Dr. Alon Tal

Dr. Alon Tal has degrees in political science from the University of North Carolina and law from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed his doctoral studies at Harvard University, where he served as an adjunct faculty member from 1989-1998. He also has taught environmental law at Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and University of Otago in New Zealand. In 1990 Alon founded Adam Teva v'Din – the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, a public-interest advocacy group which is now Israel's second largest environmental organization. In 1996 he founded the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, where he served as director, and more recently as director of research. Alon has worked as a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and as an assistant to the attorney general of Israel. A founding board member of Friends of the Earth, Middle East, Alon served as chairman of Life and Environment, Israel's umbrella group for environmental organizations, from 1999-2004, and he is presently one of the GZA representatives on the board of directors of Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael. In 2005 Alon was awarded the Charles Bronfman Prize and in 1997 he won the Henry Ford European Conservation Award. Considered by many to be the leading environmentalist in Israel today, Alon is a co-founder of the Green Zionist Alliance.

Dr. Orr Karassin

Orr Karassin holds a PhD in law from Bar Ilan University, an LLM magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University and an LLB from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has held the position of visiting research fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science and she is currently a lecturer at Sapir College Law School in Sderot, where she is responsible for the law-and-environment program. Orr was awarded several prizes for her doctoral work, including the Rothschild Scholarship for early-career researchers, and the Wolf Foundation Prize for excelling doctoral students. Orr is one of the GZA representatives on the board of directors of Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael, where she heads the board's Students and Research Grants Committee. She is also the chairperson of the Sustainable Development Council of Kfar Saba. Orr was the first executive director of Life and Environment, the umbrella group for Israeli environmental organizations. She was appointed by the Israeli government to serve as a charter member of the National Committee for Environmental Quality. Additionally, Orr was among the founders of Green Course, the Israel's largest environmental organization for students. Orr is the author of two books on environmental policy and has published widely on environmental policy and law both in academic and non-academic journals. She lives in Kfar Saba with her husband and their two young children.

Rabbi Yoav Ende

Rabbi Yoav Ende is the director of the Hannaton Educational Center and the rabbi of Kibbutz Hannaton, the Conservative/Masorti kibbutz in Israel's Galilee region. In 2008 Yoav was ordained by the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem. He also holds a master's degree in conflict resolution and management from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a bachelor's degree from the University of Haifa. Yoav has worked extensively in formal and informal education with people from different sectors of Israeli society — disadvantaged children, inter-religious groups and Palestinians. He served for four years as student rabbi in the Neve Hanna Children’s Village in Kiryat Gat, where he implemented a greening of the children's home. He also worked for two years as a coordinator of field activities for Rabbis for Human Rights, where he used nature as a method to bridge gaps between Israelis and Palestinians. Yoav previously served as one of the GZA representatives on the board of directors of Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael. Yoav and his wife are the proud parents of three children.

Dr. Eilon Schwartz

Dr. Eilon Schwartz is the executive director of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, which is dedicated to building a sustainable future for Israel rooted in environmental health and social justice. He is a faculty member of the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he teaches advanced-degree courses in Jewish environmental education, the interrelationship between Zionism and the environment, and environmental-policy ethics. Eilon is on the board of directors of Green Course, the Israeli students' environmental organization. He has published both academic and popular articles and lectures widely on the Israeli environment. Eilon previously served as one of the GZA representatives on the board of directors of Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael. Eilon is also a co-founder of the Green Zionist Alliance.

Dr. Daniel Orenstein

Dr. Daniel Orenstein is a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and a faculty member at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. His work focuses on characterizing patterns of urban sprawl in Israel and their ecological implications, as well as population-environment interactions as expressed through land use -- and he has been published widely, including in the Jerusalem Report, the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and the Forward. Recently, Daniel served on the academic advisory board for the political campaign of Israel's Green Movement Party. Daniel completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Davis; his master’s degree at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; and his PhD at Brown University, where he initiated the Middle East Environmental Futures Project, bringing together 40 Middle Eastern and North American environmental scholars to develop an innovative, interdisciplinary and policy relevant environmental study for Israelis and Palestinians. Previously, Daniel has taught at WUJS Institute and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A former member of the board of the directors of the Green Zionist Alliance, Daniel also has served as the GZA representative on the JNF-USA board of trustees. He lives in Haifa with his wife and their three children.

Naomi Tsur

Naomi Tsur is the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, where she heads the city’s environment, urban-planning and historic-conservation committees. This is only her second year in office, but Naomi already has made significant contributions to Jerusalem’s environment by developing a circuit of city bike paths, limiting private-car use in the Old City and initiating a dialogue with Palestinians about how best to handle waste. This past Tu B’Shvat, her efforts led to an additional 10,000 tress being planted in Jerusalem. Before joining city government, Naomi directed the Jerusalem Branch of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, and gained approval for the preservation of Gazelle Valley, the first urban nature park in Israel. She also founded the Sustainable Jerusalem Coalition, which successfully campaigned to protect the Jerusalem Hills. Naomi speaks about Israel’s environment around the world, and frequently serves as a representative at worldwide conferences, including the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002), the International Healthy City Conference (Belfast, 2003), and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (Capetown, 2006).