Below, please find the bios for all panelists participating in our conversation series. You can also view the curriculum vitae and resources for all panelists.
Danielle Raghib, LCSW (she/her) is a Crisis Care Technical Assistance Specialist with the Center for Applied Research Solutions (CARS). Her clinical experience includes working in outpatient crisis stabilization programs, school-based mental health services, and as a mobile crisis responder for children, youth, and adolescents in Orange County. As an expert in behavioral health crisis services, she is currently providing subject matter expertise to two statewide initiatives that focus on implementing and improving mobile crisis response services in California.
Dennis J. Barr, EdD is the Senior Director of Evaluation for Facing History and Ourselves, an international nonprofit organization that partners with educators to prepare students to be informed and ethical civic participants. Dr. Barr has conducted and supervised dozens of evaluation studies, using qualitative and quantitative methods, to support program improvement and investigate program outcomes. He was the Principal Investigator for a study published in Teachers College Record: A randomized controlled trial of professional development for interdisciplinary civic education: Impacts on humanities teachers and their students. He has developed, in partnership with other scholars, theory-driven measures of adolescent social and ethical awareness and teacher development. His current research focuses on the processes and outcomes of Facing History’s professional development and resources on antisemitism and its approach to supporting English Language Arts educators. For nearly 20 years, as an adjunct faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Dr. Barr taught courses on educational programs designed to promote adolescent social and civic development. Dr. Barr is also a licensed clinical psychologist.
Nadia Ansary, PhD is an expert in bias-based bullying, cyberbullying, Islamophobia, and the psychological correlates of bullying. She has authored numerous publications in these areas, presented to diverse audiences, and offered expert commentary on Islamophobia, hate speech, and the bullying of Muslim youth to the news media. Dr. Ansary received her master’s degree and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Rider University.
Rania Awaad, MD is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine where she is the Director of the Stanford Muslim Mental Health & Islamic Psychology Lab as well as Stanford University's Affiliate Chaplain and Affiliate Professor of Islamic Studies. In the community, she serves as the President and Co-Founder of Maristan.org, a holistic mental health nonprofit serving Muslim communities, and the Director of The Rahmah Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating Muslim women and girls. In addition, she is faculty of Islamic Psychology at Cambridge Muslim College and The Islamic Seminary of America. She is also a Senior Fellow for Yaqeen Institute and the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding. Prior to studying medicine, she pursued classical Islamic studies in Damascus, Syria, and holds certifications (ijaza) in the Qur’an, Islamic Law, and other branches of the Islamic Sciences.
Saida Abdi, PhD, MSW, LICSW is a clinical social worker and an expert in refugee trauma and resilience and an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work. She has worked for more than 20 years with refugee youth and families in the diaspora, and is an expert in refugee trauma and resilience. Her area of focus is building individual, family, and community resilience and improving the responsiveness of systems of care to the needs of refugee and immigrant communities. Her passion is developing trauma-informed culturally-clinically integrated services that are led or co-led by community members to enhance capacity building and ensure ownership and engagement. She trains and consults nationally and internationally with organizations that are developing/providing mental health services for refugees and immigrants. She is trained in Trauma Systems, and is part of the team that developed Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees(TST-R) at Boston Children's Hospital.
Dr. Samantha Vinokor-Meinrath is a lifelong Jewish educator and learner. As an expert on Jewish teens, Generation Z, experiential education, Israel, and questions of Jewish identity, Samantha comes equipped with the right questions to help learners find the answers that resonate with them. She is on a lifelong mission to inspire conversations that move Jewish journeys forward and is passionate about connecting with learners and communities around the world. Samantha currently serves as the Senior Director of Knowledge, Ideas, and Learning at the Jewish Education Project, teaches at Gratz College, and is constantly brainstorming about the Jewish past, present, and future. She is an alumna of the University of Pittsburgh (BA), the Jewish Theological Seminary (MA), Gratz College (EdD), and the Pardes Experiential Educators Program. Samantha lives in Westchester, NY with her husband and two beloved rescue dogs. She's the author of the forthcoming book #antisemitism: Coming of Age During the Resurgence of Hate, and is currently at work on her next book.
Shereen Naser, PhD is an associate professor of Psychology at Cleveland State University where her teaching and research center on equity in education. Dr. Naser has supported schools across the globe in better understanding the building blocks of a school ecology where all students can thrive.
Leora Wolf-Prusan, EdD, (she/her) is the School Mental Health Field Director for the Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center, a project of SAMHSA that provides no-cost professional development to support the school mental health workforce in the Pacific Islands, Hawaii, California, Nevada, and Arizona. She also serves as the project director for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) Category II site, the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project (SCRR), formerly served as the field director for a SAMHSA Now is the Time Initiative, ReCAST (Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma), and in addition to these national grants, she provides consulting and training for numerous other clients around issues related to school climate and positive youth development, educator mental health and wellness, and trauma-informed approaches to education. Leora works for the Center for Applied Research Solutions (the home of all these projects), lives in the Bay Area of California (unceded Ohlone land), and is a new parent to a brilliant little human.
Ilana Kaufman, MA, (she/her) is the Chief Executive Officer of the Jews of Color Initiative. Her work sits at the center of Jewish community, racial equity, and justice, is anchored by the voices and experience of Jews of Color, and is focused on grantmaking, research and field building, and community education. As a guest on NPR’s All Things Considered and Code Switch, with pieces featured in eJewish Philanthropy and The Foundation Review, and an Eli Talk titled Who Counts, Race and the Jewish Future with over 45,000 views, Ilana is passionate about all things at the intersection of Jewish community, racial justice, Jews of Color, education, and philanthropy. Ilana was previously the Public Affairs and Civic Engagement Director, East Bay for the San Francisco, Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council. A Senior Schusterman Fellow who is always searching Jewish text for discussion of equity and justice, Ilana received her B.A. in Sociology from California State University-Humboldt and her M.A. in Educational Pedagogy from Mills College.
Jaleel Abdul-Adil, PhD's career interest is culturally-sensitive, ecologically-appropriate, and evidence-based practices for low-income urban youth and families. His current research focuses on family-focused interventions for youth with trauma and co-occurring disruptive behavior and community violence exposure that are provided through university-community partnerships, service system collaborations, and national provider networks. Dr. Abdul-Adil is also one of the originators and nationally-renowned experts on the use of modern Rap music and Hip-Hop culture to enrich psychosocial interventions for urban youth.
Jamie Spector, LICSW is a Clinical Social Worker and organizer specializing in school-based interventions, multicultural work with immigrants and refugees, and community organizing. Jamie received her Masters Degree in Social Work in 1996 from Catholic University of America. Jamie has received post-graduate training in family systems therapy, trauma-informed and trauma-transformed care, and Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment (SMART). After Graduate School, Jamie spent four years volunteering and working in post-war Bosnia & Herzegovina. She then returned to the U.S. and began focusing on community-based work with immigrants and refugees and school-based interventions for youth and families. Jamie currently works as a School Social Worker in a public Middle & High School in Central Vermont. Jamie's work in schools over the last 8 years has focused on building trauma-transformed school communities where schools can move away from behaviorism as the dominant paradigm. She seeks to partner with students, families and school staff to understand the underlying meaning beneath behaviors and help building healing relationships for all. Jamie’s participation in this program reflects only her individual views and does not indicate support or endorsement by any school district.
Rana Razzaque, EdD, (she/her) is a Muslim Bangladeshi-American woman. She received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English Literature from the University of Texas at Austin and Arizona State University, respectively, and focused her thesis research on the impact of literary influence on colonizing South Asia in the 17th century. She earned her Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Denver and focused her dissertation research on how mindfulness influences the culturally responsive practices of educators. Dr. Razzaque is currently the Director of Opportunity, Access, and Inclusion at Englewood Schools in Colorado. Her work intersects culturally responsive and sustaining practices with social-emotional learning and transformative educational leadership. She has facilitated workshops for organizations and conferences across the United States. Dr. Razzaque’s mission is to transform our systems to heal individual and structural oppression and establish communities of radical care and belonging.
Sara Deen, DDS, (she/her) Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area by her South Asian Muslim immigrant parents, Dr. Sara Deen earned her undergraduate degree, with honors, in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley and her dental degree at UC San Francisco. After completing dental school, she practiced dentistry and was a lecturer at UCLA’s Advanced Education in General Dentistry program. While treating patients and mentoring dental residents in diverse Los Angeles county, Sara became interested in building bridges between communities grounded in common experiences and mutual interests; she eventually served as the President of the South Coast Interfaith Council in 2020-2021. In 2020, Sara completed a professional fellowship with New Ground Muslim Jewish Partnership for Change to better understand the Jewish American and Muslim American communities and their complex inter-relationships, followed by completion of New Ground’s Courage Accelerator program to understand and address anti-black bias in the Jewish and Muslim communities. Following completion of these programs, Sara joined New Ground’s staff as the Muslim youth facilitator for New Ground’s teen program, MAJIC (Muslims and Jews Inspiring Change) Understanding the challenges faced by youth and grateful for her own public education, Sara was elected as a governing board member of a public school district in 2022. She continues to serve the local school district community with great interest in meeting the diverse learning needs of students and mitigating youth mental health challenges. Sara’s participation in this program reflects only her individual views and does not indicate support or endorsement by any school district.
Shachar Cohen-Hodos (she/her) serves as the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) Project Manager at the Western Justice Center. Through relationship building and training, Shachar builds the capacity for PUSD community members to center Restorative Justice practices throughout the district. She previously worked at Groundswell (formerly OC Human Relations) as a Sr. Restorative Justice Specialist, where she spearheaded a whole-school approach to restorative justice practices at an Orange County middle school. Additionally, she has facilitated MAJIC: Muslims and Jews Inspiring Change, a NewGround high school interfaith dialogue program. She strongly believes that building the skills of navigating conflict for our communities' youth will help build a just world.