Social justice entrepreneur Siiri Morley, Heller MBA’10, was one of 60 women named to Fast Company’s League of Extraordinary Women. Other women on the list include Hillary Clinton, Shakira and Oprah Winfrey. In 2009, Siiri’s fair-trade candle company launched a program in Iraq that enlisted 50 women entrepreneurs to make candles. Today, Prosperity Candle also works with refugees from Bhutan and Burma living in the United States. Before launching the company, Siiri worked on poverty reduction and sustainable economic development projects in Afghanistan, Croatia, Ecuador and Kenya. Tomer Levi, MA’05, PhD’10, published his first book, “The Jews of Beirut: The Rise of a Levantine Community, 1860s-1930s.” He serves as director of the Brandeis University-Middlebury Program in Israel. Tomer has also taught several courses at Tufts and Ben-Gurion University, where he was a postdoctoral fellow. In 2010-11, he was a research fellow at the Ben-Zvi Institute, where he conducted research on Levantine Jewish society during the time of colonial expansion. Aaron Zelin, MA’10, was appointed a Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute, a Middle East policy think tank. He was a consultant to the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. He also served as a research associate in the Department of Politics at Brandeis. Jessica Lowenthal, Heller MA/MBA’12, was named assistant regional director for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in New England. She is responsible for incident reports and several key ADL programs, including the summer associates research project, annual interfaith Seder and the Civil Rights Committee. Prior to joining ADL, Jessica served for three years as a teacher at Temple Sinai in Brookline, Mass. She was previously an intern at Hadassah Boston and the American Jewish Committee. She also served as an engagement fellow at American University Hillel, where she taught Jewish history and organized Birthright trips. Billy Geibel, MA’12, received a Fulbright Fellowship and is teaching English at a university in Turkey. He first visited Turkey while a senior at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition to his classroom responsibilities, he has organized a sports club that conducts its sessions in English. He says the idea for the club was based on his college study-abroad experience, when he realized that many Turkish students need help with their English and that sports are a big part of their culture. After returning from an academic expedition to Poland, Zachary Albert, MA’12, accepted a job as education and public engagement coordinator at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. He works with middle- and high-school students, aiding in Holocaust curriculum programs and coordinating student visits to the museum. He traveled to Poland with 10 other graduate students as an Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellow, studying Polish-Jewish relations during the 20th century. For the second time, composer Christian Gentry, PhD’12, received a commission grant from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition. He plans to use the commission for a new piece for trombone quartet. Christian composes for a variety of instruments and genres, and previously won a Barlow award in 2009. He taught music theory at Brandeis as well as such courses as “Music in a World of Words: Popular Music Criticism and Interpretations Since 1967” and “Country Music and Society.” Christian also worked as programming director for the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studios Marathon Concert and as a teaching fellow at Harvard University.
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