The IAJGS Board of Directors consists of four elected officers, six elected directors, and the immediate past president. Elections are held at the general meeting, which takes place in conjunction with the annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy.
Officers
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President Jane Berenbeim, an independent development consultant, brings to the Board more than 30 years of experience in non-profit fundraising and management. Past professional positions included serving as Development Officer or Director for a variety of NYC social service, educational, health care and cultural organizations, among them Columbia University, Mount Sinai Medical Center, and Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services. An amateur genealogist for more than 20 years, Jane has recently served as Vice President of the IAJGS, is a longstanding member of the Executive Council of the Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc. (JGS, Inc.) (New York), and is its immediate past President. She holds an undergraduate degree from Vassar College, and graduate degrees from Harvard and Brandeis Universities. |
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Vice President Susan Weinberg came out of a multi-faceted career ranging from nonprofit management to finance, concluding her career as treasurer of an investment bank. She holds an MBA in Finance and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). Today she focuses her energies on creating artwork, writing, and presenting often around themes of family history and Jewish heritage. She describes the thread that connects these seemingly disparate roles as solving puzzles and telling stories. About 30 years ago she was drawn to family history, traveling to ancestral towns, studying Yiddish in Lithuania and doing research in both US and overseas archives, and writing about these explorations in her blog Layers of the Onion. Over time her personal work evolved into genealogy consulting which feeds her presentations, often on topics of immigration. She has developed several Kehilalinks and published the book We Spoke Jewish: A Legacy in Stories, based on an oral history project with Jewish elders. She was a founding member and President of the Minnesota Jewish Genealogical Society and now serves as its Immediate Past President and Treasurer. She also serves on the board of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest. |
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Secretary An archaeologist by training (B.A. and M.A.), Emily Garber has been researching her Jewish family heritage since 2007 and holds a certificate from Boston UniversityÆs Genealogical Research program. She is a family history researcher, writer. and speaker and owns Extra Yad Genealogical Services. She blogs at extrayad.blogspot.com and has written two books and several articles on genealogical research. She serves as chair of the Phoenix Jewish Genealogy Group and board member of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. Emily has spoken at eight IAJGS conferences and coordinated Introduction to Jewish Genealogy, a seminar at the 2020 Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh. |
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Treasurer Joseph Tarshish has been engaged in genealogy for ten years and is a member of the Jewish Genealogical & Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia. A Certified Internal Auditor as well as a Certified Information Systems Auditor, Joseph has served as CFO of a publicly listed financial services startup. He brings to the Board a strong focus on financial discipline and accomplishing objectives with a limited budget. |
Immediate Past President
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Past President Marlis brings experience in strategic planning, marketing, technology, and non-profit board governance to the IAJGS. She is President of the Florida State Genealogical Society (FSGS) and recipient of the FSGS 2014 Distinguished Service Award. Marlis is a member of the JewishGen Board of Governors. She was Co-Chair of the IAJGS Boston 2013 conference. She is the founder of myAncestories and a member of the APG, FGS, NGS, ISFHWE and the GSG. Marlis holds a MS Management of Technology and a BA Russian Language. |
Directors
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Director Crista Cowan has been involved in family history research for more than 25áyears and has been a professional genealogist since 2002. She specializes in descendancy research, Jewish immigration, and sharing family history with the genealogically challenged. Crista regularly teaches at conferences and genealogy societies around the country. She has been employed at Ancestry.com since 2004 and is known as The Barefoot Genealogist. She uploads a new episode of her show to the Ancestry YouTube channel (almost) every Tuesday morning. |
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Director Risa Daitzman Heywood Risa is a professional genealogist who has been actively engaged in genealogy for thirty years. She holds a certificate from Boston University’s Genealogical Research program, has been a speaker at the IAJGS conferences from 2018 to 2024, and has published in Avotaynu and Dorot. Risa was President of the Colorado JGS from 2018 to 2019 and is a current member of the Phoenix JGS. She was co-coordinator of the Belarus SIG at its inception. In addition to the United States and Portugal, Risa has lived in Singapore and Germany. She brings a varied set of skills to the board from her previous careers in IT, corporate wellness and as a cross-cultural trainer. |
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Director Ed Donakey is a converted business technologist serving as the Vice President of Strategic Relations and Deputy Chief Genealogical Officer at FamilySearch International. He works with genealogical societies and others to identify partnerships, development opportunities, and to develop solutions to make critical genealogical data available. Currently a member of the NGS board of directors and Chair of the Audit Committee, he is the past FGS Vice President of Development and board member, responsible for fundraising and partnerships. A professional strategist and past CEO, he also provides business and technology support to genealogical societies, non-profits, and emerging businesses. Ed’s genealogical interests keep him the Deep South, Ireland, and Scotland as he researches his ancestors daily. Ed’s undergraduate and graduate studies were in philosophy and political philosophy respectively at Brigham Young University. |
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Director Raquel was born in Morocco, then moved to France where she received her MD in gynecology and PhD in molecular endocrinology, followed by postdoctoral training at the NIH in Maryland. She is a board member of the Cercle de Généalogie Juive where she manages the North African Group, president of NAJMA (Nos Ancêstres Juifs Marocains et Algériens) Genealogical Society, an expert curator of Geni’s Moroccan and Algerian Jewish family tree, co-administrator of the Avotaynu DNA project section involving North African Jews, founder of the Généalogie des Juifs Marocains Facebook Group, which has 12,000 members and a member of the General Assembly of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy in Israel. She has published several articles in Généalo-J and other journals and has presented at numerous conferences and Zoom meetings. |
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Director Jarrett Ross began researching his own family history in 2009 while finishing his undergraduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh. Since then he has built his own personal tree with more than 7000 people, successfully connecting with thousands of relatives all over the world and has helped build hundreds of trees for people of varying ancestral backgrounds. Jarrett has found multiple specialties including genetic genealogy, Sephardic Jewish research with an emphasis on the Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam, the Jewish Agricultural Societies of Southern New Jersey, Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry in Ukraine, and American Jewish history. Jarrett writes a blog called Sephardic Genealogy and he also has a vlog called GeneaVlogger. Jarrett currently works as the lead forensic genealogist at DNA Labs International where he helps solve cold cases. He also volunteers as a Search Angel where he helps people find their biological family, and he volunteers as a curator on Geni.com, home of the World Family Tree. Jarrett currently serves as the vice president of the Triangle JGS in North Carolina and has been involved in the group since 2012. |
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Director Serafima Velkovich is Head of the Family Roots Research Section in Yad Vashem Archives. She is involved in research of names and fates of Holocaust victims and survivors in Yad Vashem’s and Arolsen Archives’ databases. She lectures on the use of resources for names research, participates in conferences and films on genealogy related topics, and leads the genealogy course and workshops. Serafima is a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was EHRI fellow in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and received scholarships from Yad Vashem and The Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry. Sima has presented at several IAJGS conferences as well as those at Yad Vashem, Bad Arolsen, and the USHMM. She is a member of the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA). |
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