Professor Adi Stern is the president of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. He is a graphic designer, type designer and a design educator, who served as the head of the visual communication department at Bezalel from 2008–2015. Adi’s field of expertise is typography and typeface design. He writes, consults and lectures on the design and history of the Hebrew letter. Since 1994 he has run his own leading visual communication studio, specializing in design for cultural institutions, as well as in book design and typography. Adi was a selected artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation and the recipient of the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture Design Prize. He has worked with Design Museum Holon, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Batsheva Dance Company, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israel Festival, the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, the Israeli Opera, Yad Vashem, The Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, and more. Many of Adi’s works have been exhibited internationally and have won awards, including the Tokyo Type Directors Award and the New York Art Directors Club Silver and Bronze awards. His work has also been recognized by the Type Directors Club (New York), Design and Art Direction (London), International Society of Typographic Designers (London) and the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers.
Isaac Herzog is the Eleventh President of the State of Israel. The son of Israel’s sixth President, Chaim Herzog, and grandson of Israel’s first Chief Rabbi, Yizhak Isaac Halevi Herzog, he was born in Tel Aviv in 1960, trained as a lawyer, and became a senior partner at Herzog, Fox & Neeman. In 2003, Isaac Herzog was elected to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, after serving as government secretary to Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In his 15-year Knesset career, Herzog held several ministerial posts, including Housing and Construction, Tourism, and Diaspora Affairs. In 2013, he was elected chairman of the Israel’s Labor party, becoming the Knesset opposition leader. Two years later he led the alliance between the Labor Party and Hatnua to form Israel’s largest center-left political party, the Zionist Union. In June 2018, Herzog was elected chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel. In 2021, he was elected by the Knesset as President of the State of Israel. He is married to Michal and they have three sons.
Yael Hess is the director of the Mandel Leadership Institute. A colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reserves and a graduate of the Israel National Defense College, Yael served in key positions in the IDF Education Corps for many years. She commanded the Shaare Avraham training base, which trains the educational staff of all IDF units; she headed the Education Corps’ Culture Branch; and she commanded the IDF’s education system, which includes high-school completion courses, matriculation studies, preparation for enlistment, and the IDF’s Gadna bases, where future conscripts participate in week-long preparatory programs. In her last position in the IDF, Yael headed the Education Division of the IDF Chief Education Officer’s headquarters. In this combined educational and managerial position, she was responsible for defining the IDF’s educational approach; implementing the IDF’s spirit and values; and overseeing the work of the educational staffs of all IDF units, and the work of IDF hasbara (information) units throughout the country. She was also responsible for cultural activities for soldiers and for Holocaust education and commemoration throughout the IDF. From 2000 to 2003, Yael served as a community emissary of the Jewish Agency to North America and taught Hebrew in the department of Middle Eastern studies of the University of Arizona and at the Tucson Hebrew Academy. She holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a master’s degree in national security studies from the University of Haifa. Yael is a graduate of the Mandel IDF Educational Leadership Program.
Chen Artzi Sror is a journalist, educator, social entrepreneur, and the director of the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture. She is a columnist in the weekend supplement of the Yedioth Ahronoth daily newspaper, where she focuses on Israeli society. Additional topics at the heart of her writing include culture and Jewish culture, politics, and women’s rights. Chen is a content producer and television and radio host, served in the armed forces at the IDF radio station Galei Tzahal, and held managerial and editing positions at Yedioth Ahronoth. She is the author of The New Religious Women: When Religious Feminism Meets Social Media (Yedioth Books, Hebrew), which tells the story of Orthodox feminist women and the trailblazing role they are playing in the religious Zionist community through their online activities. Chen is a graduate of the Ofakim honors program at Tel Aviv University, where she specialized in teaching Jewish philosophy, and is a graduate of Cohort 3 of the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture.
Rabbi Mishael Zion, an educator and community entrepreneur, is a faculty member of the Mandel Institute. He was the founding director of the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture, where he currently serves as a faculty member dedicated to the leadership development of fellows and graduates in the fields of culture, media, and community in Israel. Mishael is the author of Esther: A New Israeli Commentary (2019) and is the co-author of Halaila Hazeh: An Israeli Haggadah (2004) and A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices (2007), together with his father, Noam Zion. Born and raised in Jerusalem, Mishael is a founder of the Klausner Minyan, a partnership minyan in Talpiot, where he lives with his wife and four daughters. Mishael holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and Jewish thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in New York. Previously, he served as the co-director and rabbi of the Bronfman Fellowship, a leadership program for outstanding young Jewish people in Israel and North America. Mishael has served as a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and North America, and has been a visiting scholar at the New York University School of Law and the Center for Israel Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
