Dr. Ayman Agbaria is a lecturer in the Department of Leadership and Policy in Education at the University of Haifa. He has two master's degrees, one in international development and social change, and the other in criminology from Clark University and Hebrew University. He also holds a dual doctoral degree in educational theory and policy, and in international and comparative education from Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Agbaria has held senior positions at the Israel Association of Community Centers, the Shatil organization of the New Israel Fund and at Beit Berl College. He also served as a senior consultant to the Follow Up Committee on Arab Education and as a member of the Education Ministry's civics studies committee. He is also a co-founding member of the Dirasat institutue. Dr. Agrabia specializes in education amongst ethnic and religious minorities and researches policy and pedagogy for civics education, Islamic education and teacher training.

Yael Bar-Lev holds an M.Ed. and is currently a doctoral student at the Tel Aviv University School of Education. In recent years, Bar-Lev has focused on the relationship between education and culture, and especially on the challenges posed by the multicultural reality in Israel. Her dissertation deals with Jewish education in secular families in Israel. Over the years, Bar-Lev has worked in various other fields including cognition and learning; teaching methods; and education and television. In all of these she dealt with learning and theoretical development as well as with the development and direction of in-service courses and mentoring teachers, preschool teachers, and media professionals in their educational work. Yael is a graduate of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership.

Dr. Yehuda Ben-Dor holds a doctorate in Jewish thought from the Hebrew University. He has served as a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and as lecturer at the Elul Center for Jewish Learning. He is one of the founders of the Yesodot Center for the Study of Torah and Democracy. His area of interest lies in the interactions between Jewish thought and western Philosophy and literature.

Dr. Ruth Calderon is a Jewish Researcher and an author. She got her BA in Philosophy, Jewish Philosophy and Bible studies, at Oranim College and her MA and PhD in Talmudic Literature at the Hebrew University. Today Calderon serves as the Chairperson of ALMA- Home for Hebrew Culture, which she founded in 1996, which serves as a cultural and studies center for Hebrew Culture and the Jewish text. In 1989, Dr. Calderon established the first Israeli secular, pluralistic and egalitarian Bet Midrash. She is a recipient of the prestigious Avi Chai Prize in recognition of her contribution to the propagation of the legacy of Israel. Ruth hosted a TV show on classic and modern Jewish texts and published several writings and books and is the author of "The Market, the Home, the Heart" a personal homiletic reading of Talmudic legends (2001) . Ruth Calderon is a graduate of the first class of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership

Ms. Yonina Florsheim holds an M.A. in History from the Hebrew University. She served as director of the Center for Teaching of Jewish Studies in the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University for five years. She has taught high school history and trains teachers at the Kerem Teacher Training Institute. At the Mandel School for Educational Leadership, Ms. Florsheim is responsible for the internship programs and placement of the second year Fellows, field observations, teacher diploma and professional internship.

Dr. Eli Gottlieb is Vice President of the Mandel Foundation – Israel and Director of the Mandel Leadership Institute. He holds degrees in Philosophy and Developmental Psychology from the University of Cambridge and a doctorate in the Psychology of Education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dr. Gottlieb has served as a visiting professor in Cognitive Studies in Education at the University of Washington, an adjunct lecturer at the School of Education at the Hebrew University and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. His research examines the relations between cognition, identity and education. Recent publications include "The development of religious thinking" (Religious Education, 2006) and "Learning how to believe: Epistemic development in cultural context" (Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2007).

Professor Moshe Halbertal is a Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Hebrew University and a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University in 1989, and from 1988-1992 he was a fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He has served as a visiting Professor at Harvard Law School at University of Pennsylvania Law School and at NYU Law School. Halbertal is the author of the books “Idolatry” (co authored with Avishai Margalit) and “People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority”, both published by Harvard University Press. He has also authored “Interpretative Revolutions in the Making”, and “Between Torah and Wisdom: R. Menachem ha-Meiri and The Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence”, both published in Hebrew by Magnes Press. His last book published in Hebrew is “Concealment and Revelation: The Secret and its Boundaries in Medieval Jewish Thought” (Yeriot, 2001). Moshe Halbertal is the recipient of the Bruno Award of the Rothschild foundation, and the Goren Goldstein award for the best book in Jewish Thought in the years 1997-2000.

Ms. Hochstein served as President of the Mandel Foundation-Israel (MF-I) from 2002 to 2010, following twenty years as its Director.  She is a member of the founding group of Mandel endeavors in Israel, including the Mandel Leadership Institute. Prior to joining the Mandel Foundation, Annette was a planner at Jerusalem's Municipal Planning Department (1975-1978), following which the then Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kolek, appointed her to direct Project Renewal in the city's Musrara neighborhood. Ms. Hochstein was co-founder and director of Nativ, Policy and Planning Consultants (1980-1990) until joining the Mandel Foundation. Key projects in which she contributed have included the West Bank Data Project, the Israel Experience Project and the Commission for Jewish Education in North America, for which she served as director of research. A graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with majors in philology and art history, Ms. Hochstein holds an MA from the New School for Social Research in Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis. She was a Humphrey Fellow at MIT (1983-1984).

Dr. Ido Hevroni is on the faculty of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership and of the IDF Educational Leadership Development Program. He holds a BA in psychology and literature and a doctorate in Jewish literature. His doctoral dissertation dealt with commentaries on Talmudic stories. From 2008 to 2011, he served as the academic director of Rimon, a program for high school students run by the Shalem Center. His current work focuses on the relevance of the Great Books of the Western World and Jewish classics to the contemporary Israeli reality. In this framework, he deals with the pedagogical, theoretical, and ideological aspects of teaching the cultural canons. Dr. Hevroni lectures on the weekly Torah portion and Jewish holidays at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center as well as other public venues. He also teaches courses on fantasy literature and Western classics at Herzog College.

Dr. Daniel Marom is the Academic Director of the Mandel Leadership Institute.  Marom received his doctorate in education from the Hebrew University and went on to teach philosophy of education and educational planning there and at other academic institutions.  He has developed curricular demonstrations for Israeli and Jewish education in a wide range of settings, from kindergarten through to higher education. Marom's research and publications focus on the educational ideas of Israeli and Jewish thinkers.  As a member of the founding group of Mandel Foundation endeavors in Israel, he established its Visions Unit in 2003 and directed it until 2010, launched its publication program through the editing of its Monographs series and co-editing Visions of Jewish Education and Dialogue of the Disparate and developed the tutorship component of programs at the MLI. 

Professor Mordecai Nisan is the director of the Mandel Scholars in Education Program and a professor emeritus at the Hebrew University. He is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on motivation, moral development, and behavior. Prof. Nisan has held research fellowships at Harvard, Oxford, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and the Carnegie Institute of Education in Palo Alto, California. He has also served on many public committees, including the Council for Higher Education. Prof. Nisan is one of the veteran members of Mandel Leadership Institute. In addition to serving as its academic director, he founded and directed the IDF Educational Leadership Development Program, the Mandel Fellowship for Educational Researchers Program, and the Mandel Scholars in Education Program.

Dr. Motti Shalem holds a B.A. in psychology and a Ph.D. in Jewish History from Bar-Ilan University. His doctoral thesis focused on the formation of the IDF’s moral codex and was later published in his book, "An Army’s Search for Meaning" (Hebrew). Motti served in the IDF’s Education Corps for twenty years and retired from active service ranking as Lieutenant-Colonel. Motti is a graduate of the first cohort of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership.  Prior to joining  the faculty of the Mandel Leadership Institute, Motti  served as the director of Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies.

Dr. Chava Shane is the Co-Director of the Mandel Scholars in Education Program.  She holds degrees in history and philosophy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her doctorate, which was conducted at the Hebrew University in association with the Stanford History Education Group, examines teaching and learning high school history. Chava has taught high school history and has also conducted research into and developed curricula in history. Her research focuses on challenges in teaching and learning in everyday classrooms, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of learning, and the relationships between constructing academic knowledge and shaping identity.

Dr. Iris Tabak was the Co-Director of the first cohort of the Mandel Scholars in Education program. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Education at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, an associate editor of the Journal of the Learning Sciences, and a past president of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS). Her research focuses on conceptual knowledge, cognitive skills and identification as they develop in real-life contexts through interpersonal and technology mediated interactions. She holds a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University and was awarded both the NARST Outstanding Dissertation award and an Award for Early Career Contributions (AERA). She was a fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute in the Mandel Fellowship for Educational Researchers Program in 2003 and a Mandel Visiting Scholar in 2010.

Professor Anat Zohar is an associate professor at the School of Education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 2006-2009 she served as the Chairperson of the Pedagogical Secretariat at the Ministry of Education. In this capacity she led a pedagogic reform in Israeli schools whose main goal was the integration of education for thinking and the understanding of the various school subjects. Her areas of academic expertise include science education, learning and instruction, the development of students’ thinking, metacognition, teachers’ professional development in the context of teaching thinking, gender and teaching sciences, gender and education for the gifted, bridging the gap between educational policy and changes in learning and instruction, and means for implementing educational projects to develop thinking with a system-wide vision.