Karla Van Praag, Executive Director
kvanpraag@jewishorganizing.org
Karla Van Praag has been JOI’s Executive Director since September 2007. Karla has a rich background in leadership development, nonprofit management, service learning, and organizing. During her five years at Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, where she was Director of Synagogue Social Justice Programs and subsequently Director of Planning and Leadership Development, Karla helped to create the Greater Boston Synagogue Organizing Project, which involves synagogues in broad based organizing and has become a national model for meaningful Jewish involvement in interfaith justice work. She has substantial experience in youth development in low-income communities in Washington, DC and East Boston, and has also served as the Deputy Director of the Somerville Community Corporation, a nonprofit affordable housing developer and community development corporation. Karla holds a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government with a concentration in Leadership, Negotiation and Urban Development, where she was a Public Service Fellow, and is a graduate of Wesleyan University.
Meir Lakein, Director of Organizing
mlakein@jewishorganizing.org
Meir Lakein is responsible for developing and mentoring experienced organizers and developing training curricula. Meir has worked as a professional community organizer for over 20 years, helping develop the model for engaging Jewish communities in broad based organizing, and serving as the mentor of a generation of young organizers. For the past six years, he has served as the Lead Organizer of the Greater Boston Synagogue Organizing Project. Through GBSOP, 14 synagogues, hundreds of leaders, both adults and teens, and thousands of Jewish community members have engaged in broad based organizing to identify their common values and interests, develop a common story and mission, and take action to live out their values and defend their interests, both in the community around public issues and within their own institutions. Meir has also taught community organizing to almost 200 rabbinical students through classes and workshops with various seminaries. Previously, Meir built powerful organizations of homeless people in Connecticut and of Sepharadi, Russian, and Arab public housing tenants in Israel, and worked as the lead organizer of the Brockton Interfaith Community.
Catherine Bell, Director of the Jewish Organizing Fellowship
cbell@jewishorganizing.org
Catherine Bell began organizing in college when she started to connect her own experiences of finding her voice with those of women around her. She has been organizing in a Jewish context ever since her fellowship year with the Jewish Organizing Initiative (1999), when she ran an oral history of reproductive rights project for the Boston Chapter of NOW. Since then, she has worked as a youth organizer (within the Boston Jewish community and with immigrant youth in Brockton, MA), as an organizer of progressive Jewish adults in the Boston area and in New York City, and as an organizer at Temple Israel in Boston. She also spent time in Ghana as a HIV/AIDS educator as part of the Jewish Volunteer Corps of American Jewish World Service. Catherine graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English from Amherst College, and has a MA in Sociology of Education from the New York University School of Education.
Hannah White, Development and Communications Associate and Operations Manager
hwhite@jewishorganizing.org
Hannah White comes to the Jewish Organizing Initiative with a deep commitment to creating the Jewish community as it should be. Originally from Providence RI, Hannah graduated from McGill University in Montreal with a degree in Religious Studies. After working in Texas as a JCSC Fellow for Hillel, Hannah returned to the northeast to attend the Hornstein-Heller program at Brandeis University, where she earned Master degrees in Jewish Professional Leadership and Business Administration in Nonprofit Management.
Jessie Weiser, Program Manager
jweiser@jewishorganizing.org
As Program Manager, Jessie is coordinating the JOIN for Justice National Summit and directing the recruitment and selection process for the Jewish Organizing Fellowship. She comes to JOIN for Justice after four years at the Religious Action Center (RAC) of Reform Judaism, the social justice arm of the Union for Reform Judaism. At the RAC, Jessie was an advocate for health insurance reform and the separation of church and state and she managed various programs, events, and campaigns related to the organization’s 50th Anniversary celebrations. She is originally from Arizona and graduated from Pomona College with a BA in Religious Studies.
