Marketer

I am a builder who knows how to hire the right people, groups, and products into customer-happy firms. I hate losing money unnecessarily. The culture in much of Jewish philanthropy is peculiar: it often lacks learning from live feedback. At Harvard Business School the whole second year is case studies of failures—and therein lies part of the Jewish nonprofit learning gap.

I follow young-adult and communal programs extremely closely as an actual former user and as an observer of Diaspora growth goals—from Birthright and Tribefest to BR Next, Next Dor, Makor, and related concepts. I can give a concise synopsis of why many well-funded ideas encountered immediate difficulty: the pitch was not anchored in durable customer value and honest measurement.

As an organization, MOTBOARD exalts and measures growth rates—not vanity metrics or hand-waving about “impact.” If only general impact is claimed without specific data, metrics, and assignment of results, it is not for our portfolio.