In order to change reality, new thinking, new questions and new ideas are required.
Since its establishment, the Heschel Center has operated the Fellows Program to identify, recruit, train, and connect highly skilled leaders from various sectors, all committed to advancing a social-environmental agenda centered on sustainability. This year (2024), marks the launch of our 25th cohort of Leadership Fellows. Over the years, we have developed numerous leadership programs across a broad range of sectors and demographics, and most importantly, we have built a community of hundreds of change agents. These leaders come from diverse fields, including national and local politics, media, business, civil society, and the liberal arts.
As challenges have evolved, so has our commitment to ensuring maximum diversity and representation from all segments of Israeli society. With each new cohort, we have successfully recruited an increasingly diverse group of leaders, reflecting different identities and the intersections between them. Recently, we have also begun integrating these informal initiatives by forming working groups focused on selected areas of impact.
The Unique Features of the Program
Combines between a number of diverse fields
Combines economics, social issues and environment, with input from different sectors, disciplines, professions and perspectives.
Offers a perspective representing comprehensive sustainability
Promotes alternatives for the existing realities, while questioning the current social and economic systems.
Combines head, heart and hands
Infuses rethinking and reframing of existing current realities while fostering a community dedicated to taking innovative actions which promote personal, social and systemic change.
Acts through critical pedagogy
Forces participants to venture outside their comfort zones, combines ideas with actions and examines success stories from Israel and around the world.
The Contribution of the Program
The Heschel Center for Sustainability Fellows Program plays a vital role in advancing a sustainable future in Israel by cultivating innovative environmental and social change. It has been described as “the think tank from which many of the groundbreaking ideas for environmental and social action in Israel have emerged in recent years.” Participants consistently emphasize the transformative impact of the program, with one remarking, “I came out different than when I entered,” while others highlight the profound understanding they gained of complex global dynamics.
The program also fosters invaluable relationships, with one fellow sharing, “I met incredible partners in ways I never would have otherwise.” These connections, alongside the program’s focus on sustainability, contribute to strengthening Israel’s economic, political, social, and environmental resilience.
The images below showcase some of the enterprises we visit each year as part of the program, as well as those founded or managed by program graduates.
Join us in designing a sustainable future through inspiring transformational leadership, grounded in a deep understanding of the roots of our social, economic, environmental challenges along with the tools required to reshape reality.
Support the Fellows Program
Heschel Fellows Alumni (Page still in Construction!)
Cohort 1:
Ahuva Goren-Winsdor:
An Environmental Psychologist. She is a social consultant to planning and design teams at municipalities, NGOs and Hi-Tech companies. Her work is focused on public participation in decision making and the improving design and planning to suit user needs. Over the past 20 years she has worked with the Ministry of the Environment, Tel Aviv-Yaffo Municipality (City Engineer Department), The Society for Preservation of Nature in Israel, the Jerusalem Foundation and the City of Jerusalem.
Prof. Noga
Kronfeld-Schor:
The Chair of the School of Zoology and the head of the Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology Laboratory at Tel Aviv University. She is a Fulbright, Rothschild and Alon fellow, and a Gutwirth Research Prize winner. She published over 100 papers which were cited over 3000 times and mentored over 50 graduate students and post-docs. Her research focuses on mechanisms and adaptive significance of biological rhythms (both daily and annual), light pollution, and ecology of thermoregulation.
Cohort 2:
Ahuva Goren-Winsdor:
An Environmental Psychologist. She is a social consultant to planning and design teams at municipalities, NGOs and Hi-Tech companies. Her work is focused on public participation in decision making and the improving design and planning to suit user needs. Over the past 20 years she has worked with the Ministry of the Environment, Tel Aviv-Yaffo Municipality (City Engineer Department), The Society for Preservation of Nature in Israel, the Jerusalem Foundation and the City of Jerusalem.
Prof. Noga
Kronfeld-Schor:
The Chair of the School of Zoology and the head of the Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology Laboratory at Tel Aviv University. She is a Fulbright, Rothschild and Alon fellow, and a Gutwirth Research Prize winner. She published over 100 papers which were cited over 3000 times and mentored over 50 graduate students and post-docs. Her research focuses on mechanisms and adaptive significance of biological rhythms (both daily and annual), light pollution, and ecology of thermoregulation.
Cohort 2:
Dr. Efraim
Davidi:
A lecturer and fellow researcher in Social and Labor History at Tel Aviv University; as well, he is a senior teacher at the Department for Social Work at Ben Gurion University in the Negev. Dr. Davidi fields of research and teaching are globalization, Israeli society and social movement’s history.