Executive Committee
Leo Slepak
An investment banker, investor, and business developer with more than 30 years of experience in global entrepreneurship. In his youth was at the center of Moscow’s refusenik activism; in subsequent years led efforts in the West on behalf of his parents in Soviet exile.
Simon Klarfeld
Ex Officio, Executive Director, SJMEP. Educator, nonprofit manager, program designer, curriculum developer. Soviet Jewry Movement work in London, Leningrad, SF Bay Area, and Kyiv. Fluent in Russian and dabbles in Hebrew.
Doug Cahn
Principal, The Cahn Group, LLC. Former: Vice President, Human Right Programs, Reebok International Ltd.; Senior Congressional staff member, Human Rights Information Center of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (Madrid).
Miriam Rosenblum
Career in nonprofit leadership. Former: Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, Cincinnati Council for Soviet Jews, Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism, MIT Hillel, JCRC (Cincinnati). Current: Brain Educators. Co-creator: First U.S. historical marker recognizing Soviet Jewry movement.
Bob Gordon
Former & current leadership: Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, Boston Action for Soviet Jewry, Social Venture Fund for Jewish-Arab Equality and Shared Society. Entrepreneur: The Store 24 Inc. and City North Development, LLC.
Morey Schapira
Former leadership: Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, Student Struggle for Soviet Jews, Boston Action for Soviet Jewry, Medical Mobilization for Soviet Jews. Co-creator: Let My People Go. High Tech Executive.
Debbie Kardon
Executive Director, Action for Post-Soviet Jewry; Chair, Action for Ukraine. Leadership roles at Jewish non-profits as a change agent and organizational leader.
Board of Directors
Wendy Eisen
Longtime community leader and Soviet Jewry activist. She served as chairman of the Montreal 35s, the Toronto 35s, and the Ontario and national Soviet Jewry committees of the Canadian Jewish Congress. She is the author of “Count Us In: The Struggle to Free Soviet Jews – A Canadian Perspective”
Rabbi Enid Lader
Congregational rabbi, Jewish educator, Interfaith relations. Board service: Academy for Jewish Religion, Greater Cleveland Bd of Rabbis (Chair), AJR Assoc of Rabbis & Cantors (Chair), First US historical marker recognizing Soviet Jewry movement (Co-creator).
Eti Ganin
Jewish communal leader. Former: Materials Scientist and Engineer. IBM & GE. Activist & refusenik in Kishinev & Leningrad; Proud beneficiary of movement for Soviet Jewish liberation that started in Cleveland.
David Z. Pinsky
Partner, Covington’s international arbitration and litigation practices with focus on former Soviet Union. Lecturer, Columbia Law School. Board service: NY’s UJA-Federation FSU Division, Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst. Emigrated from USSR (Kyiv) 1979 at the age of two.
Jessica Katz
Columbia Univ School of Architecture & Planning. Former: City of New York Chief Housing Officer; Citizens Housing & Planning Council. Once called "The Littlest Refusenik" she emigrated from the USSR in 1977.
Zev Yaroslavsky
Director, Los Angeles Initiative, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Former: County Supervisor, County of Los Angeles; Council Member, City of Los Angeles; CA Students for Soviet Jews, Southern CA Council for Soviet Jews; Union of Council for Soviet Jews.
Advisory Council
Yosef Abramowitz
American-Israeli activist, educator and entrepreneur; recognized as one of the pioneers of the solar industry in Israel. Was president of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) at the height of the Soviet Jewry movement.
Shaul Kelner
Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt University; Author, "A Cold War Exodus" (2024) and numerous papers and chapters about Soviet Jewry movement; Teaches annual seminar “The Cold War Struggle to Free Soviet Jews.”
Gal Beckerman
Senior Editor for Books, The Atlantic. When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone (2010), his book documenting the Soviet Jewry movement, chosen as a book of the year by The New Yorker and the Washington Post.
Zoya Raynes
Managing Director, Bank of America; Senior Relationship Management team. 25+ years Wall Street experience; formerly Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Bear Stearns. Current board service: Jewish Funders Network (Chair), UJA-Federation of New York, Ruderman Family Foundation, Jewish Heritage Program. Former President, Jewish Communal Fund. Born in Kyiv; immigrated to the US in 1979.
Dr. Michael Beizer
Historian of Russian-Soviet Jewry, former refusenik, and activist in Leningrad. Retired research fellow at Hebrew University. Author of multiple books on Soviet Jewry. Executive Director of “Remember and Save” archive of the Aliyah Movement in the USSR.
Glenn Richter
National Director, Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ), 1964-1991.
Dina Beilin
A leading Moscow refusenik leader, coordinator of refusenik records.
Adele Sandberg
South Florida Council for Soviet Jewry leadership; Jewish communal leader.
Laura Bialis
Documentary filmmaker; Founder, Foundation for Documentary Projects; Director & Producer, Refusenik (2008).
Joel Sandberg
Former Vice President, Union of Councils for Soviet Jews; South Florida Council for Soviet Jewry; Jewish communal leader.
Pamela Braun Cohen
Author, "Hidden Heroes, One Woman’s Story of Resistance and Rescue in the Soviet Union." Former: Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (President), Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry.
Natan Sharansky
Refusenik; Prisoner of Zion; Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, 2001-2003; Chairman of the Executive Board of the Jewish Agency, 2009-2018; Author.
The Honourable Irwin Cotler
International Chair, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights; Former Member, Canadian Parliament, Minister of Justice, and Attorney General. Represented Natan Sharansky.
Barry Shrage
President of Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) of Greater Boston, 1987-2018; Professor, Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program, Brandeis University, 2018-present.
Rita Eker
Leader: The 35’s - Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry (United Kingdom). Co-founder: One-to-One Project. MBE honors in 1999.
Alexander Smuckler
Soviet-born activist and community leader shaped by Moscow's refusenik era. Central figure in production and distribution of Jewish samizdat and dissident materials; samizdat collection archived at the Wende Museum, Los Angeles. Post-emigration: continued advocacy and philanthropic support for Jews in and from the FSU, including documentation of refusenik history and primary-source collections.
John Grabowski
Senior Vice President, Western Reserve Historical Society; Krieger-Mueller Associate Professor of Applied History, Case Western Reserve University.
David Waksberg
Retired Jewish educator and nonprofit executive. Activism rooted in grassroots Soviet Jewry organizing — active with Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry as a teen and young adult. Former Executive Director, Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews. Founding board member, SJMEP.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg
Lifetime of service to the Jewish people: Leading Jewish thinker, scholar, professor, author, and innovator. Pioneer in Holocaust education and commemoration; supporter of intra-faith dialogue in Jewish leadership; a founder of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry.
Enid Wurtman
Jerusalem-based activist originally from Philadelphia, Enid helped sustain and resettle Soviet refuseniks. She raised awareness, funds, and hope—supporting thousands as they made aliyah and built new lives in Israel.
Danny Grossman
Former Diplomat, Entrepreneur, and Foundation Leader. Jewish Community Federation of S.F. & Bay Area (2015-21); Wild Planet (1993-2011), US Dept of State Foreign Service Officer with focus on human rights (1983-89).
Sylva Zalmanson
Former refusenik, Participant in the 1970 “Leningrad Hijacking”; Human rights activist; Artist.
Yossi Klein Halevi
Senior Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem. Co-host, For Heaven's Sake podcast (Hartman Institute). Former Contributing Editor, The New Republic. Co-director, Hartman Institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative (2013–2023). Author: "Like Dreamers" (Jewish Book Council Everett Book of the Year) and "Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor" (NYT bestseller, published in 12 languages).
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetzov
Filmmaker. Director of “Operation Wedding,” 2016, documentary of the 1970 "Leningrad Hijacking;” Winner of 21 awards at film festivals around the world. Creator, "Let My People Go” educational program.
David Harris
National Coordinator, Freedom Sunday; key organizer, Soviet Jewry movement. CEO, American Jewish Committee (25 years). Author: In the Trenches: Selected Speeches and Writings of an American Jewish Activist, 1979–1999.
Tatiana Zunshine
Author, "A Woman Under Surveillance: My Fight With the KGB to Free My Husband From the Siberian Gulag." Former refusenik. Founder and Director, Children Helping Children International.
Consultant
Sasha Krasny
Seasoned nonprofit executive with over 20 years of experience transforming organizational missions into measurable impact. Principal Consultant at Krasny International Consulting since 2016, leading multimillion-dollar fundraising campaigns and specializing in foundation strategy, major donor relations, and philanthropic advisement. Former leadership roles at The Jewish Agency, Genesis Philanthropy Group, and UJA-Federation of New York. As a multilingual immigrant from a family of refuseniks, she brings a profound personal connection to preserving Soviet Jewry stories.