Featured Speakers

Learn about our featured speakers:

Sheila Katz

Sheila Katz is the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), a network of 180,000 advocates across the U.S. and Israel advancing the rights of women, children, and families. Since her start as CEO, Sheila has overseen the founding of the “Rabbis for Repro” campaign, building a network of over 1,000 Rabbis and Jewish clergy promoting reproductive health, rights, and justice. Additionally, under Sheila’s leadership, NCJW has made advancing anti-racism efforts at the national and local levels a priority, showing the intersectionality of racial justice in all of the organization’s main advocacy issues.

Sheila holds an M.S. in teaching from Pace University and B.A. in politics from Ithaca College. Sheila was named by the Jerusalem Post as one of 2020’s 50 most influential Jews in the World and was named by the Center for American Progress as one of 2020’s faith leaders to watch. She sits on the Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University.

Danielle Natelson

Danielle is the Director of the Springboard Fellowship at Hillel International. This role brings her full circle as an alum of the Ezra Fellowship’s inaugural cohort. Danielle has spent more than a decade working at the intersection of leadership and learning across the Jewish communal landscape. Her intersectional identity as a Jew of Color has positioned her to contribute to efforts of diversity, equity, and inclusion across the Jewish community, including selection into Bend the Arc’s second Jews of Color cohort of the Selah Leadership Program. As a Design Strategist at UpStart, she designed opportunities to support entrepreneurs and Jewish communal professionals’ leadership across the ecosystem.

Danielle led efforts to ensure greater equity, inclusion, and diversity within UpStart and its network. In 2020, she designed and piloted the Jews of Color Career Development Program in partnership with the Jews of Color Initiative to catalyze more diverse and representative leadership in the ecosystem. Previously, Danielle spent six years cultivating relationships with students, community partners, and stakeholders at Hillel at UCLA. Her passion for music and Israeli dance has helped her enrich numerous Jewish communities through the arts, most notably at Camp Ramah in California. A lifelong learner and a cohort program enthusiast, Danielle is the proud alum of UC Berkeley, the Pardes Summer program, and multiple cohort programs with the Shalom Hartman Institute. She is currently a member of the fifth class of the Wexner Field Fellowship and sits on the Jews of Color Initiative’s Grant Advisory Committee.

Manny Yekutiel

Manny Yekutiel is originally from Los Angeles, California and first moved to San Francisco in 2010 where he spent a summer raising money for same-sex marriage on our street corners as a Canvasser. He previously worked on President Obama and Secretary Clinton’s Presidential Campaigns and was a White House intern in President Obama’s White House. Manny is the owner of Manny’s, a small business which combined a restaurant, bar, coffee shop, political bookstore, and events space. The purpose of the space is to create a physical place to go to engage in civic and political life.

In its first year Manny’s was awarded Small Business of the Year by the California State Senate and has been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Since opening Manny’s has hosted over 1,000 civic events for the community, hosted online conversations viewed by over 2 million viewers, offered the space to 150 local non-profits for free and hosted 17 of the 2020 democratic presidential candidates. Manny’s has had 16 formerly homeless or incarcerated individuals graduate from the training kitchen run by the non-profit Farming Hope who now have full time jobs. Manny is also on the board of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco and the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association. He was also named 30 under 30 in law and politics by Forbes Magazine in 2015.