Where to for partnership between Israel and world Jewry? ■

Sir Mick Davis, Co-Founder, The London Initiative. Mick is the Executive Chairman of Vision Blue Resources Ltd and non-executive Chairman of MacSteel. Mick is also a Director of the Institute of National Security Studies, Israel. 

Mick was Chief Executive and Treasurer of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom from February 2016 to July 2019. 

Mick was Chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council of the United Kingdom from 2011 to 2017 and Chairman of the United Jewish Israel Appeal from 2005 to 2012. 

Mick and his wife Barbara through the Davis Foundation support social cohesion and mobility, education, health care, children at risk, the arts in Israel, the United kingdom and South Africa. 

He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Bar Ilan University and knighted for services to charity and holocaust commemoration and education, in 2015. 

Dr. Ivor Chipkin is the Co-Founder and Director of the New South Institute (NSI). In 2017 Chipkin, with several colleagues, wrote and released the Betrayal of the Promise report, a study of state capture that had a huge political impact in South Africa and internationally. Chipkin completed his PhD at the École normale supérieure, Paris-Saclay, where he also did his Diplôme d’Études Approfondies (DEA). Chipkin was an Oppenheimer Fellow at Oxford University. He is the author of Do South Africans Exist? (WUP: 2007) and Shadow State: the politics of state capture with Mark Swilling (WUP: 2018). He also teaches public policy at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) at the University of Pretoria. 

Tomer Lotan is Head of Policy at Bonim Mehadash. Tomer is a public policy and governance expert with extensive experience in both government and civil society. He served as Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Public Security, leading major reforms in personal security, including the national program to reduce violence in Arab society. Previously, he headed Israel’s COVID-19 national task force. He also served as CEO of the Citizens’ Empowerment Center and founded Ma’as, a nonprofit promoting strong public service. Tomer holds an MSc from the London School of Economics, where he graduated with distinction for his thesis on inequality in social services. 

Fida Nara Tabony is Co-Director of the Programs Department at the New Israel Fund. She began her work at NIF as the Director of Shatil’s Haifa office and Program Manager of Nasij نسيج  ("tapestry"): Strengthening Palestinian-Israeli Civil Society. Fida holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work and a Master’s degree in Gender Studies, from Bar-Ilan University. 

From 2013-2021, Fida Co-directed the Jewish-Arab partnership organization Mahapach-Taghir . Prior to that, she managed the social change unit at Women Against Violence from 2000-2013.  

Alongside her professional experience, Fida is a social and political activist focusing on social and feminist issues within Palestinian-Israeli society as well as equality, partnership, and the struggle against the occupation. Among her voluntary activities, she co-founded the Popular Committee in Nazareth in 2019 to combat crime and violence in Arab-Israeli society and the “Women Against Guns” coalition. 

Mike Prashker, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the London Initiative. Mike was founding director of Merchavim - The Institute for the Advancement of Shared Citizenship in Israel. Author of “A Place for Us All – Social Cohesion and the Future of Israel (2017), he advised The Ted Arison Family Foundation before moving on to lead the London Initiative. 

Esther Sperber is the founder of Smol Emuni US, an organization of Orthodox and observant Jews committed to justice, equality, and dignity for Jews and Palestinians. They are building a courageous Orthodox Jewish voice for peace and for ending the occupation. Born in Jerusalem and based in New York, she is also one of the leaders of the Hostages' Family Forum and the pro-democracy protests. 

Sperber is an architect and writer whose work explores the intersections of religion, culture, and social justice. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Haaretz, The Forward, and more. She has lectured at Harvard, Yale, JTS, and Yeshiva University.