JPPI

Inbal is a Ph.D. student at the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is also a teaching assistant at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy and at the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government. She worked as a Content Director and a member of the steering committee of the Israeli President's Conference (2008-2009). She holds a master's degree (honors) from the academic program in Public Policy at the Hebrew University.

Gabriel Abensour grew up in France and made Aliyah in 2011. Gabriel is a PhD student in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a President's Fellow at the Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. His research lies at the intersection of Mizrahi studies, Jewish Law, and History. Gabriel earned his MA and a multidisciplinary bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Hebrew University where he was a student in the Amirim Interdisciplinary Honors Program in the Humanities. For the last two years, Gabriel worked as Research Assistant in the Center for Religion, Nation and State at the Israel Democracy Institute. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Chen and their son Peli.

Dr. Einat Wilf, the Baye Foundation Adjunct Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was Chair of the Education, Sports and Culture Committee, Chair of the Knesset Sub-Committee for Israel and the Jewish People, and Member of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the 18th Knesset.

Born in 1948 in Tel Aviv, studied law, general history and political science, and specialized in Political Philosophy. In 1977 he started to work at Yediot Acharonot newspaper as a news editor. From 1989 to 1993 he was Yediot Achranot's Washington correspondent. Since his return to Israel, he has worked mainly at Yediot Acharonot publishing house, as the head of the political and security division, and as a member of the editorial staff. In this capacity he has edited books by Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, Ezer Weizman, Moshe Arens, Yossi Beilin, Moshe (Bogi) Ya'alon, Dan Halutz, Uri Sagi, Avraham Burg and others

Michael Herzog is a Brigadier General in reserve. He was discharged in August 2010 from long service in the IDF, which included, among other things, combat as an infantryman in the Yom Kippur War, a long career in the Intelligence Division, the head of the Strategic Planning Division in the Planning Division (AGT), the military secretary to the defense minister and chief of staff Minister of Defense (a total of six years in the last two positions, with four defense ministers). Herzog has been involved in all of Israel's peace talks with the Palestinians, Syrians and Jordanians since 1993. Between May 2009 and March 2010, he served as a special envoy of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense in efforts to drive the political process. He has also served and is serving as a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. In 2021 Herzog was named Israel's Ambassador to the US.

Col. (Res.) Zilber served in the IDF (Air Force) for 30 years. In his last position he was the head of the Intelligence Operations Department of the Air Force's Intelligence Division. Elder has a bachelor's degree in accounting and economics from Tel Aviv University and a master's degree in national security from Haifa University. After his release, he served as VP of Operations at the startup company VERBIT and was a partner in the startup LOOKING. Eldar heads JPPI's Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Information and Consulting Center.

Dan Feferman recently completed his service with the IDF at the rank of major. For nearly a decade Dan served as a foreign policy and national security analyst and advisor to the General Staff, focusing on US-Israel strategic relations, as a special assistant to the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, and as a commander in an elite intelligence unit within the IDF's Research and Analysis Division, where he continues to serve in reserve duty. Through his various positions, Dan has been closely involved in Israel's most pressing strategic defense and political issues. Dan also consults, lectures and writes on foreign policy, defense and intelligence matters . Prior to his military service, Dan completed an MA in National Security Studies from Tel Aviv University and a BA in International Politics and Middle East Studies from the School of International Service, at the American University, Washington DC, both with honors. Dan also completed a prestigious internship at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Laura Kam is the Director of Communications for JPPI and President of Kam Global Strategies, a Jerusalem-based international strategic communications company. Previously she was Executive Director for Global Affairs at The Israel Project working on projects in the U.S., China, India, Russia, and Europe. Laura held various positions at the Anti-Defamation League in New York, Washington, D.C. and in Jerusalem, including as co-director of ADL’s Israel office.   Prior to that she was a press officer at the Consulate General of Israel in New York.  A diplomatic spouse, Laura served in an official capacity in Berlin, Germany for five years.  Laura has a BA in education from the State University of New York at Sony Brook, an MSW in community organization from Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work and has completed all her doctoral coursework at the City University of New York in the field of social work administration.

Dr. Gitit Levy-Paz is a fellow at JPPI. She has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Bar-Ilan University, an M.A. in Hebrew Literature from Ben Gurion University, and a B.A. in Political Science and Communication from Bar-Ilan University. Her work focuses on contemporary Jewish American identity from an interdisciplinary – sociological, political and literary - viewpoint. In addition to her work at the JPPI, she is a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. Gitit was selected as a research fellow for the Israel Democracy Institute's program on Judaism and Human Rights and has received several other fellowships. She worked as a literary editor and wrote literary criticism for the literary section of Haaretz.

STEVEN W. POPPER, (Ph.D., Economics, UC Berkeley, 1985; B.S. summa cum laude, Biochemistry, U of Minnesota, 1976) is a RAND Senior Economist and Professor of Science and Technology Policy in the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He is also director of RAND's Israel Initiative. He has published research on the economics of innovation -- particularly how organizations both public and private identify and incorporate technological change. He led RAND's first Summer Institute, a week-long workshop on science, technology and U.S. economic competitiveness. From 1996 to 2001 he was the Associate Director of RAND’s Science and Technology Policy Institute (S&TPI.) He provided research and analytic support to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and other agencies of the executive branch. His work included projects on the economic and social returns to basic research, assessing critical technologies (including principal authorship of the Fourth U.S. National Critical Technologies Review,) policy analyses of national innovation systems, evaluations of federal R&D portfolios relevant to the Global War on Terror, determining the S&T capabilities required for a prospective Department of Homeland Security, technical barriers to international trade (for the National Institute of Standards and Technology,) federal R&D portfolio decisionmaking (for the National Science Board and the World Bank,) and Presidential transition documents on S&T issues of national importance. Dr. Popper is currently leading projects on better integration of technology assessment into transportation planning for the Transportation Research Board and has recently competed studies on energy strategy in Israel and science and technology-based economic development in Mexico City. He has now begun a new project to work with Israel's police on domestic policing issues. He was active in founding projects of the RAND Pardee Center for Longer-Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition. This included co-authorship of the flagship study, Shaping the Next Hundred Years, which provides a new methodological framework for decision making under profound uncertainty that has been applied to an increasing set of policy issues. In particular, he has advised doctoral dissertations applying these concepts to issues in R&D planning and S&T policy. Dr. Popper has conducted research for, and has served as consultant to, several non-U.S. governments as well as multilateral international organizations such as OECD and the World Bank on issues of technology planning, industrial restructuring, and regional economic development. Prior to joining RAND he worked as a researcher in physical chemistry and enzymology, as Country Account Officer for Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia at Bank of America, and as consultant to the World Bank on issues of industrial restructuring in East Europe. He has also been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is a member of the AAAS Policy Council representing the Industrial Science and Technology section, and is a Charter Member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.