About Us

Jack Lew is Ambassador of the United States to Israel.  Nominated by President Biden, he was sworn in on November 2, 2023.  Ambassador Lew previously served as the 76th Secretary of the Treasury, White House Chief of Staff and twice as Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), under both President Clinton and President Obama.  He previously served in the Department of State as Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources under Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.

After leaving the Department of the Treasury, Ambassador Lew served as Managing Partner at Lindsay Goldberg, a private equity firm, and on the faculty at School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, from which he is currently on leave.

Previously, Lew served as managing director and chief operating officer for two different Citigroup business units.  Prior to that, he was executive vice president and chief operating officer of New York​ University, where he was responsible for budget, finance, and operations, and served as a professor of public administration.  President George W. Bush nominated Ambassador Lew to serve on the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, where he chaired its Management, Administration, and Governance Committee.

As OMB Director, Lew led the Administration budget team and served as a member of the National Security Council.  During his first tenure at OMB, the U.S. budget operated at a surplus for three consecutive years.  Earlier, Lew served as OMB’s Deputy Director and was a member of the negotiating team that reached a bipartisan agreement to balance the budget.  As Special Assistant to President Clinton from 1993 to 1994, Mr. Lew helped design Americorps, the national service program.

Lew began his career in Washington in 1973 as a legislative aide. From 1979 to 1987, he was a principal domestic policy advisor to House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr, when he served the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee as Assistant Director and then Executive Director.  He was the Speaker’s liaison to the Greenspan Commission, which negotiated a bipartisan solution to extend the solvency of Social Security in 1983, and he was responsible for domestic and economic issues, including Medicare, budget, tax, trade, appropriations, and energy issues.

After the Obama Administration, Lew served on the boards of the National Library of Israel, USA (where he was co-president); the National Committee on US China Relations (where he was chair); the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and the Financial Services Volunteer Corps.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and of the bar in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Ambassador Lew is a graduate of Harvard College (AB) and Georgetown University Law Center (JD).  He has received three honorary degrees.

Sender Cohen is based in New York and serves as Managing Partner of KH2 Capital and Chairman of Nevo Labs, a newly formed Israel based commercial lab focused on researching, developing and investing in deep technology verticals.

Sender is Chairman of Fulbright Israel, a role to which he was appointed by US Ambassador Tom Nides, a Trustee of the Harlem Childrens Zone, a Trustee Emeritus of Yeshiva University, and was a founding trustee of the Birthright-Israel Foundation. 

Sender has over two decades of multi-asset investing experience at global family offices and investment firms.
He was most recently the CIO of Schusterman Interests, the investment office for the Tulsa Oklahoma based Schusterman family, the founders of the oil and gas E&P company, Samson. Sender managed the entire multi-strategy asset pool at Schusterman, which both invested directly and allocated capital externally.

Previously, Sender was Director of Research & Head of External Allocations at Soros Fund Management where he was also Co-Head of the technology venture investing portfolio for the firm. 

Prior to working with the Soros families, he was a Managing Director at Duquesne Capital Management, the investment firm of legendary investor Stan Druckenmiller, and before that he was also a Portfolio Manager at Soros (and a Partner at Soros Private Equity Partners responsible for private technology investments) having been hired there by Mr. Druckenmiller. 

 

Jeff Daigle, a career member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister Counselor, most recently served as U.S. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Cabo Verde from 2019 to 2024. Upon his departure from the posting, he was the third-longest serving incumbent U.S. ambassador in the world. 

Ambassador Daigle joined the Department of State in 1999 and has served abroad with the U.S. embassies in Nigeria, France, Cambodia, and Iraq, as well as the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York. In Washington, he has held a variety of positions, including Executive Director for the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (which appraises U.S. government activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics and reports its findings and recommendations to the President, Secretary of State, and Congress); Chief of Staff for the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, assisting with strategic oversight of the Department of State’s $1.2 billion global Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs operations; and Deputy Assistant Coordinator for Products in the Bureau of International Information Programs. 

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Ambassador Daigle held a range of positions in the private and non-profit sectors. He was the Executive Director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; a performer and facilitator of professional development programs at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida; an English teacher in Chiba Prefecture, Japan; and a Regional Corporate Trainer for Hibernia National Bank in Baton Rouge. 

Ambassador Daigle has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Louisiana State University. He has studied French, Khmer, and Portuguese and is the recipient of multiple Meritorious and Superior Honor Awards from the Department of State.

Joëlle Uzarski is the Cultural Attaché at U.S. Embassy Jerusalem.  Since 2005, she served at the U.S. embassies in Brasilia, Bangkok, Islamabad, New Delhi, and Santiago, where she directed State Department educational and cultural programs in Afghanistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Chile, India, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Paraguay, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uruguay, and Vietnam.  Her most recent assignment was a teaching and research fellowship at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.  She has degrees in Creative Writing and Applied Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Prior to joining MSD, Alisa was a Managing Director, Corporate Strategy at Foresite Capital, a life sciences/biotechnology firm, where she had responsibility for corporate development, long-term capital strategy, investor relations, human resources, ESG engagement, and other operational areas. For nearly 12 years prior to Foresite, Alisa was a senior member of the investment team of Carnegie Corporation of New York. She was at Carnegie from 2009 through 2020, where she focused on the management of Carnegie’s real estate and natural resources portfolios, as well as its absolute return and inflation-linked strategies. Alisa graduated magna cum laude from Yale with an honors degree in political science and received her JD from Stanford Law School.

Thomas R. Nides is the Vice Chairman, Strategy and Client Relations at Blackstone. Mr. Nides has extensive experience in both the public and private sector. He served as the United States’ Ambassador to Israel from 2021 to 2023. Prior to that, he spent over a decade at Morgan Stanley in various capacities including Chief Operating Officer and Vice Chairman. Nides was appointed Deputy Secretary of State and Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. State Department by President Barack Obama and was awarded the nation’s highest diplomatic honor by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for his service. He has also previously been a senior leader at Credit Suisse, Fannie Mae, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and on Capitol Hill.

Nides currently serves on the boards of the Partnership for Public Service, the International Rescue Committee, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the Urban Alliance Foundation. He received his B.A. from the University of Minnesota. He formerly served as chairman of the board of the Woodrow Wilson Center.
 

Pamela Reeves is an international development and policy strategist who advises governments, foundations, and companies.  She is currently the Vice Chancellor of Brown University. She served in the Obama Administration as director of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s International Fund for Women and Girls.

Reeves has contributed to global strategic programming and agenda-setting as advisor to major companies and as the consulting senior advisor on gender strategy to the Executive Office of Melinda Gates. Reeves served as the United Nations human rights officer for Liberia during that country’s civil war and has worked in over 20 countries on governance transitions. Reeves also serves on the Board of Governors of the John Carter Brown Library and chairs the board of the Kakenya Center for Excellence in Kenya. In addition, she has served on the boards of directors of Women for Women International and the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. She holds a B.A. in international relations from Brown University and an M.A. in international relations from Yale University.
 

Ariela Dubler is the Head of School at The Abraham Joshua Heschel School, a Nursery through Twelfth Grade pluralistic Jewish day school in New York City. Previously, she was a professor at Columbia Law School with a specialty in family law and legal history. Ariela was on the founding board of The Natan Fund. Ariela Holds a B.A. from Harvard College, an M.A. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. from Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Ariela lives in New York with her husband and three children.

Dr. Jessica Liebowitz is a Research Scientist in Computer Science at Brandeis University, where she is co-founder and co-director of the Data Science Internal Internship (DSII). This project creates partnerships between top-performing undergraduates in data science/artificial intelligence and administrative offices across the university. It oversees the experiential learning of participating students, who work directly with administrative leaders to increase the university’s organizational effectiveness through innovations in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. It grew out of Dr. Liebowitz’s and Professor Tim Hickey’s data analytic research into the supply and demand of fastest growing skills within the higher ed sector.

Dr Liebowitz also serves as the Chair of the Advisory Council for the Brandeis University Consortium for the Teaching of Hebrew Language and Culture. She is a long-time supporter of the professionalization of Hebrew language learning. While at Middlebury College as special advisor to the Chair of the Board, Dr Liebowitz helped support the creation of the Middlebury School of Hebrew in 2007 and served on its first Advisory Board. Dr Liebowitz is on the Board of Fulbright Israel, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a founding former Board member of the Natan Fund. She is currently a student in the Hebrew language program at Brandeis University.

Dr. Liebowitz holds a PhD from Harvard University, BA from Yale University, and Honorary Doctorate from Middlebury College.