Staff
Elizabeth Mandel
jGirls+ Magazine’s Executive Director Elizabeth Mandel is an accomplished documentary filmmaker, published writer, editor, and community activist. She has built a successful record of using media to raise awareness and create change around social justice, gender and Jewish community issues. …
Carolyn Kettig
Carolyn Kettig is a professional actor based in New York City, where she has performed at The Public Theater and helped develop new work with brilliant playwrights at the Atlantic Theater Company, Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick, WP Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater, and The Hearth. …
Michele Lent Hirsch
Michele Lent Hirsch is a writer and editor. Her first book, Invisible — a blend of literary journalism and memoir — came out in 2018 from Beacon Press. Her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Vice, The Guardian, and New York magazine’s The Cut …
Bex Ehrmann
Bex Ehrmann is a Chicago-based writer, theatremaker, and educator. They have received fellowships from Luminarts Cultural Foundation and Lambda Literary…
Steph Black
Steph Black is a Jewish activist and writer based in D.C. where she fights to expand abortion access and reproductive justice. She writes newsletters, funds abortion, and…
We’re Hiring!
jGirls+ is currently looking to fill paid positions on our staff. Learn more and join us!
Advisory Council
Aliza Mazor
Aliza Mazor is the Chief Field Building Officer, responsible for organizational learning and field building at UpStart. Aliza is the former Executive Director of Bikkurim where she helped to support Jewish innovators and crafted the Atid Hazak (Strong Future) initiative to help high potential organizations grow and scale. […]
Boris Kievsky
Boris Kievsky is the Chief Storyteller and Nerd for Good at dotOrgStrategy, dedicated to helping nonprofits harness storytelling and technology to create more heroes for their cause and a better world for all of us. Boris began programming computers and working with online networks at a young age […]
Deborah Meyer
Deborah Meyer is the Founder and Executive Director of Moving Traditions, whose award-winning programs, Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing! and Shevet Achim: The Brotherhood empower thousands of Jewish teen girls and boys to question gender restrictions and make meaning in Jewish community.
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Dr. Andrea Jacobs
Dr. Andrea Jacobs is a feminist educator, researcher, and organizational consultant with over 25 years of experience working for change in Jewish and wider-world communities. She has developed resources and training programs to address gender equity, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial justice […]
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin
Beth Cooper Benjamin, Ed.D., is the Director of Research at Ma’yan, a program of the JCC Manhattan that provides feminist, social justice, and leadership training to teen girls and teaches vital skills to parents and educators. In addition to her research, which uses lenses of gender and privilege to examine the lives and concerns of [...]
Ella Tav
Ella Tav currently lives in Israel in Kibbutz Beit Yisrael, an urban kibbutz in Gilo, Jerusalem. She grew up in New York City and attended the elite public high school, The Beacon School, until she decided to move to Israel and explore the possibility of making aliyah (immigrating to Israel). While in high school, she worked as an assistant teacher. […]
Esther Kustanowitz
Esther D. Kustanowitz is a Los Angeles-based writer and consultant specializing in social media, pop culture, and Jewish community conversation. Esther is the Editor of GrokNation.com, a blog and web community founded by actress, neuroscientist and mom Mayim Bialik. She is also Contributing Writer at the Jewish Journal. […]
Julie Sissman
Julie Sissman is an Organization & Leadership Consultant who has worked with large organizations, like IBM, and small ones, like start-up non-profits. Julie is active in the Jewish giving circle movement, as a leader of HEKDESH, a giving circle of alumni of the Dorot Fellowship in Israel, a member of Natan.
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Katina Paron, Editorial Consultant
Katina Paron is a journalism educator with 23 years of youth media experience. She is the Director of the NYC High School Journalism Collaborative at Baruch College and the editor of Dateline: CUNY. […]
Nancy Gruver
Nancy Gruver is the founder of the innovative, educational, independent social media company for girls ages 8-14, New Moon Girls. New Moon Girls was started as a print magazine by and for girls. Nancy then transformed the company into a creative social network while continuing production of the print magazine and adding digital versions. […]
Rabbi Kara Tav
Rabbi Kara Tav is the Founding Director of Spiritual Care at Elmhurst Hospital, Queens. With twenty years’ experience in the Jewish world, Rabbi Tav is a skilled leader, chaplain, teacher and mentor. Throughout her career, Kara has worked and taught abroad and here in United States. She has taught at a variety of ages and stages of Jewish communal life. […]
Stephanie Goldfarb
Stephanie Goldfarb is a veteran Jewish community professional who has been specializing in experiential Jewish teen education at the Jewish United Fund for over six years. Holding Masters degrees in both Gender studies and clinical social work from Loyola University, as well as a certificate in Experiential Jewish Education from Yeshiva University […]