Sarah is C.O.O. of CANVAS and a D.C.-based arts professional with a passion for creating an equitable future for the arts. After seven years at the National Endowment for the Arts, where she served artists and cultural organizations nationwide as a Program Specialist in Media Arts, she joins CANVAS with a vision to help us better serve our grantees and elevate the Jewish arts and culture community. She has held previous roles in grantmaking and curatorial work at the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and The Jewish Museum. Sarah is also an artist in her own right, working in mixed media and collage. 

CANVAS was founded by Lou Cove, senior advisor to the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, where he co-created the PJ Alliance – a cohort of mega-supporters dedicated to PJ Library’s national and global growth. He 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”). Lou served as 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, the National Day of Unplugging, and the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation. Lou was also 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.

Jewish Funders Network (JFN) support and coordination is led by Tzivia Schwartz Getzug, Director of the West Coast office of JFN, where she creates opportunities for network members to connect, to engage and to strengthen and leverage their philanthropic work. In addition to her work with CANVAS, Tzivia is privileged to be involved in two other giving collaboratives: she is 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 non-profit world. Her extensive experience includes five years as the founding executive director of Jewish World Watch, an innovative non-profit working to combat genocide and mass atrocities through targeted community engagement.

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

Gordon Haber edits the CANVAS COMPENDIUM, a weekly newsletter on Jewish arts and culture, the business of art, and philanthropic strategy. His short fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals and as three best-selling Kindle Singles. His nonfiction writing on religion and culture has appeared in newspapers and magazines like The Forward, Tablet, Jewish Chronicle, Religion Dispatches, and Religion and Politics. 

CANVAS program assistant Merav David has been working in Jewish nonprofits in the New York area for several years. Before moving to New York, Merav earned a BFA in interdisciplinary art from the University of Hartford. Notably, Merav participated in prominent archaeological work in the Jewish world, including Biblical sites in Israel as well as Holocaust sites across Lithuania. She went on to work for the Museum of Jewish Heritage and later for Young Judaea Global. Merav is a painter, ceramist, and cat mom who enjoys frequenting the local farmers market, cooking (especially the Iraqi foods her savta makes) and connecting with other Mizrachi artists in NYC.