The Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture is pleased to announce four new members of our advisory board who join the current 20 members to carry out two important responsibilities: to counsel the Foundation and represent its mission in the community.
HARVEY COHEN, MD, PhD
Deborah E. Addicott - John A. Kriewall and Elizabeth A. Haehl
Family Professor of Pediatrics
Katie and Paul Dougherty Medical Director of Palliative Care at
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford, CA
Harvey J. Cohen was appointed the Deborah E. Addicott – John A. Kriewall and Betsy A. Haehl Family Professor in Pediatrics in February 2007, and the Katie and Paul Dougherty Medical Director of Palliative Care in August 2010. Dr. Cohen was previously Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University, where he was the Arline and Pete Harman Professor, and the Adalyn Jay Chief of Staff at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Dr. Cohen obtained both his MD and PhD from Duke University and was a pediatric intern at the Children’s Hospital in Boston. He completed a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Children’s Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and was named assistant then associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cohen was recruited to the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry where he was Chief of the Division of Pediatric Oncology. From 1985-1990, Dr. Cohen was on the Scientific Advisory Board for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. He returned to the Board in 2000, and was its Chair from 2002 to 2006. Dr. Cohen was also a member of the NIH Hematology II Study Section and was its Chair from 1987-1988. He served as a Trustee of the March of Dimes, the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, and the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, and is currently a Trustee of the Morgridge Institute for Research, a research institute dedicated to supporting interdisciplinary medical research at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Cohen’s research interests include: clinical trials in leukemia, mechanisms of drug resistance, and determining the roles of proteins in predicting susceptibility to, diagnosing, and treating childhood illnesses such as brain tumors, leukemia, prematurity, and inflammatory diseases. In addition, he has a long-term interest in pediatric palliative care.
BARRY COHN
Managing Director, Cushman & Wakefield
Oakland, CA
A fifth-generation San Franciscan, Barry has an active real estate and Jewish communal career. With 30+ years in commercial brokerage, he has completed over 15 million square feet of commercial real estate transactions in the Bay Area. He is currently a Managing Director at Cushman & Wakefield. In 1998 he co-founded Etz HaShaked Development, Inc., a real estate development company in Israel, which has built over 2,000 apartments and 350,000 square feet of commercial/office space in Israel. In 2015, he co-founded Freshwater Investments, an investment company holding multi-family real estate assets in the western US. Since being president in 1976 of his temple youth group in Lafayette, CA, Barry has participated in and led countless organizations in the community. His focus has been on Jewish camping, education, and Israel relations. He has led the construction of many capital campaigns and is currently part of the leadership team overseeing the rebuilding of URJ’s Camp Newman as well as the vice-chair of the Federation’s Capital Planning Committee. He received his bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and his double master’s degree in Public Administration from the USC and Jewish Communal Service from HUC. Barry and his wife, Debbie, live in San Francisco and Tel Aviv.
LAEL GRAY
Chief Executive Officer, Addison-Penzac Jewish Community Center
Los Gatos, California
Lael Gray has served as the CEO of the Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center of Silicon Valley since July of 2019. Before moving to Los Gatos, Lael worked at the Asheville Jewish Community Center in North Carolina where she was initially as the Early Childhood Director, then directed nearly every department of the organization before becoming the Executive Director in 2012. In 2019, Lael completed a successful capital expansion project for the Asheville JCC, raising more than $9 million and overseeing the construction of a new early childhood wing and aquatics center, along with other significant renovations. A graduate of Binghamton University in 1987, she began her career in marketing and communications in Manhattan and Miami. In 2001 she relocated to Asheville and shifted her career focus to supporting Jewish education and communal life. Lael has dedicated much of her free time to community service and building interagency partnerships and has served on numerous boards and commissions focusing on racial equality, food policy, and the environment. She is a runner and enjoys playing classic rock on the banjo. Married to Jeffrey Japp for more than 25 years, Lael has two talented grown daughters who make her proud every day.
FRANCESCO SPAGNOLO
Curator, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Francesco Spagnolo (Ph.D. Hebrew University 2007) is a multidisciplinary scholar focusing on Jewish studies, music, and digital media. At the University of California, Berkeley, he is the Curator of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life and an Associate Adjunct Professor in the Department of Music, and teaches about music in Israel, Jewish nightlife, ritual performance, archives, and digital humanities. He is also an affiliated faculty with the Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies, the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, the Institute of European Studies, the Religious Diversity Cluster of the Haas Institute, and serves on the Digital Humanities Council. Dr. Spagnolo is also a host for the cultural programs of Italian National Radio (RAI) in Rome. At The Magnes, he holds the primary responsibility regarding the intellectual and academic interpretation of one of the largest Jewish museum collections in the world, and has led the acquisition of new important collections, including the Mark and Peachy Levy Family Judaica Collection (2016), the Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection (2017), the Roman Vishniac Archive (2018), and the Berman-Bloch Collection of Israeli Art (2019). As a scholar, his research interests center on the intersections of music and synagogue life in Italy and the Mediterranean. As a curator, his focus is on the performative aspects of Jewish material cultures in the global diaspora. Among his publications are Italian Jewish Musical Traditions (Rome-Jerusalem, 2001) and The Jewish World (New York, 2014).
