As COO, Sarah oversees organizational strategy, grantmaking, national partnerships, and leadership development initiatives serving the field, as well as all operations and finances, organizational growth, staff teams, and resources powering CANVAS systems, people, and culture.

Before joining CANVAS, Sarah served artists and organizations nationwide as a program officer at the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, in curatorial roles at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and The Jewish Museum, and on the DC Steering Committee of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy.

As a practicing visual artist, cultural strategist, and philanthropy professional, Sarah is an advocate for the power of the arts to foster community, nurture a culture of care, and envision more vibrant futures for all. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and daughters.

Jennifer is an accomplished leader in the arts and music education sectors, committed to fostering a diverse arts ecosystem and collaborating with hundreds of artists to design and produce over 400 arts and education programs. She was most recently Executive Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in New York, where she promoted Afrodiasporic composers, launched a groundbreaking childcare fund for musicians, secured ICE’s largest grant from the Mellon Foundation, and expanded its international presence through collaborations with Carnegie Hall, Columbia University, the New York Philharmonic, and presenters across Europe.

At Willie Mae Rock Camp, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and Carnegie Hall, she pioneered initiatives like an intensive youth orchestra and professional training workshops with Yo-Yo Ma and the late Zakir Hussain. She has also led key projects for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and designed 50+ professional development programs.Jennifer has served as an advisory council member to several arts philanthropies, including CANVAS, advocating for accessible philanthropy. Her research on arts funding was recently published in I Care If You Listen. She teaches arts leadership strategies at the New School’s College of Performing Arts and holds degrees from Northwestern University and Hanns Eisler Musikhochschule, along with a nonprofit management certificate from the New England Conservatory. A former French horn player with the Berlin Philharmonic and Israeli Opera Orchestra, Jennifer now performs as Gina Fur, her electropop alter ego. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Regan advises CANVAS Leadership on strategic and operational planning, and also designed and runs the Executive Mentor component of CANVAS’s Leadership Development program. She is a big picture–focused, passionate, and accomplished thought partner; designer of operations and systems; and Executive Coach to nonprofit leaders.

In her consulting practice, Regan advises nonprofit leaders and their Boards on organizational and management strategy; capacity-building through clear communication and goal-setting; and has run many successful Executive Searches. She has more than 10 years of experience serving on and leading nonprofit Boards, most recently as the first-ever New York Board Chair of Girls Leadership. As a two-term Board member of The New York Women’s Foundation, Regan sat on the Grants Allocation Committee. As Director of Individual Giving for Student Leadership Network, Regan was a tireless builder of major donor relationships, and secured many six-figure, multi-year gift commitments.

Regan spent 25 years as a senior leader in magazine publishing, with 10 years as Executive Managing Editor of Condé Nast’s W Magazine, where she was responsible for all editorial operations and content; hired, motivated, and managed dozens of staff members; and set and implemented strategy, contracts, and budgets. She has held the Managing Editor title at Lucky; Harper’s Bazaar; SPIN; Civilization: The Magazine of the Library of Congress, and other well known magazines. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

Tzivia collaborates with the CANVAS team and coordinates support with the Jewish Funders Network (JFN). Tzivia also serves as the JFN Senior Director of Philanthropic Engagement and JFN West, where she creates opportunities for network members to connect, engage, strengthen, and leverage their philanthropic work. Tzivia is also the Executive Director of the Jewish Venture Philanthropy Fund and the U.S. Program Director of the Social Venture Fund for Jewish-Arab Equality and Shared Society in Israel.

Tzivia is a lawyer who has spent most of her career in the Jewish nonprofit world. Her extensive experience includes five years as the founding Executive Director of Jewish World Watch, an innovative nonprofit working to combat genocide and mass atrocities through targeted community engagement.

Tzivia’s engagement with Jewish Arts and Culture began when she worked with DreamWorks’ founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, as the Community Liaison on DreamWorks Animation’s first film, The Prince of Egypt.

Tracey serves as the primary liaison to the CANVAS Board, Executive Committee, and members of CANVAS Collaborative Fund, overseeing funding partner relationships, grantseeking, and donor database management. Tracey is passionate about equitable access to arts and culture. She is experienced in project and program management, arts education, fund development, and as a grantmaker in the arts, culture, and human services fields. 

Before joining CANVAS, Tracey served as a Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Arts, where she provided guidance and technical assistance to applicants in preparing grant applications and managing grant awards. She also served as a nonprofit grants support specialist for the Loudoun County government, where she coordinated and drafted federal and state grant proposals, managed grants that the County subgranted to local nonprofits, and designed grants trainings.

Tracey served as Deputy Director at the DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative, working to ensure the organization’s programs operated in a mission-driven, equitable manner across DC public and charter schools and contributed to grant seeking, management, and reporting. Tracey holds degrees from Shenandoah University in Music Production and Recording Technology, and a Masters of Science in Arts Management. She is a former oboe player, mom, yogi, and aspiring Taekwondo blackbelt.

Merav oversees all operations at CANVAS, keeping the organization’s grantmaking, financial systems, and daily logistics running smoothly. She has worked in Jewish nonprofits across New York for nearly a decade, with experience spanning program coordination, systems administration, development support, and back-end ops.

Before joining CANVAS, Merav was Program Assistant at Jewish Funders Network, supporting events and member engagement. At Young Judaea Global, she managed onboarding, development operations, and internal systems as Office and Systems Administrator. Earlier, she worked at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, curating books and Judaica and supervising visitor services at the Pickman Museum Shop, where she saw how Jewish art, literature, and ritual could offer comfort and celebration in a space shaped by remembrance.

Merav holds a BFA in Judaic Studies and Interdisciplinary Art from the University of Hartford, with a minor in Art History. Her undergraduate work included archaeological field studies in Israel and Lithuania with the late Dr. Richard Freund, focusing on both Biblical and Holocaust-era sites. She’s also a potter, abstract painter, and cat mom of two. You can find her cooking her Savta’s Iraqi recipes, exploring her local farmers market, or running along Hudson River Park.

Lou has spent his career at the intersection of contemporary culture and Jewish life. He has served as both a trustee and a senior advisor to the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and helped co-create the PJ Alliance — a cohort of supporters dedicated to PJ Library’s national and global growth. Lou is also the author of Man of the Year (Flatiron Books), an Amazon 2017 memoir of the year, a People magazine pick of the week (“Hilarious and poignant”), and a Booklist Starred Selection (“The kind of book readers fall in love with”).

Prior to founding CANVAS, Lou was the Executive Director of Reboot — a think tank and incubator for modern Jewish culture — where he oversaw the development of numerous Jewish cultural projects, including Sukkah City, 10Q, and the National Day of Unplugging. Lou also served as the Vice President of the National Yiddish Book Center, where he helped build an endowment, a new building, and a sustainable platform devoted to reclaiming a lost literary canon.

Eva is the Director of the Mandel Institute for Nonprofit Leadership. Eva joined the Mandel Foundation in 2020, as a Senior Research Associate to support development of the Foundation’s strategic plan for North America. In 2022, she led the design and launch of the Cultural Leadership Program, a fellowship for leading artists and cultural producers committed to revitalizing Jewish life.

Prior to joining the Mandel Foundation, Eva worked at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, where she managed partnerships with the Center’s Board, alumni network, and community organizations. She has developed a range of cultural initiatives over the course of her career, such as Entrepreneurial Musicianship at New England Conservatory, a university-wide program that offers students career navigation, leadership training, and support to develop new creative work. She also served as the Executive Director of Piyut North America, an initiative to revitalize Jewish musical and spiritual traditions from North Africa and the Middle East.

Eva holds an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, an MA in Ethnomusicology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a BA in Music and Hebrew Literature from New York University.

Tom is a strategic planning and executive-level financial and operating veteran with experience in media, arts, and education, as well as network- and membership community–building. Tom has served in controller, CFO, and treasurer roles in eight different organizations, and has held P&L responsibility in various settings for over 25 years. He now consults on financial planning for organizations, and serves as Finance Committee Chair for the Jewish Community of Amherst. He is also Trustee and administrator of two Special Needs Trust funds.

Early in his career, Tom headed strategic planning for National Geographic Television before establishing and running Discovery Channel Enterprises, where he was named one of “50 Top Creatives to Watch” by Variety magazine. He later served as CEO for Artist Network Ventures. Tom then developed expertise in professional education and held COO/senior strategic or P&L roles in Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute, Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Association, and Certified Financial Planning (CFP) Board of Standards. 

Tom has special expertise in innovation as a corporate head of new venture creation/operation (Discovery Channel, VeriSign, Artist Network Ventures), start-up entrepreneur (4x COO and 2x CEO), and enabler (VentureWell/National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance, UMass Isenberg School, Harvard Business School). Tom was born in Istanbul, raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, and graduated from Hamilton College.

Yosi has worked in community organizing, communications, marketing, and business development for over fifteen years — integrating art, music, and culture into his work whenever possible. 

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Yosi engaged artists from across the globe in a vast viral movement to support Barack Obama, including the “Hope” campaign, managed with artist Shepard Fairey. Following the election, he served in the White House Office of Public Engagement, before accepting an appointment to the National Endowment for the Arts as the Director of Communications. 

Yosi then launched TaskForce, a pro-social cultural strategy agency. TaskForce engages leaders of the creative community to raise awareness and build momentum for organizations and businesses tackling our world’s most pressing challenges. TaskForce is behind some of the most notable public will campaigns of the previous decade, and continues to lead the field of cultural organizing and strategy.

Deena is the inaugural Executive Director of Micah Philanthropies. A seasoned philanthropic and nonprofit professional, Deena works in partnership with the Trustees of Micah Philanthropies to develop and implement the foundation’s grantmaking and fieldbuilding strategies.

Deena has more than 20 years of experience working in the Jewish philanthropic community, before Micah as Executive Vice President at the Jewish Funders Network. Deena also served as Senior Director of Strategy and Partnerships for The AVI CHAI Foundation.

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Shayna is an advocate for civic engagement, social justice, and cross-cultural connections. During her nine-year tenure at Los Angeles magazine, she rose to the position of Senior Editor and oversaw the editorial development of LAmag.com, focusing on the people and the issues shaping the future of Los Angeles. Shayna has moderated panel discussions on topics ranging from female leadership to design in the age of digital storytelling.

Inspired to play a larger role in building communities and supporting worthy projects, Shayna joined Fundamental as a Senior Philanthropic Advisor in 2016, and then became Executive Director of the Righteous Persons Foundation (RPF), which was founded by Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg after the making of Schindler’s List and focuses on bridging the divide between people of different backgrounds and galvanizing the power of the arts, media, and Jewish storytelling for social change. She is currently Senior Program Officer for Capshaw and Spielberg’s The Hearthland Foundation. Shayna has a degree in American Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the 2020 recipient of the JJ Greenberg Award, which is presented to professionals who have demonstrated extraordinary leadership in Jewish philanthropy.