Alumni Updates

Jarrett Moreno (JPDS-NC Class of 1998) is co-founder of Our Time, a non-profit committed to youth empowerment. Our Time was recently highlighted in a CNN news piece. Watch it here!

Nora Dweck (JPDS-NC class of 2000) recently took the grand prize and received four additional awards at the University of Pennsylvania’s annual student invention competition, known as Pennvention, for inventing a novel way to wirelessly charge laptops and other portable electronic devices. Working with her college roommate, and with no engineering background, the two friends swept the awards ceremony with what they call "WiFi for Energy" - a system that converts electrical energy from a wall socket into ultrasound so that it can safely be beamed across the room and power your devices. The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, the newspaper’s technology columnist, heard of the invention and invited Nora and her roommate to present their proof-of-concept model at his preeminent technology conference, D: All Things Digital, where it was a smashing success. Nora is now raising capital to move forward with the research and development phase and will ultimately introduce the product, known as uBeam, into the market place. JPDS-NC is beaming about the news!

You can get more information about Nora’s product, as well as photos and computerized renderings of the uBeam product at www.uBeam.com.

Sara Marcus (JPDS-NC Class of 2003) has been spending the spring quarter of herSophomore year atDartmouth living and teaching basic literacy and other skills to women and children in a shanty-town outsideLima, Peru.

Neilah Rovinsky (former JPDS-NC Student) is currently attending Alice Deal Middle School. She recently participated in the first class offered at Arena Stage's new theatre, where she and 13 other middle school students from all over the city met for 14 weeks and developed, wrote, produced and starred in a play "Muscle Memory" in the Voices of Now Festival.

Neshama Rovinsky (JPDS-NC Class of 2008) is attending the George School in Newtown, PA where she was elected representative for the 9th grade class. In March she attended the Panim el Panim program in Washington, DC and she plans to attend the Model UN program at the University of Pennsylvania this summer.

Michaela Wilkes-Klein (JPDS-NC Class of 2001, pictured above) has been named a fellow of the MadeleineKorbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, which prepares women for positions of global leadership. Her participation in the institute will begin this January, where she will take lessons from various international relations and public policy experts, including former U.S. Secretary of State Albright. Michaela is majoring in French and politicalscience and has worked as an intern at the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, the U.S. Department of State in the Office of United Nations Political Affairs, the Office of the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe. At Wellesley, she is involved with Wellesley Friends of Israel and serves as co-president of Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honor society. She has been accepted early decision to Georgetown University Law Center.

Jonathan Slotkin (JPDS-NC Class of 2004, pictured above) is attending the University of Rochester with a Merit Scholarship and majoring in Chemical Engineering.  He attended the McLean School of Maryland, where he received the school math and science awards and played varsity lacrosse and varsity basketball.  For the past three summers Jonathan volunteered at "A Wider Circle". He managed their warehouse and collected, moved, and organized furniture and other household goods, assisting pre-screened "clients" (homeless families) get back on their feet.

Ezra Marcus (JPDS-NC Class of 2000) graduated from Yale in 2010 and is now back working for his alma mater as an admissions officer.  While in college Ezra dabbled in acting (and is pictured above in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of "H.M.S. Pinafore).  He also sang with a men’s a cappella group and the Glee Club, helped found a journal on theology, and served on the board of Chabad at Yale.  In his spare time he studied "Ethics, Politics and Economics" with a focus on urban politics, and spent a semester working at the Housing Authority of New Haven.

Sarah Stern (JPDS-NC Class of 2003) is attending Bard College. After completing an internship with Moment Magazine, she blogged about her summer project leading a summer camp for Palestinian women. To read Sarah's blog go to: momentmagazine.wordpress.com

Oren Hirsch (JPDS-NC Class of 1997, pictured above) graduated in May 2009 from Cornell University with a degree in Urban & Regional Studies. Since his graduation, he has been living in Jerusalem, studying at the Conservative Yeshiva, and doing an internship with the Jerusalem Municipality through the WUJS program. 

In his spare time, he created an interactive bus map for the city that works in Google Earth and Google Maps. The map, which can be found online at jlembusmap.com, was written about in the Jerusalem Post. Read the article about Oren to learn more about his work here or visit his Facebook page. Enjoying the outdoor life in Israel, Oren participated in the Hazon Israel Ride, a 385 mile bike ride from Jerusalem to Eilat to raise money for environmental awareness and sustainability research in Israel and throughout the world.  His ride raised nearly $3,900 for the Arava Institute and Hazon.

Jillian Berman (JPDS-NC Class of 2001) is attending the University of Michigan. She served as the Managing News Editor of The Michigan Daily, carryring on the tradition of JPDS-NC leadership of the school paper (Gabe Nelson, JPDS-NC Class of 1999, also served as Managing News Editor of The Michigan Daily).

Rachel Brandenburg (JPDS-NC Class of 1992, pictured above) attended Tufts University, where she majored in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies. Rachel has worked as an AJC Goldman Fellow at the Transatlantic Institute in Brussels, Belgium, spent a year in Israel on a Fulbright Scholarship studying Arabic and pursuing research related to Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution initiatives, and has earned a Masters of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Rachel is currently serving as a Foreign Service Officer here in Washington, DC and serves on the JPDS-NC Board of Trustees.

News From Our Alumni

Jordan Fontheim (JPDS-NC Class of 2003) will appear on NBC's "The Sing Off" this coming season with his
a capella group, the University of Rochester Yellowjackets. The show premieres on September 19. Read more...

Hannah and Eli Weissler (JPDS-NC Class of 2009) won Field School awards in 2010-2011. Read more...

Jordana Meyer won 1st prize in the 2011 Montgomery County Middle School Writing Contest for her poem, "A History Set in Stone." Read Jordana's poem...

Nathaniel Kanefield (JPDS-NC Class of 2002) and his team won the first Dartmouth Case Competition at Tuck School of Business. Read more...

Hannah Josovitz (JPDS-NC Class of 2009) won second place in the 2011 Montgomery County Science Fair.

Joseph Horowitz (JPDS-NC Class of 2005) debuted in his first opera in December 2010. Read more...

Ari Moskowitz (JPDS-NC Class of 2008) is helping to launch a BBYO chapter in Washington, DC. Read more...

Mia Bloomfield, Nora Colman & Gabe Colman (JPDS-NC Classes of 2004, 2005 & 2008) won Field School awards in 2009-2010. Read more...

Send your updates on achievements and milestones to joshua.suchoff@jpds.org and we will include them on our website or on Facebook!