Itzik attended the one-year program at the Hebrew University through a scholarship awarded by the Canadian Friends of Hebrew University to a selected CHAT grad. He holds a doctorate in law from The Hebrew University and is Senior Assistant to the Legal Advisor of Israel’s State Comptroller helping, among other things, to oversee the auditing and compliance of Israel’s various political parties and candidates. He and his wife Chaya made aliyah to Beit Shemesh where they raised three children. Their growing family includes a son-in-law, two grandchildren and the recent arrival of Savta Mary Becker as a new olah. 

Lindsay played NCAA basketball at Tufts University in Boston, where she also explored her passion for technology and graduated with a degree in Computer Science. She is a software engineer and works at Sonos, an American developer and manufacturer of audio products in Boston. 

Russell holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he focused on social entrepreneurship. He was the Founder and CEO of CrowdChange, a fundraising technology company. He also co-founded Feed the Deed, a social media initiative spreading kindness globally. He is now working on building new initiatives in the self-help and education spaces. 

Renee is a freelance journalist covering Israel and the Jewish world. Her work has been published in The Times of Israel, Haaretz, The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Hadassah Magazine, The Jerusalem Report, and other media outlets. Prior to becoming a journalist, Renee worked for nearly two decades in Jewish education in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. Renee made aliyah seven years ago. She and husband Joel have three grown sons.  

Paula is the Associate Director of Global Student Experiences at Hillel International. Still taking an “extended vacation” from Toronto, Paula has resided in Israel and Ohio, and is currently based in Colorado where she lives with husband Seth, who she met in Israel, and daughter Bari. She has kept in touch with the great friends she made at the school, and she credits her education here with preparing her for university and graduate school, and in helping raise the bar and expectations that she sets for herself professionally. 

Larry received a degree in Physics from Harvard in 1987, and an MA in Film from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He was personally selected by Steven Spielberg to direct DreamWorks’ flagship interactive computer game Goosebumps straight out of school. He then went on to direct the box office hits Cats & Dogs and Antz! Larry is cofounder and Chief Customer Officer of SonicCloud, a revolutionary technology for personalizing sound on phones and computers for people with hearing loss. He was named one of Fast Company Magazine’s “100 Most Creative People in Business” in 2018.  

Dan fell in love with Jewish history at CHAT, leading him to pursue a career as a historian of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and Israel. After completing his Ph.D. in History at Stanford University, he was an assistant professor in McGill’s Department of Jewish Studies. In 2019, Dan moved with his Australian husband Alex and their daughter Miriam to Melbourne. He currently teaches in Monash University’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation.

Martin has worked as a filmmaker, foreign correspondent and war correspondent for 25 years for CTV, Global TV, FOX, and as a producer for ABC News. His television series, documentaries and news coverage have exposed major issues throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the Americas, and have appeared on PBS, Bloomberg TV, NBC, SKY, BBC, CNN, CBC Documentary Channel, CTV, and Global Television Canada, among others. His most recent documentaries include The Arrest, Undercover in ISIS, and Secrets of Survival.  

Miriam is Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Yale Law School, where her team focuses on admitting diverse, academically and professionally excellent students, and ensuring equitable financial support. Prior to this, she worked at NYU Law School as a legal research and writing professor and administrator. She has also been a litigator in private practice and at a non-profit organization focused on child welfare reform. Her first job out of law school was as a clerk for Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella of the Canadian Supreme Court.  

After completing dentistry at the University of Toronto, Simi followed her dreams and made aliyah to Israel. She is currently owner and principal dentist at Landau Dental, providing Canadian-standard dentistry to Israelis and foreigners alike. Simi lives in Jerusalem with her husband Chaim and four children.  

Brian runs a Tony Award-winning production company, AF Creative Media. After attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, he began producing theatre alongside his wife, Dayna Lee. Broadway productions include: Angels in America, Company and Moulin Rouge. Their twin girls, Ella and Emmy, are their proudest achievement.

Leon’s primary academic research area is the life and works of Charles Dickens. He has written and lectured widely, and is an expert analyst of Dickens’s letters, manuscripts, and handwriting. He is Reader at the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast, and has been appointed to the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives (ACNRA), an independent body in the UK that deals with freedom of Information requests. He has held a range of public appointments in the areas of peace and reconciliation, and arts and culture.

Elise resides in Australia, where she has worked in sales and marketing roles in the coworking and fintech industries. She is an active member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Melbourne and co-founded WOTIV (The Women’s Orthodox Tefillah in Victoria), a group that provides opportunities for women to learn and practice skills such as leading tefillot and leining.  

Jeremy is a prolific and award-winning feature film and television director with too many credits to mention. He has been nominated for the Best Director Emmy Award for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, and for the Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg-produced The Pacific. He has directed for many of the most ground-breaking cable television series, including The Handmaid’s Tale, True Detective, Six Feet Under, Homeland, The Borgias, The Tudors, Dexter, Weeds, and Queer as Folk. He has also written and directed three award-winning feature films: Fugitive Pieces, The Five Senses, and Eclipse.  

Talia is a European and Dutch migration law specialist, currently working as a legal advisor with undocumented migrants in the city of Utrecht, Netherlands. One of her fondest high school memories is a Jewish History trip to Kensington Market, which made a particularly strong impression. Learning about the overlapping migrant groups that lived in that neighbourhood was formative in her choice of career path.  

After articling and working in Toronto, Jeffrey relocated to London and was a partner in UK-based law firm, Freshfields, for 17 years. In 2016, he became Partner in the London office of New York-based international law firm, White & Case. He resides in north London. He and his wife have four children all of whom attend Jewish schools.  

Karen is a senior teaching fellow and the director of Liberal Arts at the University of Bristol in the UK. She is a scholar of multiethnic, American, and women’s literature. Her most recent book, Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2018) examines media portrayals of Orthodox Jewish women and delves beyond stereotypes to identify a powerful tradition of feminist literary portrayals of Orthodox women – often created by Orthodox women themselves. 

Karl has served in various positions at Rambam Medical Center and at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He is currently Dean of the growing Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University in the Galilee. He is a nephrologist, and enjoys teaching and conducting research in population genetics. Karl and his wife Linda moved to Israel in 1995. His five married children and eighteen Israeli-born grandchildren live, study, and work in Haifa.

Kyle graduated with an MBA from Tel Aviv University in 2019. He was drawn to the tech ecosystem in Israel, joining high-growth start-up, Oribi.io where he is scaling up their Business Development and Sales Team.

After graduating from TanenbaumCHAT, Robbie went on to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He co-founded the seven-piece jazz-funk band “Ripe” with fellow students. The band has since grown into a North American touring act.