April Baskin, President
April Baskin is a California native currently residing in Washington, D.C. During the work week April is the Human Resources and Administration Coordinator at the World Justice Project. Between September 2008 and June 2010, as a Schusterman Insight Fellow (through the Center for Leadership Initiatives and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation), she worked at Maryland Hillel, BBYO, Inc., and Moment Magazine. She is also a graduate of the Jeremiah Fellowship with Jews United for Justice, a nine-month Jewish social change and community organizing training program. April also co-founded JewV’Nation(TM), a Jewish diversity start-up, and Jews of Color United. April earned a Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University, having majored in sociology with concentrations in community health and social inequality. She was recognized with high honors for her senior honors thesis about Jews of Color and continues to present her research at Jewish conferences and retreats around the country. While at Tufts, April interned at a variety of educational and community-based organizations, including the Chinese Progressive Association of Boston and Chabad of Sacramento. She further broadened her experience in community organizing through interfaith collaboration as an Americorps fellow for an after-school program affiliated with the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston. After graduating, April worked as a research assistant at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Outside of work, April enjoys writing, food, dance, and canines of all shapes and sizes. She can be reached at jmn.president [at] gmail [dot] com.
Cantor Shira Batalion
Cantor Shira Batalion is a graduate of the joint Cantorial Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Gratz College. She recently returned from a 4 month Volunteer Corp position through the American Jewish World Service in Kitale, Kenya where she worked with a grassroots organization that teaches sustainable agriculture. Shira currently resides in Chandler, AZ where she is pursuing a degree in Holistic Health at the Southwest Institute of the Healing Arts. She has previously worked as an education director at Congregation Bet Haverim, Atlanta’s Reconstructionist synagogue, as the High Holiday Cantor at Temple Beth Chai in D.C., as a Field Director for Obama for America, and co-wrote a progressive Haggadah. Shira is passionate about issues of diversity, and invested in creating more conscious and compassionate communities.
Howard Brown
Jen Chau
Jen Chau is the Founder and Executive Director of Swirl, an anti-racist organization that builds communities to engage in cross-cultural dialogue around race and identity. She is also an independent consultant focused on supporting non-profits with their efforts around organizational development, change management, building HR processes, diversity work, and executive coaching. Jen’s perspectives on race and racism have been featured in such publications as The New York Times, USA Today, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Additionally, Jen has appeared on CNN, NPR, MSNBC, and PBS’s Asian America as an expert on topics surrounding diversity, race issues, and mixed race identity. Jen received her BA in Women’s Studies at Wellesley College and her MS in Organizational Change Management from Milano, The New School for Management and Urban Policy. She currently lives in New York City and writes about her experiences in activism every now and then at The Time Is Always Right.
Tanya Gold
Tanya Gold joined the JMN Board of Directors in 2009. Her notoriety comes from her familial connections to her popular sisters Marissa (board member) and Jasmine (unofficial staff) Tiamfook. They raved so much about JMN, she became a counselor in 2007. After that amazing experience, she made it a priority to return yearly. Tanya studied at Yeshiva R’tzahd in Brooklyn. Her birth mom’s white and Jewish family originated from a shtetl in Eastern Europe and her Black and Asian father grew up in the Caribbean raised Christian. Her diverse background helps her appreciate and respect all cultures. Tanya volunteers for Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Humane Society, and Chai Impact, a volunteer organization through the Jewish federation. Tanya likes to write and travel, and created a JMN coloring book. In her spare time, she practices medicine and is a yoga instructor.
Paul Golin
Paul Golin is the Ashkenazi half of a “Jewpanese” (Jewish/Japanese) household and returns to JMN’s board after previously serving from 2007-2009. He is associate executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute (www.JOI.org), a national, independent, non-profit organization reaching out to unaffiliated Jewish families with an emphasis on engaging intermarried households and helping the organized Jewish community better welcome them in. Paul is a frequent writer and speaker on Jewish outreach and co-authored with Rabbi Kerry Olitzky the books 20 Things for Grandparents of Interfaith Grandchildren To Do (And Not Do) To Nurture Jewish Identity In Their Grandchildren (2007) and How To Raise Jewish Children…Even When You’re Not Jewish Yourself (2010). Besides JMN, he is also a volunteer leader for NY de Volunteer, a non-profit community organizing initiative for Japanese people and their friends in New York City, and he administers the Jewpanese page on Facebook. Paul has a background in media, having worked at HBO Studio Productions and a startup computer games company. He majored in Communications and Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Tiferet Gordon
Tiferet Gordon is a third year student at the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College. Most recently, she was a teacher in and director of the Beit Rabban Youth Program at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline and the director of children’s programming for Isabella Freedman in 2009. In her spare time, she volunteers with MAB Community services, reading to elderly blind women and leads Shabbat services at an assisted living home. Spending time with both children and the elderly gives her a full view of life which helps her engage her own wise discernment and appreciate the beauty and complexity of the gift of being. Currently, she is headed to Israel for a year of study in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Julie Greenberg
Rabbi Julie Greenberg has been a member of the JMN Board since 2008. She is the Rabbi of Congregation Leyv Ha-Ir~Heart of the City in Philadelphia (www.leyvhair.org) and has a private counseling practice, Counseling with Soul. She is ordained as a Reconstructionist Rabbi and trained and licensed as a family therapist specializing in helping families and individuals cope with special needs children, navigate family transitions and grow spiritually. Julie is mother of five children in a multiracial family. She can be reached at JulieGberg@gmail.com.
Shahanna McKinney
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Alexandra Newman-Kofinas
Alexandra Newman-Kofinas comes from a Jewish family with diverse backgrounds. During her undergraduate years, she majored in Judaic Studies and worked as a diversity trainer. Helping to staff JMN retreats since 2005, Alexandra was asked to join the JMN board in 2008. Alexandra and her husband are residents of Queens, NY and beginning the Fall of 2010, she will attend the CUNY Hunter’s Graduate School for Social Work. She can be reached at alexandrabethnewman@gmail.com.
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Jesse Saltzman
Jessie Saltzman was born in the Dominican Republic and was immediately adopted by a single Caucasian Jewish woman. During her early childhood years she was raised in Manhattan but moved to Texas with her mom and little brother at the age of 8. She currently is a senior at the International School of the Americas where she participates annually in Model United Nations and attends the North East School of the Arts studying musical theatre and technical theatre. She has been part of the Jewish Multiracial Network for 14 years and is the youngest board member.
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Chava Shervington
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Marissa Tiamfook
Marissa Tiamfook grew up in Brooklyn, NY, with an Ashkenazi Jewish New Yorker mother and a half Black, half Chinese Catholic father from Trinidad. She was always active in her Jewish community, on the board of Hillel at UNC-Chapel Hill, and currently volunteers with her synagogue in Los Angeles, CA and with Jewish World Watch. She spent four months in Uganda in 2009 volunteering through American Jewish World Service and misses her Abayudaya Jewish community there. Marissa attended her first JMN retreat in 2005, wishing an organization such as JMN existed when she was a child. She returned as a Youth Counselor and Head Counselor, brought other family members along, and joined the board in 2008.
