Board of Trustees

The Honorable Mr. Elliott Abrams, Chairman

Elliott Abrams is the chairman of the Tikvah Fund, as well as chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition and Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.. He served as Special Assistant to the President and NSC Senior Director for the Near East and North Africa in the first term of George W. Bush, and as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor in the second term. In the Trump administration he served in the State Department as Special Representative for Iran and for Venezuela. He is the author of Undue Process, Security and Sacrifice, and Faith or Fear, and writes widely on U.S. foreign policy with special focus on the Middle East and the issues of democracy and human rights. His most recent book is Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy After the Arab Spring.

Mr. Gary Rosenthal, Vice Chairman

Gary Rosenthal is a partner in The Sterling Group, L.P., a private equity firm headquartered in Houston, Texas. Prior to 1987, Gary was a partner at the Houston law firm Vinson & Elkins and a clerk to the Hon. Irving Goldberg of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He has also served as Executive Chairman, CEO, and/or board member of numerous public and private companies.

In addition to his current role as Vice-Chairman of the Tikvah Fund, Gary’s other charitable activities include service as Chairman of Texas Children’s Hospital, the University of Houston System, and the Gordon and Mary Cain Pediatric Neurology Research Foundation and as a member of the Boards of Commentary Inc., The University of St. Thomas, the Finance Committee of the Texas Medical Center, and the Sabin Foundation. A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Gary is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and a former Charles Henry Fiske Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge University, England.

Mr. Raanan Agus

Raanan Agus is global co-head and co-chief investment officer of Alternative Investments & Manager Selection (AIMS) within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. AIMS invests in leading private equity, hedge fund, real estate, ESG, credit and public market managers, investing as a limited partner, secondary-market investor, seed-capital provider, co-investor or management company partner. Prior to his current role, Raanan served as head of Direct Alternatives for Goldman Sachs Asset Management and global co-head of Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, a position he held since the group’s inception in 2007. Prior to that, he was co-head of the Goldman Sachs Principal Strategies Group beginning in 2003 and later became sole head of the group until 2007. Raanan joined Goldman Sachs in 1993 as an associate in Equities Arbitrage. He was named managing director in 1999 and partner in 2000. Raanan earned an AB, summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, from Princeton University in 1989 and a JD/MBA, Stone scholar, beta gamma sigma, specializing in Finance from Columbia University in 1993.

Ms. Mem Bernstein

Mem Bernstein – venture philanthropist – is the Chairman of The AVI CHAI Foundation, a leader in Jewish education; and a trustee of Keren Keshet – The Rainbow Foundation, whose signature project, Nextbook, promotes Jewish literature, culture, and ideas through the Jewish Encounters books series, and its website, www.tabletmag.com. In the late 1980s, Mrs. Bernstein authored two books that resonate with today’s baby boom generation: Aging Parents and You published in the US, and The Sandwich Generation, published in Israel.

Ms. Terry Kassel

Ms. Kassel is the Head of Strategic Human Resources at Elliott Investment Management L.P., serves as Counsel on their Management Committee, and is also a member of their Compliance and Operational Risk Committee. Previously, Ms. Kassel held a series of leadership positions at Merrill Lynch from 1985-2006, including serving as Global Head of Human Resources and as a member of Merrill’s Operating Committee.

Ms. Kassel serves as Chairman of the Board of Start-Up Nation Central, a not-for-profit based in Israel and inspired by the book, Start-Up Nation. She also serves as Director of the Paul E. Singer Foundation and as Board Member of OneTable, Onward Israel, Jewish Funders Network, and Jewish Food Society. Ms. Kassel earned a J.D. from Seton Hall University and a B.A. in Political Science from New York University.

Mrs. Shelly Kassen

Shelly Kassen is the past President and Chairman Emeritus of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Mrs. Kassen has extensive experience in community and nonprofit leadership, including having served as a selectman of the Town of Westport, president of her synagogue, and as chair of her local AIPAC council. A former CPA, Shelly graduated from Wellesley College and received an MBA from Harvard University.

Mrs. Kassen is a long-time leader of the Tikvah movement, most recently having served as co-chair of the Tikvah Advisory Board before her appointment to Tikvah’s Board of Trustees.

Dr. Moshe Koppel

Moshe Koppel is a member of the department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University and serves as chairman of the Kohelet Policy Forum. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Courant Institute and did post-doctoral work in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  Dr. Koppel’s main areas of research in computer science include machine learning and social choice theory. His work on authorship attribution is used widely in commercial, legal and security applications. Dr. Koppel has also published two books and many articles on Rabbinic literature, with special emphasis on logic and probability. He also co-founded and co-edited the journal Higayon, which is devoted to these topics.  Dr. Koppel’s political activity includes co-drafting two proposed constitutions for Israel, including a joint proposal with Michael Eitan, formerly chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution and Law committee. Several laws that Dr. Koppel drafted have been passed by the Knesset.

Mr. Jay Lefkowitz

Jay Lefkowitz is senior litigation partner in the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis and a member of the firm’s global management executive committee.  He is also an adjunct professor of administrative law at Columbia Law School.

Mr. Lefkowitz has had a distinguished career in public service, including the period from 2005 through 2009, when he was the United States Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea.  He also served as Deputy Assistant to President George W. Bush for Domestic Policy and as General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget.  Earlier in his career Mr. Lefkowitz served as Director of Cabinet Affairs and Deputy Executive Secretary of the Domestic Policy Council for President George H.W. Bush.  His essays on law, politics, and religion have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Public Interest, the Jerusalem Post, Commentary, and elsewhere.  Mr. Lefkowitz is a graduate of Columbia University and Columbia Law School.

Mr. Steven Price

Steven Price is co-founder and CEO of 25Madison, LLC, a venture studio and investment vehicle for early stage companies. He is also Executive Chairman of Townsquare Media, Inc. a publicly traded diversified media company.

Prior to founding Townsquare in 2010, he was Senior Managing Director at Centerbridge Partners, a leading private equity and distressed debt firm. Mr. Price was formerly the founder and Chief Executive Officer of PriCellular Corporation, a publicly traded cellular telephone operator and LiveWire, a software company focused on business process outsourcing.

Mr. Price graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University and has a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law. He is Vice Chair of Community Security Service (CSS) and serves on the Boards of Brown University (Trustee emeritus) and Commentary Magazine, among others. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Council of AEI, the Mount Sinai Medical Center Foundation and the Financial Management Committee of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. He is a co-owner and Alternative Governor of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team.

Mr. Roger Hertog, Chairman Emeritus

Roger Hertog is president of the Hertog Foundation and chairman emeritus of the Tikvah Fund. One of the founding partners of the investment research and management firm Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., which he joined in 1968, Mr. Hertog served as the firm’s president before its merger with Alliance Capital Management in 2000. In 2006 he retired from the successor company, AllianceBernstein, and is currently vice-chairman emeritus.

An alumnus of the City College of New York, Mr. Hertog was previously chairman of The New-York Historical Society and The Manhattan Institute; he has also served on the boards of the American Enterprise Institute, the New York Philharmonic, the New York Public Library, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy.

In 2007 Mr. Hertog was awarded the Medal of the National Endowment for the Humanities in recognition of his philanthropic efforts. In 2010 he received the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership. In 2022 Mr. Hertog was awarded the Tikvah Fund’s highest honor, the Herzl Prize.

Mr. Arthur Fried z’l

Mr. Fried retired as a Managing Director and CFO of Lehman Brothers in 1981 to become the CEO of The Rothschild Foundation, Jerusalem/Geneva, a position he held until November 1999. Thereafter, he served until December 2012, as Chairman and CEO of The AVI CHAI Foundation funded by the Estate of Zalman C. Bernstein.

Mr. Fried earned a B.B.A. from Bernard M. Baruch School of Business and Public Administration in 1963, a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1968, and an M.B.A. in Health Care Administration from City University of New York in 1983.