Meet Our Team

Heidi Lovitz

Heidi Lovitz

Senior Managing Director

Heidi Lovitz is an educator, education administrator, and curriculum developer dedicated to innovating Jewish education. Her experience includes Family Educator at Congregation Beth Elohim in Acton, MA for over 15 years, the Director of Jewish Life and Learning at Camp Tevya in Brookline, NH for 15 years, and Director of Education and Programming at Temple Beth Abraham in Nashua, NH. Heidi was one of the founding leaders of the Havayah program connecting teens from Boston, Haifa and Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Heidi holds a BA in communication studies from the University of Massachusetts and is pursing a Master of Jewish Education at Hebrew College. Heidi enjoys theatre, music, reading, gardening, biking and hiking. Heidi lives in Westford, Massachusetts with her husband Peter and has two adult children.

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Rafi Glazer

Director of Operations

Rafi has been working in the Jewish education space for over a decade. Prior to coming to ShalomLearning he was the Israel Programs Director with Jewish National Fund, where he worked with schools, synagogues, and college campuses to provide Israel programming and recruit students for Israel trips. Before that he was the Director of Programs at the American Jewish Society for Service, an organization dedicated to creating immersive service-learning and social justice programming for Jewish teens across the United States. Rafi graduated from the University of Rochester with dual degrees in Political Sciences and Middle Eastern Studies. Rafi enjoys rewatching The West Wing and is working to visit all fifty states (current count is 41). He lives in Rockville with his wife Lauren.

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Michele Rosenfield

Director of Educational Technologies

Michele is a Jewish educator who has developed and taught various online courses. Prior to her midlife career change, Michele was a Systems Consultant for Ernst and Young and an Account Manager for Automatic Data Processing. Michele has a BA in Computer Science from Brandeis University, an MBA in Accounting from Fordham, and an MA in Jewish Education from The William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at The Jewish Theological Seminary.   Michele and her family reside in Metuchen, NJ.

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Shira Sender

Shira Sender

Director of Client Care and Teacher Support

Shira is a Jewish educator who used ShalomLearning in her religious school classroom for many years before officially joining the ShalomLearning team in 2020. For over thirteen years, Shira has taught students both virtually and in the traditional classroom.. Shira grew up in Upstate New York, where she received her BA in Psychology and Women’s Studies from the University of Buffalo. Later, Shira moved to Chicago where she worked on her MA in Counseling Psychology from the Adler School. Shira worked for three years as a Crisis Counselor with at-risk youth in Chicago in addition to teaching supplementary Jewish education. In 2018 Shira transitioned to teaching preschoolers in a Jewish Early Childhood Education program while continuing to teach and tutor religious school students.. Today, Shira lives in the Northern suburbs of Chicago with her husband, three young children, and dogs. Shira enjoys nature and outdoor activities, cooking, gardening, and reading.

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Board of Directors

Devin Schain

Founder, Board Chair

Devin is a serial entrepreneur with more than 30 years in numerous entrepreneurial ventures. He has successfully started and sold four companies and has invested in more than 40 start-ups and early-stage businesses. Currently, Devin is Founder and CEO of Student Playbook. He is active in Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and also founded Campus MD/Access Health Group and Campus Direct. In addition to being a serial entrepreneur, Devin is a dedicated philanthropist: he founded ShalomLearning and The Social Sector of Scaling Up.

Steven Guttentag, Ph.D

Treasurer

Steven is currently the CEO of Reading Plus, an adaptive literacy intervention solution that develops silent reading proficiency and confident, lifelong readers. He recently served as an Executive in Residence for investment firm Avathon Capital. Prior to that he served as the President of Connections Academy, an online schooling company he co-founded and sold to Pearson PLC in 2011. Dr. Guttentag began his career as a classroom teacher and has spent the last 25 years designing and deploying technology-based solutions to improve K–12 education. His academic credentials include a B.A. from the University of Michigan, a M.A. in Teaching and Curriculum from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Policy and Administration from the University of Pennsylvania.

Rabbi Sarah Tasman

Rabbi Sarah is the founder of the Tasman Center for Jewish Creativity which offers community classes & gatherings, and private spiritual coaching, and life cycle officiation. Rabbi Sarah specializes in leading experiential spirituality and Jewish mindfulness classes, providing opportunities for personal and professional development, and incorporating expressive modalities including writing, yoga, art and ritual. She is a faculty member at The Adas Israel Community Mikvah where she trains mikvah guides in ritual creation and recently co-led the Well Bodies Program in Embodied Judaism. She has taught Jewish mindfulness for Gratz: NEXT, Jewish Federations of North America Changemakers Fellowship, and many congregations and organizations.

Rabbi Sarah was ordained by the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in 2012. She also holds a master of Jewish Education and a certificate of non-profit management. She is a Rabbis Without Borders Fellow and member of the Kenissa: Communities of Meaning network. Previously, Rabbi Sarah was the Interfaith Family/DC Director, serving the needs of interfaith couples and families throughout Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC and has worked at Hillels at The University of Maryland, Yale and MIT.

Jerry Herman

After 25 years of senior-level executive positions in the corporate, nonprofit, and startup industries, I now dedicate myself to helping others maximize their potential and achieve their goals.

Through executive leadership coaching, I provide others with the tools needed to finally reach that next step in the leadership cycle, I help executives to develop skills that will best help their teams and their company, and I empower groups and individuals with a heightened awareness of solutions and capabilities that were otherwise invisible before. Whatever is your next step in a career or in life – I help you get there.

In my 25 years as a senior-level executive, I had the unique opportunity to mentor and guide those around me as they navigated their own paths from Associate to Executive. Whether it was building a hotel startup from nothing and developing it into a chain of nine hotels with over 750 employees, rescuing a troubled business and turning it back towards success, or working as the Chief Operating Officer for a large nonprofit, I developed a passion for being that trusted advisor who helps individuals, teams, and companies unlock their potential and realize their goals. I now continue this passion as a trained coach, offering my clients customized programs that are tailored to suit a person or organization’s unique needs.


Advisory Board

Rabbi Sid Schwarz

Senior Fellow at Hazon: The Jewish Lab for Sustainability

Dr. Sarah Steinberg

CEO, Frogstone Strategies

Dr. Michael Horn

Chief Strategy Office, Entangled Group and Co-Founder, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation

John Katzman

CEO, The Noodle Companies

Daniel Pianko

Partner, University Ventures

Joshua Troderman

Former CEO, ShalomLearning, 2014-2020


Curriculum Development Team

Program Advisors

The ShalomLearning curriculum blends technology, developmentally appropriate content and teaching methods to reach students on their terms in order to build understanding, impart critical skills and forge a lifelong love of Judaism and Jewish learning. Leaders in Jewish Education and Education Technology advised the foundations of our curriculum in the early stages.

Dr. Erica Brown, Director of Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership. Site: www.ericabrown.com

Andrew Rosen, CEO at Interfolio, Inc.

Rabbi Sid Schwarz, Senior Fellow at Hazon: The Jewish Lab for Sustainability. Site: www.rabbisid.org

Dr. Jonathan Woocher z”l, Senior Fellow at Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah

Initial Iteration Curriculum Development Team (Grades 4-6)

The ShalomLearning curriculum is organized around seven core Jewish values that infuse our traditions (both ancient and modern) with wisdom and meaning. The project began in 2010  by experts using the pedagogic principles of Understanding by Design (UBD), by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins to create ShalomLearning curriculum for grades 4-6.

Jill Allenberg Stepak, ShalomLearning Director of Curriculum Development

Aliza Sperling, ShalomLearning Curriculum Program Manager

Rabbi Shmuel Feld, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Rabbi Yakov Majeski, ShalomLearning Master Teacher

Mariana Haroun, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Tammie Rapps, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Barry Krasner, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

JoHanna Potts, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Rebecca Weisman, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Avi West, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Meredith Woocher, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Additional Grade Level Curriculum Development Team

As the adoption of the ShalomLearning program grew over the years, so did the curriculum. ShalomLearning released our third grade curriculum for the 2015-16 academic year.  The following year our partners had access to our seventh grade curriculum, and in for the 2017-18, second grade curriculum was officially released.

Adam Bellows, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Rabbi Melissa Bellows, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Rabbi Danielle Eskow, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Amy Goldberg, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Heidi Lovitz, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Leah Maas, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Rachel Meytin, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Laura Naide, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Jennifer Newfeld, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Dana Kanter Prottas, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

The Bible Players, ShalomLearning Curriculum Writer

Curriculum Editors

Each year, ShalomLearning experts use feedback from our educators and changes in education technology to make revisions to our curriculum.

Heidi Baker, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Eliana Bernard, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Liana Brodsky, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Rachel Besser, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Mindy Gold, Curriculum Consultant, www.edtechmmg.com

Debi Himelfarb, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Rabbi Janice Mehring, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Becky Oliver, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Natalie Klein-Raymond, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Michele Rosenfield, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Jade Sank, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Shira Sender, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Marci Serfaty, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Shani Sicherman, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Alisa Silverman, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Cheryl Vogel, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Daniel Young, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Alison Zimbalist, ShalomLearning Curriculum Contributor

Finally, we’d like to express our gratitude to all of the ShalomLearning educators who have submitted feedback upon which the curriculum updates are based.