Board of Directors
George Goldenberg, President
George, an emigre to the Bay Area from Moscow, holds a Masters in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University and was formerly a VP of Engineering at Yahoo!. He is currently EVP of Platform and Products at CaaStle, where he created a platform that powers the majority of apparel rental services in the US. George serves on the boards at Meira Academy, The Shalem School, and is a proud parent of two SPHDS students.
Leo Lazar, Vice President
Leo is currently the Associate Publisher of 70 Faces Media, the largest digital publisher of Jewish content in North America (JTA / The New York Jewish Week / My Jewish Learning / Kveller / The Nosher / Alma). A DC native with French roots, Leo graduated from Princeton with a degree in Public Policy in 2005. His early career was in financial management at General Electric, NBC Universal and Bridgewater Associates. Leo moved to the South Bay area in November 2018 with his wife Becky, who joined Google as International Tax Counsel.
Jason Bayer, Treasurer
Jason was born and raised in Los Angeles and moved to the Bay Area where he received degrees in Economics and Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from UC Berkeley. He and his wife Catherine have three kids, two of whom are in the Early Childhood program at SPHDS (Benjamin and Mira). Jason was a software engineer at Google and has worked across the company for the past 16 years. Today, Jason is a manager at Facebook.
Laeya Grossman, Secretary
Lea Grossman comes from a family that has been involved in community building and Jewish education in the USA in one form or another for generations. Lea is originally from Atlanta, GA (though she was born in Israel and began her schooling there), but she and her husband moved to Lakewood, NJ when they got married. They relocated to Palo Alto four years ago in order to continue the family tradition of community building. Lea has a Bachelors in Psychology and received her Masters in Business Administration from Kennesaw State University. She currently works as the Vice President - North America for Pyrus, a software service that helps companies with task management and streamlining and automating workflows. Though relatively new to the Bay Area, Lea is no stranger to SPHDS, having grown up hearing stories about it from her mother and aunts who all attended SPHDS when they lived in Santa Clara. As the mother of four daughters (all of whom are in SPHDS), it's especially important for Lea that her children see strong Jewish (and female) role models who are involved in the community and who try to give back to the community as much as they can.
Abe Bassan, Director
Abe and his wife Joyce, originally from Panama, have lived in Palo Alto since 2015. They have been active supporters of local Jewish community institutions, including through Abe's previous role on the board of Congregation Emek Beracha. Abe currently works at Samsara BioCapital, a biotech investment fund that backs companies focused on developing innovative medicines. Before that, he worked at biotech companies in the Bay Area and Boston, ultimately deciding to stay put on the West Coast after failing to adapt to frigid northeastern winters. Abe holds degrees in biological sciences from Princeton and Stanford.
Aliza Coleman, Director
Aliza Coleman was born in Jerusalem, Israel and raised in Palo Alto, CA. She is a proud alumni of SPHDS and an even prouder parent of two SPHDS students. Aliza currently serves her community as a teacher of Jewish subjects across the Torah spectrum at Meira Academy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and a Master's degree in Educational Leadership from Bellevue University.
Linor Eylon, Director
Linor Eylon is passionate about Jewish day school education and has devoted over 25 years to working with and supporting Jewish children. For a decade, Linor proudly taught in and directed the SPHDS Preschool program. She then served multiple terms on the Board of Directors of SPHDS and has chaired many events for SPHDS and Kehillah Jewish High School (Palo Alto). Linor holds a Bachelor of Science in Child and Family Development (Summa Cum Laude) and was the recipient of the prestigious Grinspoon-Steinhardt Award which honors outstanding Jewish educators throughout North America. Linor along with her husband, Eyran, have lived in the Bay Area for the past 21 years. Linor and Eyran are the proud parents of 3 children who are all alumni of SPHDS and Kehillah Jewish High School.
Itamar Frankenthal, Director
As an Israeli who has lived in Monsey, Manhattan, Boston, Dallas, Long Island and San Jose, Itamar Frankenthal and his family bring to the SPHDS a broad Jewish and cultural perspective that compliments the diversity of our parent body. Itamar is an electrical engineer, entrepreneur, teacher, and CEO. Itamar is the owner and CEO of Rose Batteries and its subsidiary Energy Sales, Silicon Valley’s leader in custom batteries for mission-critical applications. Itamar also teaches Torah classes at Am Echad and is a professor of battery technologies at San Jose State University. Itamar studied at Yeshiva Shaarei Torah, Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, and Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchananand (RIETS) . Itamar also studied at Yeshiva University, holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the City University of New York and an MBA from Harvard Businesses School. Itamar is the proud parent of three SPHDS students and enjoys cycling, hiking and photography.
Jonathan Gershater, Director
Jonathan grew up in South Africa where he attended King David Jewish Day School from preschool to 12th grade. He moved to California in 1991. He graduated with a BS in computer science and has lived in Palo Alto since 2001. He is married to Adele who was a past-treasurer of SPHDS. Their son and daughter attended SPHDS from pre-school to middle school. Jonathan was a past-treasurer of Congregation Emek Beracha in Palo Alto where he has also volunteered in various roles.
Naama Hammel, Director
Naama and her family joined the SPHDS community five years ago. She is married to David and is the proud mother of Yaara (SPHDS alum, 10th grader at JCHS), Roei (7th grade), and Tamir (4th grade). Born in Boston and raised in Israel, Naama is an ophthalmologist by training and is currently a Clinical Research Scientist at Google Health developing machine learning models for the detection of diseases from medical images. She completed her medical and ophthalmology training at Tel-Aviv University; her glaucoma fellowship at the Shiley Eye Institute, UC San Diego; and her ophthalmic informatics fellowship at the UC Davis Eye Center.
Stephen Kloder, Director
Stephen Kloder grew up in Atlanta, GA and has been living in Silicon Valley since 2013. After studying Computer Science at Georgia Tech and University of Illinois, he worked at various tech companies: fulfillment center software at Amazon, document understanding at Microsoft, co-founding AttorneyFee (now part of LegalZoom), and experiment platforms for Google. He currently builds machine learning models for payment systems at Square. In his previous homes, he was involved with chesed efforts at Champaign Urbana Jewish Federation, and the Executive Council of the Capitol Hill Minyan in Seattle.
William Kornfeld, Director
Bill grew up in New York. After receiving Bachelors degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics and a Ph.D. in computer science, all from MIT, Bill moved out to Silicon Valley more than 30 years ago to start a company. He has been (mostly) here ever since, although his consulting business has taken him to far and sundry places. He lives in Palo Alto with his wife, Patti. They have one daughter who is currently in her last year at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law. Bill is passionate about Jewish continuity and believes that the strength of the link from generation to generation is through education.
Eran Leib, Director
Eran Leib grew up in Israel where he served as an officer in Mamram (IDF), married Orit and co-founded Whitebox Security. In 2015, SailPoint Technologies acquired
Dr. Maly Oron-Benhamou, Director
Maly was born, raised, and attended medical school in Israel. After graduation, Maly relocated to New York City for her residency and fellowship training with her husband, Ori (an SPHDS alum!). While in New York both their sons, Jonathan and Eithan, were born. The family moved to the Bay Area and joined the SPHDS community almost two years ago. Maly is currently working as a Pulmonary and Critical Care doctor for the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.
Aaron Pluemer, Director
Aaron grew up in Sunnyvale attending SPHDS. He graduated in 2010 after 12 years of enrollment, and his parents were SPHDS parents for over 20 years. Aaron attended Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto and served as President of United Synagogue Youth. He holds a BS in electrical engineering from UC Santa Barbara. Aaron is now an engineer at Qualcomm and is pursuing his Masters in electrical engineering. He is still in-touch with former SPHDS classmates.
Assaf Resnick, Director
Assaf Resnick is the CEO and co-founder of BigPanda. Prior to founding BigPanda, Assaf was an investor at Sequoia Capital, where he focused on early and growth stage investing in software, internet and mobile verticals. Assaf Holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He lives in Northern California with his wife and three children.
Oded Shekel, Director
Oded and his wife, Hagit, joined the SPHDS community six years ago. They are the proud parents of Yael (serves in the IDF), Yuval (high-school senior), Yaron (8th grader) and Yishai (4th grader). Oded was born and raised in Israel and moved to The US in 2001. He has a Computer Science degree and has worked as an Executive Product Manager for multiple software companies ranging from small startups to large enterprises.
Sarah Sleeter Magzimof, Director
Sarah is an SPHDS alumna with a Bachelors in Economics from Columbia University who relocated back to the Bay Area from Israel with her family six years ago. She began her career working in Finance at Bloomberg London and transitioned to Fin-tech after moving to Israel. Upon relocating to California, Sarah took a position at Yahoo and currently works for Apple. Her three children attend SPHDS. She is passionate about Jewish education and imbuing a strong identity and love for Israel into our children.
Ari Tuchman, Director
Ari, a long time resident of Palo Alto, is the CEO of Quantifind, an anti-money laundering data science company based in Menlo Park, California, and the co-founder of Entanglement Technologies, which develops chemical sensors by leveraging quantum metrology techniques. Ari is married to Liora Schultz, a pediatric oncologist, and is the proud father of Danelle, Natalia, Adin, Nurielle and Adrielle.