Group Leaders

Maddy Brigell

Maddy is a social worker, community organizer and educator from Chicago. She has been interested in working internationally since college when she did a nine month study abroad program and three month research fellowship in Senegal, West Africa. She also participated in the AJWS Volunteer Corps for 13 months in 2006/2007, working with urban youth in Managua, Nicaragua.  When in Chicago, she keeps herself busy working at a harm reduction drop-in center for people who are homeless with severe mental illness and substance use issues. She also teaches 7th grade Sunday school at her synagogue. In her free time, Maddy enjoys dancing, cooking and riding her bicycle. She has a B.A. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and will be attending the University of Chicago in the fall to earn a Master's degree in Social Work.

Nicole Chamoy

Nikki's first passport was issued mere weeks after she was born and she has not stopped traveling since. She has adventured through more countries than she is years old, including much of Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She first became involved with AJWS in 2000 as a participant in the precursor to Volunteer Summer, the International Jewish College Corps. Since then, her life has taken many unexpected turns, leading her to a B.A. in Economics from Barnard College, followed by years of teaching English as a Second Language both domestically and abroad. Her studies have included international development at the London School of Economics and Jewish law, history, and customs at Nishmat in Jerusalem. She will be a first year medical student at Boston University this fall.

Jill Cozen Harel

Jill is finishing her fourth year as a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College (HUC) in New York. She has worked at URJ Camp Swig Newman, staffed two Birthright Israel trips and currently teaches an introduction to Judaism class and serves as the student rabbi of a congregation in North Carolina. Jill's experience with AJWS began with an Alternative Break in El Salvador while in college. She is a native Californian and holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley in Cognitive Science.

Sara Eisenfeld

Sara, born in Philadelphia, has been living in a bus in the woods of the Farm School in Massachusetts where she is a farmer and educator of urban middle schoolers in gardening, forestry, rustic furniture building, beekeeping, yoga and general community living! She likes to bake challah, dance and listen to people's stories. Her B.A. from Penn State University is in English / Philosophy. Sara has had the pivotal perspective of traveling in Guatemala and is looking forward to her first AJWS group leader experience.

Jacob Holzberg-Pill

Jacob spent five years as a nature-based youth mentor in California, Cape Cod, Vermont, New York and Israel. He focused on nature awareness and wilderness survival as a path toward transformative education. He is currently working toward a Master's degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. He received a B.A. from Brandeis University in a self-created program titled "Ecology and Community."

Emily Kates

Emily will be entering a clinical psychology Ph.D. program in the fall. While deliberating over which one, she works with toddlers and adolescents in two psychology labs at Columbia University. After graduating from Barnard College, Emily participated in AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps in New York City, working with at-risk teens in an alternative high school in Brooklyn. She also lived in Israel for a year, studying at Pardes, before returning back to New York.

Adam Klein

A proud native of Athens, GA, Adam was introduced to AJWS as a participant on the 2001 International Jewish College Corps program to Honduras, now known as Volunteer Summer. He has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa, from 2002-2004. Adam was a Volunteer Summer group leader in 2005 in Peru and is thrilled to be part of Volunteer Summer 2008. In addition to being the Program Director at UGA Hillel, he is a country-folk singer/songwriter, and celebrates the release of his second record, Western Tales and Trails, in May. Check out his music at www.adam-klein.com or www.myspace.com/adamkleinmusic.

Daniella Ponet

Daniella was born in Jerusalem, Israel but grew up in New Haven, CT. She has a B.A. from Vassar College where she majored in English. After college she spent a year working and traveling in Central and South America. She has lived in Brooklyn since 2000 where she has worked as a tenant organizer with low-income renters, a scheduler on a city-wide campaign, an organizer with homeless people living with AIDS and as a national program organizer at CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. At CISPES she organized and participated in several political delegations to El Salvador. She recently received a Master's degree in Media Studies from the New School and hopes to work on political documentaries. In the meantime she walks dogs in Park Slope.

Navit Robkin

Born in Israel, Navit moved with her family to Atlanta, GA as a child. She graduated with a degree in Psychology and Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. While in school, she lived and worked with the Abayudaya in Uganda for a summer. After completing university, she was a fellow at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Israel and then worked for the Jewish Coalition for Service in New York. She is currently a Dorot fellow living in Israel, making a documentary on Ethiopian and Russian immigration experiences and managing an African refugee shelter in Tel Aviv.

Zachary Silver

Zachary recently completed his first year of rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. During each of the past seven summers he has worked in informal education roles at Camp Ramah, both in Wisconsin and in Israel. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied history and Jewish Studies, he spent the year in Israel studying at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem and staffing Ramah in Israel's high school semester-abroad program. The following year, he worked on board Semester at Sea and traveled around the world, seeing the wonders of creation and the utter humanity of people everywhere. He has a deep passion for American Jewish history, follows basketball and football closely and cooks a terrific vegetarian chili.

Ariel Vegosen

Ariel currently represents Dr. Bronner's, the fair trade and organic body care company. Her biggest passion is combining her love of Judaism, travel and nature. Some of her most inspirational work includes stints with the Teva Learning Center, Costa Rican Adventures for Jewish Teenagers, Seeds of Peace, Code Pink Women for Peace, and An Olive on the Seder Plate: a political theater piece about Jewish people wrestling with the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. She is a recent graduate of the Sheva Fellowship, a six month Jewish experiential education program on 3,000 acres of desert. Her interests include art as a means of activism, performing poetry, motion theater, aerial dance and creating a gender revolution.

Ari Weiss

Ari, a native New Yorker, is currently a Rabbinic Fellow at NYU Hillel and is on the Judaic Studies Faculty at the Heschel High School. Over the last couple of years he became politically and socially engaged in progressive causes. He has interned in a newspaper on the south side of Chicago, went to El Salvador with AJWS and canvassed in New Hampshire for the Edwards campaign. Ari has received Rabbinical Ordination from YCT Rabbinical School and is completing a Master's degree in Jewish Philosophy from Yeshiva University where he completed his undergraduate work in philosophy and religion.

New York staff

Alexis Kort

Alexis is the Program Officer for Volunteer Summer. She is an alumna of the AJWS Volunteer Corps where she was an intern for six months with Point of View, a Women's Rights NGO in Mumbai, India. She received her B.A. from McGill University where she majored in Jewish and Middle Eastern studies. Subsequently, she focused on modern Islamic thought, human rights and women for a Master's degree from the University of London – School of Oriental and African studies. Previously, the Program Director for Habonim Dror, North America, Alexis has led groups for the AJWS Rosh Chodesh – It's a Girl Thing educational project, an Alternative Break trip to Guatemala with UCSD and a Delegation to Uganda with a synagogue from Portland, OR. She has also traveled to Honduras, Ghana and India for AJWS.

Rachel Weinstein

Rachel joined AJWS in June 2007 as the Program Associate for Volunteer Summer. Rachel focuses primarily on the Domestic Yearlong Program and helps to develop volunteers' global justice work when they return from their summer service trip. Rachel became involved in this kind of work as an undergraduate at Vassar College where she directed several social justice projects on campus and in the local community. During this time, Rachel also served on a City Council committee to oversee a community development project. Rachel comes to AJWS with nine years of experience in informal education: she has worked as a teacher, served on the curatorial staff of the Museum of Jewish Heritage and was the assistant to an editor at Harvard University Press. Rachel is currently completing a Master's degree at CUNY-Graduate Center where she is writing her thesis on race and representation in ethnography and photography.

 

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