|     |     |

Gail Twersky Reimer, Ph.D., Executive Director
Gail Twersky Reimer is founding director of the Jewish Women’s Archive, a pioneering organization dedicated to uncovering, chronicling and transmitting the rich legacy of Jewish women in North America.

The Jewish Women’s Archive emphasizes the power of new technologies to transform both our practice and knowledge of history, and is nationally recognized as a unique and vital contributor to a more expansive and inclusive vision of Jewish life, past, present and future. The Jewish Women’s Archive’s award-winning website, jwa.org, has the most extensive collection of material on American Jewish women on the web.

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Reimer began her professional career as a faculty member of Wellesley College shortly after receiving her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Rutgers University. While at Wellesley she was awarded fellowships from the American Association of University Women and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, and received the prestigious Pinanski Prize for excellence in teaching.

From 1988 to 1995, Dr. Reimer was Associate Director of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities (MFH), the state-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In the early 1990’s, Reimer conceived and co-edited two pathbreaking anthologies of Jewish women’s writings—Reading Ruth: Women Reclaim a Sacred Story and Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days. This work led to the founding of the Jewish Women’s Archive in 1995.

The Jewish Women’s Archive has become a leading advocate for and center of education in Jewish women’s history, ensuring that we remember the women who came before us, honor the women among us, and inspire those who will follow us.

Dr. Reimer lives in Boston with her husband. They have two daughters.

Stephen Benson, Executive Assistant
Stephen Benson has worked previously in executive administrative positions at the New England Eye Institute, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and Jackson & Company public relations. He has taught theatre classes and directed productions at the College of the Holy Cross, Tufts University, Middlesex Community College, and Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. in English and Theatre from Tufts University.

Ari Davidow, Director of Online Strategy
Ari Davidow is focused on developing new services and tools to support Virtual Collections and Online Resources at JWA. He founded the Jewish forum on the WELL, the influential pioneer in online community, co-founded Jewishnet (predecessor to Hebrew-College–based Shamash network, and a host of other online communities, mailing lists, blogs and websites. Davidow's virtual work is complemented by a long history as an expert on multilingual typography. He contributed chapters to both volumes of Computers and Typography, Rosemary Sassoon, ed. (Intellect Press, UK, 1993 & 2002). Davidow taught typography online for a decade at the New School for Social Research Graduate Media Studies Department.

Isaac Simon Hodes, Web Producer
Isaac works to maintain and improve the jwa.org website and also collaborates on the design and implementation of new online resources. Before coming to the Jewish Women's Archive, he worked as a high school teacher and as an immigrant rights organizer. Isaac holds a B.A. from Harvard University, but feels more loyalty toward another educational institution: Lynn Classical High School. He is deeply committed to Jewish-identified social justice work that supports human rights in all parts of the world, and believes the words and actions of many of the women highlighted by Jewish Women's Archive exhibits can teach valuable lessons to today's activists and organizers.

Andrea Medina-Smith, Digital Archivist
Andrea has a M.S. in Library Science with a concentration in Archival Management from Simmons College where her focus was on digital collections, digital preservation and online access to archival collections. She is working with JWA’s archival collections and helping to implement new tools that will promote the mission of the Jewish Women's Archive. Before coming to JWA, Andrea worked as the assistant to multiple programs at Simmons College, and in the field of primary education. She is working towards a M.A. in History and holds a B.A. in History from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Programs

Lauren Antler, Senior Program Manager
Lauren Antler has joined the JWA team to get the word out about our new film Making Trouble. She comes to JWA having just completed an MA in Arts Administration at Columbia University. Her master's thesis on preservation and nostalgia of the Jewish Catskills was born from her undergraduate thesis on 1930s Yiddish film. Lauren also brings to JWA a decade of experience in TV production where she worked at MTV, Nickelodeon and Oxygen, among others. Lauren's work as a comedian & filmmaker brought her around the country performing with her sketch comedy group "The Royal We." Her solo show "What to Wear When you are Fighting the Patriarchy: Lessons from the Daughter of a Jewish Feminist" grew out of the performance she did at JWA's gala "So Laugh a Little."

Jayne K. Guberman, Ph.D., Director of Oral History
Heading JWA’s oral history program Weaving Women’s Words, Jayne Guberman received her Ph.D. from the Department of Folklore and Folklife with a focus on Jewish traditional culture and cultural revival from the University of Pennsylvania. A graduate of Harvard University, she was Co-Director of the Starr Gallery at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center in Newton, Massachusetts, where she developed and curated cultural, historical, and art exhibitions on relevant issues in the Jewish community.

Ruth Pearlstein, Program Manager
Ruth Pearlstein earned her B.A. in History from Tufts University and completed a senior research paper analyzing Campbell Soup advertising during World War II. She was also an editor of Tufts’ Art and Literary Magazine. Ruth has worked as an assistant editor in Economics, Finance, and Business at the MIT Press.

Judith Rosenbaum, Ph.D., Director of Education
Judith Rosenbaum brings her love of women’s studies and Jewish studies, teaching and research, to her work as Director of Education at the JWA. Rosenbaum earned a BA summa cum laude in History from Yale University and received her PhD in American Civilization, with a specialty in women’s history, from Brown University. She has taught women’s studies and Jewish studies at Brown, Boston University, the Adult Learning Collaborative of Combined Jewish Philanthropies and Hebrew College, and Gann Academy: The New Jewish High School of Greater Boston. She is a former JWA Research Fellow.

Ellen K. Rothman, Ph.D., Deputy Director
Like JWA's founder and Executive Director, Ellen K. Rothman comes to JWA from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities where she served as Associate Director for 11 years. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she received her Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Brandeis. While trained as an academic historian, she has spent most of her career in the public humanities—working in museums, developing curricula, producing programs for public radio and college-level distance learning, and creating an electronic almanac of Massachusetts history, MassMoments. Her book, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America, was published by Basic Books and in paperback by Harvard University Press.

Development

Catherine Clark, Director of Development
With three decades in "cause," arts, legal, and medical non-profit organizations, both in the United States and in Great Britain, Catherine Clark joins the Jewish Women's Archive with broad experience in non-profit administration, fundraising, board development, capital and major gifts campaigns, and special-event management. In the 1980s, she served as Assistant Executive Director of the Council for a Livable World and Council for a Livable World Education Fund, later named the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation (CACNP). In the late 1990s, she served as president of her own consulting firm, Sherwood Forest Incorporated, while also serving as Development and Capital Campaign Director of Greenwood Music Camp in Western Massachusetts, and Capital Campaign Director of CACNP. In recent years, Catherine served as the full-time Development Director of RESPOND, a domestic violence agency based in Somerville, MA, and the YWCA Boston Director of Institutional Advancement. Catherine is delighted to be Director of Development of the Jewish Women's Archive, to celebrate the achievements of a very special group of women, and promote the just and equitable society that she has worked toward during her long and varied career.

Nora Pittis, Development Associate
Nora Pittis graduated from Smith College with a B.A. in History and German Studies. She recently moved back to the States after living and working in Berlin for two years. In Berlin she completed a ten month German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship while studying twentieth century German History and Gender Studies at the Humboldt University. Following her fellowship she stayed on as the assistant to the director of the Berlin office of the European Council of Jewish Communities. She's excited to be back stateside and to contribute her skills to the important work being done at the Jewish Women's Archive.

Marketing & Communications

Jordan Namerow, Online Communications Specialist
Jordan Namerow is excited to integrate her interests in women's advocacy, Jewish communal service, and writing in her role as Communications Specialist. Jordan graduated from Wellesley College in 2005 with a B.A. in Sociology and a minor in Women's Studies. Her internship experiences at several Jewish non-profit organizations including Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center, the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute for Southern Jewish Life, and the Jerusalem-based Citizens' Accord Forum between Jews and Arabs of Israel have helped her build a skill-set instrumental to her work at JWA. Most recently, she completed a one-year fellowship in Warsaw, Poland with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) providing social welfare assistance and educational enrichment to the Jewish community of Poland.