​Board of Directors

Ruby Gelman

Ruby is a Pediatric Dentist in private practice in Manhattan where she lives with her husband Shimon Shkury and their two children, Ari (K'26) and Avital (K'28). Ruby attended Yavneh as a babysitter in the late 1980s and later served as a counselor and Rosh Ayda for many years. Yavneh was central in her growth as a committed and engaged Jew. Ruby is proud to be serving as Yavneh's Board President.

Julie Altman

Julie Altman is an historian by training and is the Principal of Story Street Research, a qualitative market research and consumer insights consulting firm. She has served on the board of JCDS and is currently on the board of the FIDF. Julie attended Jewish camp for seven years. Her introduction to Yavneh was the JCDS Shabbaton. She and her husband, Alex Sagan, have four children who have all attended Camp Yavneh.

Ruth Bernstein

Ruth lives and works in the Boston area. She and her family started attending Yavneh with family camp and now have two Camp Yavneh alumni in the family. A librarian, Ruth grew up going to Henry S. Jacobs and Greene Family camps and graduated from Brandeis University. Ruth has lived and worked in Israel as part of Sherut L’am and served on the Ma’ayan board for a decade. The Bernsteins attend congregation Shaarei Tefillah in Newton.

Daniel Eisenstadt

Daniel Eisenstadt is the founder, CEO and Chairman of Terravet Real Estate Solutions (Terravet), which operates, develops and manages healthcare real estate with a specific focus on buildings leased to veterinary operators. Terravet currently owns approximately 200 buildings which are located in more than 35 states. Terravet operates a Private REIT and two funds and in the aggregate has more than $300 million of committed capital focused on veterinary and healthcare real estate. From 2009 to 2018, Daniel served as a co-founder, President and Chairman of Community Veterinary Partners (CVP). CVP is a veterinary services business that owns and operates more than 100 veterinary hospitals located on the East Coast and Midwest. Prior to co-founding Terravet and CVP, Daniel was a managing director at CMS Companies, a private equity and real estate investment firm, where Daniel served on the firm’s investment committee and executive committee. Prior to CMS, Daniel worked as the co-founder and founding executive director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, a museum and visitor center located near the former concentration camp. Daniel began his career working as a corporate lawyer at Fulbright and Jaworski, L.L.P. Daniel has an MBA from Harvard Business School, a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a bachelor’s degree from Clark University. Daniel was also a Raoul Wallenberg Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Daniel lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Sharon, and their daughters, Elena, Ariella and Rachel.

Matthew Hills*

Matt has been on the Board of Camp Yavneh since 2006 and served two terms as President from 2007-2009, and 2020-2022. He is a Managing Director of LLM Capital Partners, a private equity firm. Matt has served on Boards of public and private companies in the U.S., Canada and Israel, and has served on and been Chair of Audit and Compensation & Governance Committees. He was recently Chair of the Newton School Committee. Matt received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (1987) and a B.A. cum laude from Brandeis University (1981).

Jesse Geller*

Jesse Geller was a camper and staff member at Yavneh from 1973-1974 and 1976-1984 (Kerem 1977). He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Camp Yavneh since 1994, serving as the Building and Grounds Committee Chairman and as an officer of the Board. Jesse is the immediate past President of the Yavneh Board. He resides in Brookline, Massachusetts with his son Levi (Kerem 2025).

Scott Gladstone

Scott Gladstone is a Chestnut Hill based attorney concentrating in business litigation, construction law and Brookline zoning. Scott was a camper and then a counselor/waterfront/kitchen staff at Yavneh throughout the ‘80s. Scott’s three children have attended Yavneh with his youngest having returned as a Rosh and Cornerstone fellow. Scott is on the Board of the New England chapter of the American Jewish Committee and is a long-time Brookline Town Meeting Member.

Debbie Katz*

Debbie Shapiro Katz is the former President of Camp Yavneh. Debbie works as a Senior Development Officer in Principal Gifts at Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston. She was a camper at Yavneh for three years while growing up in Brookline. Her years at Yavneh influenced her greatly! She currently lives in Needham with her two children and her husband Doug, a psychologist.

Suzanne Kling Langman

Suzanne Kling Langman has worked in Jewish nonprofits for much of her career, most recently at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. She now consults with a number of national Jewish organizations. A native Bostonian, she lives in New York City with her husband, Barry Langman, and son, Elliott.  Attending Camp Yavneh from 1979-1984 gave her a lifelong love of Hebrew and a model of Judaism without boundaries. She can still sing her Shir Aydah from Gurim ’79.

Laurel Marcus

Laurel attended Camp Yavneh for nine years as a camper and counselor and spent two years staffing Family Camp. She has served on the Board since 2015. Her fondest memories of Yavneh include time on the basketball courts, ReliSh (Ruach Lifnei Shabbat), and that first-day-of-camp thrill when you turn onto Lower Deerfield Road. After graduating from Dartmouth College, Laurel spent eight years at digital marketing and design firms, specializing in consumer data insights and web analytics. She consults on the side for local companies on digital strategy and user experience. Laurel is currently pursuing her MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  

Marion Menzin

Marion Menzin is mother to two Yavneh campers (Eve and Isaac) and the spouse of a proud Yavneh alum (Abe). Her background is in history education, school administration, and general instructional design, and she is currently the Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning at Gann Academy. She is a strong believer in the importance of Jewish education for ensuring a dynamic future for the Jewish people, and she's looking forward to supporting Yavneh in its mission.

Dr. Deborah Platek

Deborah Skolnick Einhorn

Deborah is the Associate Dean for Academic Development and an Assistant Professor of Jewish Education in the Shoolman Graduate School at Hebrew College. Within these roles, Deborah recruits, advises and teaches graduate students, while working with faculty and administration to hone and enhance the Jewish Education and Jewish Studies programs. Her teaching focuses on Jewish American history education, leadership and students’ graduate thesis research. In addition to speaking and writing on Jewish education, Deborah’s focuses her scholarship on gender, philanthropy and organizational change in American Jewish life.  Deborah is the past president of the Jewish Community Day School of Rhode Island and serves on the board board of Tufts Hillel.  On the Yavneh board, Deborah was a member of the Strategic Planning Committee and also recently chaired a working group to craft Yavneh's K'lal Yisrael statement. Deborah's three children all attend Yavneh and spend much of their spare time singing Zimriyah songs.

Erik Winton

Erik and his family have been at Yavneh since 2005, when his wife Shani started working for Yavneh and his three children began as campers (his youngest was in Kerem in 2018).  Erik was at camp for almost every Shabbat in session from the summer of 2005 until the summer of 2018 as a staff spouse.  He and Shani also held two of their children’s b’nai mitzvot at camp during the off season, which was a blast!  When not in camp, Erik is a Principal at Jackson Lewis P.C. a national management-side labor and employment law firm, where is he is the Co-Leader of the firm's Non-Competes and Protection Against Unfair Competition Practice Group. As an employment lawyer, Erik has helped camp extensively for years with legal advice regarding employment issues.