a graduate of the 8200 elite intelligence unit as part of her two year service with the Israel Defense Forces. 

Assia's iAngels co-founder, Shelly Hod Moyal, complements her technical skills with extensive financial and investment background, including positions at Goldman Sachs and UBS. iAngels currently collaborates with over two dozen Israeli angel investors to provide individual investors from all over the world with access to exclusive deals, where they can participate under the same terms and lower investment tickets.

Prior to her engineering and entrepreneurial career, Ms. Assia was a classically trained ballet dancer.  She lives in Israel and is married to eToro founder and CEO, Yoni Assia, and has two children: Adam (3) and Anne (2). 

Dr. Shraga Bar-On is a research fellow and a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, Israel and the Gruss Scholar-in-Residence at the Tikvah center, NYU law school. His research and his public involvement focus on two major issues: Talmudic and Halachic thought and Contemporary Jewish identity. Dr. Bar-On received his Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from the Hebrew University. As a post doctoral fellow at Hebrew University, he developed a new methodology for teaching Jewish Law – Halacha, as a realm of moral dilemmas. Deeply involved in "The Jewish Renaissance" in Israel, he has founded and coordinated, with other members of the Institute, programs such as the Hadarim Beit Midrash program for outstanding students in the humanities and the Cathedra program of Jewish identity for senior IDF officers (in collaboration with the IDF education units). He was an associate moderator in the Gevanim program for the advancement of pluralistic Jewish leadership of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco and he has chaired Ne’emani Torah v’Avodah, the open Orthodox movement in Israel.

Dr. Bar-On has won several prizes and scholarships in academic and educational fields among them the Ephraim E. Urbach Post-Doctoral Fellowship and the Max and Bella Guggenheim Post-doctoral Fellowship in Jewish Ethics. He is married to Vered and has three children.

Rabbi Mordechai Bar-Or is the Founder and President of Kolot, a study center (Beit Midrash) aiming to develop an Israeli leadership that will advance Jewish values and create a fresh mission for the State of Israel.

Brought up in Jerusalem in an observant family, Bar-Or attended Yeshivat har Etzion, a hesder yeshiva (combining Talmud study with army service) at Gush Ezion, and fought in the first Lebanon war. He was ordained by Chief Rabbi Goren in 1984. Bar-Or headed the Jewish Studies program at the Pelech High School for Girls in Jerusalem. He served as Director of “Gesher” Seminars in Safed for three years, before co-founding Elul in 1989 and serving as its co-director until 1996.

In 1997 Mr. Bar-Or received the Avi Chai prize for his work in establishing and directing Elul (the very first pluralistic Beit Midrash in Israel). In 1997, after the assasination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, he founded Kolot. Bar-Or served as CEO of Kolot until 2012 and has served as President of Kolot since the end of his tenure as CEO. He also serves as the Government Adviser on Jewish Values and leads a new Jewish values inititative lead by President Shimon Peres.

Mordechai Bar-Or is a proud father of 4 children and 7 grandchildren.

Adam Berg, a Los Angeles-based artist, works in video, painting and sculpture. Berg was born and raised in Israel, and holds a BA, MA and PhD in Philosophy (Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Time) from the University of Haifa; he studied art at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome, Italy and architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Toronto, Canada. 

Fascinated by the nexus of science, philosophy, history and time, Berg has developed a body of work that investigates the boundaries between traditional art and new media.  Fusing scientific models with art historical references, he explores perceptual reality, in particular conceptions of evidence and fact.  He has had numerous solo exhibitions internationally, including at the Edward Cella Gallery (Los Angeles), University of Konstanz (Germany), Santa Monica Museum of Art, Museo Arte Plastica (Castiglione Olona, Italy), Palazzo Medici Riccardi (Florence, Italy), Inga Gallery (Tel Aviv), Barbur Gallery (Jerusalem), and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Digital Art Lab, Holon, Israel.

Berg is currently an adjunct associate professor at Otis College of Art and Design and has served as Artist-in-Residence at McLuhan Center for Culture and Technology, University of Toronto and Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California. 

Rabbi Daniel Bouskila is the International Director of the Sephardic Educational Center (SEC), an international educational and cultural organization with its own historic campus in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Through various innovative programs at the SEC campus in Jerusalem, and in different communities in the diaspora, he is developing the SEC into a Sephardic think tank that explores the unique halakhic and philosophic approaches of 19th & 20th century Sephardic rabbis.

He earned his B.A. in History from UCLA and Rabbinic Ordination from Yeshiva University in New York. He also studied at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh in Israel for two years, served in the IDF’s Givati Infantry Brigade for one year, and studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for one year.

Idan Cohen is an internationally-acclaimed dancer and choreographer who was born and raised in Kibbutz Mizra in Israel. The kibbutz life has had a wide effect on Cohen's artistic life and work. He received a scholarship to study theater and fine arts at the "Art colony," in Israel 's Negev and was admitted to a video-dance project by Bat-Sheva Dance Company dancer Lara Bersak (France).

Since 2003, Cohen has been creating, performing and teaching successfully as an independent choreographer, receiving multiple awards from the Israeli Ministry of Culture and European festivals. Cohen has toured widely in the US, Europe, Scandinavia, Brazil, Thailand, India and Singapore. He has been a guest artist and teacher at the Center for Performance Research and Dance New Amsterdam in New York, UCLA, American University, University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, Smith College, dance theaters in Scotland, Bulgaria and Poland, and at The Jerusalem Academy and Suzanne Dellal Dance Cener in Tel Aviv. Idan is currently the Schusterman Artist-in-Residence at UC Irvine.

Anat Gilboa is an art historian specializing in early modern art, as well as Jewish and Israeli visual culture. She has taught at universities in Israel, Canada, and the US. A graduate of the University of Haifa with a double major in Art History and Literature, she received her Master's degree in Art History from Tel Aviv University, and a Ph.D. in art history from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. While Dr. Gilboa’s core academic expertise is in art history, her research, academic courses, and public talks reflect a focus on cross-disciplinary analysis of Jewish and Israeli visual culture, history, religion, gender themes, and literature. Her current research and teaching focuses on five core themes that define modern Israeli identity: religion, the history of the Shoah, war and conflict, societal challenges of a multi-ethnic country, and the redefinition of gender roles.

Gilboa is the author of the book, Images of the Feminine in Rembrandt’s Work, and numerous publications in American and European journals and conferences.

Dalia Dassa Kaye is the Director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy and a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. Before joining RAND, Kaye lived in The Netherlands where she served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the Dutch Foreign Ministry and taught at the University of Amsterdam. In 2011-2012 she was a visiting professor and fellow at UCLA’s International Institute and Burkle Center. From 1998-2003 Kaye was an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University.  She is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including a Brookings Institution research fellowship and The John W. Gardner Fellowship for Public Service.  Kaye publishes widely on Middle East regional security issues and is the author of Talking to the Enemy: Track Two Diplomacy in the Middle East and South Asia and Beyond the Handshake: Multilateral Cooperation in the Arab-Israeli Peace Process.  She has also co-authored numerous RAND studies, including most recently Israel and Iran: A Dangerous Rivalry, Coping with a Nuclearizing Iran and Artist and the Arab Uprisings. Dalia holds her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Neil Netanel is Professor of Law at the University of California at Los Angeles and past Director of the UCLA’s Israel Studies Program. He writes and teaches in the areas of copyright, international intellectual property, and telecommunications. Professor Netanel earned his J.S.D. from Stanford University, J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and B.A. from Yale University. His book, Copyright’s Paradox, was published by Oxford University Press in March 2008. His book-in-progress, From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print, which he is co-authoring with David Nimmer, will also be published by Oxford University Press.

Prior to entering law academics, Professor Netanel practiced law in Israel for seven years with the Tel-Aviv firm, Yigal Arnon & Co., where he negotiated the contract with the architects for Israel’s Supreme Court building, represented Israel’s first cable television operator, shepherded numerous joint ventures with Israeli high-tech companies, and served on Israel’s Ministry of Justice Copyright Law Revision Committee. He also worked for a year at Israel’s Environmental Protection Service. Professor Netanel now teaches regularly in Israel. He has taught courses at the law schools of Haifa University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Tel-Aviv University.

Ambassador Dennis Ross is a Distinguished Fellow at the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and a counselor at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Prior to returning to the Institute in 2011, he served two years as special assistant to President Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region, and a year as special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton focusing on Iran.

For more than twelve years, Ambassador Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process and dealing directly with the parties in negotiations. A highly skilled diplomat, Ambassador Ross was U.S. point man on the peace process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. He was instrumental in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to reach the 1995 Interim Agreement, successfully brokered the 1997 Hebron Accord, facilitated the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, and worked intesively to bring Israel and Syria together.

A scholar and diplomat with more than two decades of experience in Soviet and Middle East policy, Ambassador Ross worked closely with Secretaries of State James Baker, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright. Prior to his service as special Middle East coordinator under President Clinton, Ambassador Ross served as director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in the first Bush administration. In that capacity, he played a prominent role in U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control negotiations, and the 1991 Gulf War coalition.

During the Reagan administration, he served as director of Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council staff and deputy director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. Ambassador Ross was awarded the Presidential Medal for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service by President Clinton, and Secretaries Baker and Albright presented him with the State Department's highest award.

A 1970 graduate of UCLA, Ambassador Ross wrote his doctoral dissertation on Soviet decision-making, and from 1984 to 1986 served as executive director of the Berkeley-Stanford program on Soviet International Behavior. He received UCLA's highest medal and has been named UCLA alumnus of the year. He has also received honorary doctorates from Brandeis, Amherst, Jewish Theological Seminary, and Syracuse University.

Ambassador Ross has published extensively on the former Soviet Union, arms control, and the greater Middle East, contributing numerous chapters to anthologies. In the 1970s and 1980s, his articles appeared in World Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Orbis, International Security, Survival, and Journal of Strategic Studies. Since leaving government at the end of 2011, he has published frequently in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and numerous other publications.

David “Dedi” Schwartz is Vice President for Product Management and the App Market at Wix, the leading free HTML5 website publisher. Based on an open SDK and Wix's industry leading HTML5 editor, the App Market has grown rapidly under Schwartz's direction, seeing exponential growth opportunities for developers as well as Wix's 44+ million users worldwide.

Schwartz is the founder of several successful start-ups, including Jogli, a music search engine; PeerApp Technologies, a provider of P2P caching systems to ISPs; and WebMap Technologies, an innovative provider of search and visualization software. He also served as a strategic consultant for Aladdin (NASDAQ-ALDN), and led the sales, marketing and business development of eSafe Secure Surfing, Aladdin’s newproduct for the consumer market.

Drawing on his vast and diverse experience, Schwartz has guest-lectured throughout the high-tech industry, as well as at the Hebrew University MBA program on issues ranging from product development and management to marketing and innovation trends. Schwartz holds an LLB from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

David Suissa is President of Tribe Media Corp, which owns The Jewish Journal, Tribe Magazine, Hollywood Journal, and the popular news site Jewishjournal.com. His weekly column in the Jewish Journal earned him the “Best Columnist” award by the L.A. Press Club in 2009.

Formerly, Suissa was founder and CEO of SuissaMiller Advertising, a $300 million marketing firm that was named Agency of the Year by USA Today. In 2005, he sold the company so he could dedicate himself to the Jewish world. Among his community awards, Suissa was named one the top 50 Jewish leaders in North America by the Forward newspaper.

David Suissa was born in Casablanca and grew up in Montreal, and has been living in Los Angeles since 1982.

Dvir Tzur received his Ph.D. in Hebrew Literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on the connections between contemporary Hebrew literature and Israeli culture, including issues of home, land, nativism, nostalgia and retrospective writing. His current research is focused on the nexus between border-crossing and mysticism in contemporary Hebrew literature.

Prior coming to UCLA, Dvir was a postdoctoral fellow at the Bernard Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the State of Israel. During his graduate studies, he was a member of the "Jews and Cities" research group in Scholion - an interdisciplinary research center in Jewish Studies at The Hebrew University of Jersulaem. In addition to his scholarly publications, Dvir is the author of two novels: Inverted Letters and Regina's Orchard (Babel Publishers), and is currently working on a third. He also holds an MA in Contemporary Jewry Studies and a BA in Communication and Sociology & Anthropology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Yael Vizel is the Founder and CEO of Zeekit (zeekit.co), an online start-up company in the fashion industry. Her technology allows users to simply upload photos of themselves and then preview how they would look in different outfits and accessories, a service that allows for a better e-commerce experience. Currently, Zeekit is piloting its software with eBay.com and expects additional corporate deals in the future as this technology is develeoped for markets outside of the fashion industry.

Yael holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technion University and worked for five years as a semi-conductor (computer chip) designer for Elbit Systems in Israel. Prior to studying at the Technion University, she served in the Israeli Air Force’s (IAF) elite tech unit and became the first woman commander of the unit. As an expert computer scientist, Yael was responsible for leading IAF ground-tech and aerial-tech combat missions.