MEET THE TEAM

partners with nonprofit organizations and empowers them to emerge into new eras of prosperity fueled by relationship-based giving. Susan’s radical approach to development has transformed the giving landscape at every organization she has crossed paths with and earned her a reputation as a thought leader and disruptor in the non-profit industry. In her 20 years of senior leadership, she has driven millions in donations, developed a new generation of leaders, and connected countless individuals to the heart of what inspires them to give of their time, talent, and treasure. Susan Kramer holds a Masters in Non-Profit Management from Regis University, a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, and is a certified Competent Toastmaster. She also has a tambourine and a pair of gossamer fairy wings hanging on her living room wall. She is a true believer that every hard journey will have a celebratory end and that the “magic” we need to catalyze change is always within us if only we have the courage and heart to look deeply enough.

She is also the President of the National Home Funeral Alliance and a board member of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Pennsylvania. She helps doulas and death-positive businesses create a more inclusive and accessible experience for their clients through human-centered design workshops and also creates online courses and offers freelance graphic design work. Her primary goal is to make death a more equitable experience for all, and one day hopes to open a real-life “death cafe” and death education space in Philadelphia! You can find her on Instagram at @thedeathdesigner.

In 2022 she co-created and launched two twelve-module courses on the subject of Natural Burial: in partnership with Lee Webster The Green Burial Master Class; and with David Zinner Jewish And Green: Cemetery Management For The 21. As Gamliel Institute graduate and faculty, Final Passages graduate, member of the Conservation Burial Alliance, Rosha Chevra Kadisha (Head of Jewish Burial Society), past member of the Board of Trustees of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of California and independent consultant; with over 40 years of experience in end-of-life subjects, Holly Blue provides education and training to both Jewish and secular audiences. She has visited countless natural burial sites from England to Hawai’i, presented at international conferences, trained home funeral guides, consulted with cemetery management and mortuary personnel, taught community college extension courses and is a passionate advocate for environmentally sustainable and culturally-sensitive burial practices.

showing how respect is woven throughout Jewish end-of-life rituals, enriching how we live. He started a Chevrah Kadisha in 1996 and has been teaching Jewish death practices now for over 25 years. Along the way he became an instructor for the Gamliel Institute and has published seven books, including a highly praised Passover Haggadah, and four books on Jewish death practices, one of which won a Nautilus Book Award. His taharah manual is widely respected and includes traditional as well as modern liturgies with chants by Rabbi Shefa Gold. See richardalight.com and benzakkai.org for more about Rick.

She moved to Florida to help care for them and later her aunt also, spending three years overseeing their care. In order to deal with the anticipatory grief she read many books on the topics, joined a support group and realized that she experienced a transformation. That is, focusing on what is important and hoping (and believing) that it is true there is an afterlife. After their deaths, she moved to Tucson and was on staff at a hospice as the Volunteer Coordinator & Community Liaison.  While she already had earned a Master’s Degree in Counseling, she took a graduate level course in Death and Dying to continue understanding this life process. Hospice work continued to call to her when she moved to Colorado so she became a volunteer with a hospice and continues volunteering.  She has been on the leadership team of the Boulder, CO Chevra Kadisha for over 15 years and coordinates the shmira and tahara for the funeral homes in the area for all Jewish deaths, whether they are affiliated with a synagogue or not. It seems to be a calling for her to help others with end of life traditions and issues. Evie is originally from Chevy Chase, MD, a suburb of Washington, D.C.  She raised her three children in Rhode Island and lived in Memphis, Florida and Tucson before moving to Colorado. Her children have blessed her with 4 grandchildren. She has been a Realtor since 2006.  She loves the outdoors and enjoys skiing, hiking and sailing and walks (and cuddling) with her small dog, Lili — and enjoying her grandchild. 

In response to this calling she has trained as a death doula and spends her free time volunteering as a bedside companion to the dying and their families. She is honored to support people and their loved ones with navigating the complexities of end of life. Rachel has a knack for engaging people with end of life education - she is able to balance passionate discussion with the ability to hold space and honor the grief, anxiety and confusion that can come up around the topics of death and dying. She is also an active member of her community Chevrah Kadisha. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children and is spiritually sustained by the supportive Jewish community there. When she's not doing deathwork you can find her at torah study, volunteering in the preschool classroom, baking and doing embroidery.

For +25 years he has been a member of the Mendocino Coast Jewish Community (MCJC) Chevrah Kadisha performing Taharah and sitting Shmirah. Beginning in 2017, he has been involved in Kavod v’Nichum, taking the Core Courses as many times as possible and attending, volunteering at and presenting at annual conferences. He is a member of the Community and Chevrah Education Collaborative (C&CEC) Executive Commitee and served on the MCJC Board for 5 years. Bob grew up in Riverside, CA. His academic background is in the life sciences (Genetics and Evolutionary Biology) at UCD, but he went astray and ended up in the corporate world. He was a VP at a multinational financial institution based in San Francisco for 23 years, and ended up working at many locations during merger madness. In IT, he was a coder, tech support analyst, system architect performance manager, QA manager, project manager, operations manager, financial/budget and costing analyst, web designer, risk analyst and contingency planner and executive management consultant (tech explainer/advisor, organization improvement, communication improvement). (One might deduce he could not hold a job). He has also been a locker room attendant and a lab flunky. After a steady job, he did contract IT consulting and business analysis work in the SF Bay Area on retail supply chains and for a wholesale bakery. These days he does whatever comes his way for small businesses, non-profits and individuals; recently, mostly new systems, networking and Cybersecurity. Bob's primary volunteer interests in semi-retirement are reducing unnecessary suffering at end of life, through the restoration of Jewish traditions, and cat rescue. Bob has innumerable interests; some of them are cats, Jewish learning, participation in the local Jewish congregation, friends, ocean kayaking, literature, architecture, hiking, grave markers, ceramics, plant propagation, political activism, virology, travel, music, maker electronics, forestry, soil science, psychology, neurodiversity, political activism, economics, gender studies, technology, hiking, mental health activism, cooking/eating, disability rights, tutoring, suicide prevention, ethical wills, film, podcasts, cemeteries, sustainability, economic and social justice science in general, philosophy, process improvement and constant learning.

In this role she facilitates connections, conversations and development of all the Core communities, provides essential support to CoP leaders and oversees the seamless execution of events. She plays a key role in enhancing the professional growth and community building efforts within each community. (www.CoreTorah.org)  In addition, Elissa is the Founding Director of Core Connects RI, a non-profit organization that aims to deepen women’s connections to one another, to Jewish wisdom and Jewish values, to empower each other to find greater meaning, purpose and possibility in life and to cultivate unity without uniformity.  Elissa was born in London, England and in 1985 married her American husband and they started their married life in Washington, DC. After the death of her first child, Elissa started to explore Judaism in much greater depth. In her quest to understand the loss of her baby she explored Jewish sources in general and more specifically regarding death and the afterlife. She is very active on her local chevra kadisha and she speaks widely on this topic.  Elissa started and actively manages Core’s community of practice for women engaged with traditional Chevra Kadisha. To date it is truly an international community of hundreds of women from all over the US and Canada, the UK, France, Sweden, Holland, France, Italy, Israel, Chile, Panama, Mexico, South Africa and even Australia. The mission of the community is to share experiences, give encouragement, network and help to develop and support each other.  Elissa is responsible for providing on-going professional development for the community. The knowledge she has acquired motivated her to write a book which is a personal memoir of loss and grief with the Jewish teachings about life, death and the afterlife woven into the story. The book, “From One Life to the Next Life; The Sacred Passage After Death,” is due to be released at the beginning of the summer with Mosaica Press.  Through all of these experiences Elissa mentors and encourages others on their journeys.

She is an End of Life Doula, a volunteer with hospice and with Jewish Family and Children's palliative care program, a board member of Sinai Memorial Chapel, and a student of Gamliel and the Ben Zakkai Institute. Yael is committed to providing emotional, spiritual, and practical support to families around illness, end of life, death, and bereavement.

She has consulted with nearly 500 clients in N. America, Europe and the Midde East, and worked with websites that have cumulatively generated hundreds of millions of dollars.  The author of “42 Rules for a Web Presence That Wins”, endorsed by Vinton Cerf (the “Father of the Internet”) and Guy Kawasaki among others, she has taught at three international business schools.  Originally from the UK, she now lives in Santa Cruz, CA.  Philippa is dedicated to inspiring business owners and marketing executives to find actionable insights in their digital analytics that will grow their business and cut wasted spending, because so many are missing those “hidden gems”.  While reviewing more than 5,000 websites over the course of her career, she has found that almost all of them were leaving money on the table, either in missed opportunities for revenue growth, or by wasting money on ineffective marketing.

In 1962, Merle started her own business with $50.00 worth of fabric purchased retail at Marshall Field’s and, initially, limited to making headbands, she called it Merle Limited and ran the business out of her bedroom in her parents’ apartment. Bows, scarves, and shawls were added with the work being done by home sewers until she could afford to rent and equip a space and offer full time employment. In 1964, Merle married her accountant/attorney, Barry Gross. They are the proud parents of two sons who engage in tikkun olam for their careers, and the proud grandparents of three delicious granddaughters on similar trajectories.  The accessory business grew to eventually employ 32, which included the original two home sewers. Merle sold her business in 1994 and pursued several interests including becoming an interviewer for Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, running the Anshe Emet Synagogue gift shop (profitably), and serving as a Founding Trustee of The Jewish Women’s Foundation of Chicago. In 2007, Merle and her husband helped to launch Anshe Emet’s Chevra Kadisha in which both continue to “coordinate” and serve. She has served on the Board of NCJW Chicago and remains active on programming and education committees. Never fearful but increasingly aware of death, she is cognizant of the need to acknowledge its inevitability and be prepared for it. Merle’s family teases her openly, sometimes making bets on how long it will take her to bring death and the value of Jewish rituals into the conversation.

She is a founding member of Momentum since 2008 and a philanthropist who volunteers with various Jewish organizations. She likes to ski in the winter and relax at the beach during the summer.

She is skilled in palliative care, home-based primary care, managed care, population health, post-acute care, disease management, pay-for-performance, and healthcare innovations. She has led national teams and programs as Regional Chief Medical Officer for WellBe Senior Medical, overseeing clinical quality and care in five states. Previously Senior Medical Officer for private equity healthcare group valued up to $3.5 billion and was the founder of a home-based primary and palliative care practice which was profitable for more than ten years and founding Hospice Medical Director of a startup hospice that card for approximately one thousand patients over ten years. As Chief Medical Officer for several states at WellBe, Jill is responsible for the clinical model optimization and standardization for an in- home physician run practice caring for the highest risk patients. As Senior Medical Officer at Landmark Health/Optum, National Palliative Care Lead, Jill was responsible for the strategy, development, and implementation of the national clinical palliative care program including workforce training, operational process, outcome metrics, and overall accountability for palliative care performance for over 65,000 engaged patients. During her time here, she helped create a palliative care workforce through training, coaching, and interdisciplinary collaboration improving advance care planning and improving cost of care by over twenty percent. As Medical Director and Director of Palliative Care for DaVita Medical Group/ Tandigm (acquired), a home-based medical practice, Jill developed and implemented a palliative care program as a member benefit for a health plan where she developed a workforce providing palliative care within a home based practice specializing in care for the highest risk most complex patients for more than one hundred and fifty physician-led practices reducing unnecessary hospitalizations and skilled nursing facility admissions by up to twenty percent. Previously, Jill was an Assistant Clinical Professor at RWJ Rutgers Medical School for 26 years where she taught physical diagnosis, a patient-centered medicine preceptor, and developed the palliative care education curriculum. Jill was part of the Editorial staff for AAHCM Frontiers, the Chair of Wellness, Well-being, and Burnout special interest group AAHPM (fix grammar). She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a Board Member of the Goals of Care Coalition for NJ, a Palliative Task Force Member of GOCCNJ, and a featured presenter for AAHCM, Hospice News, and Elevate webinars. Jill is a passionate community advocate for palliative care services, has participated in numerous community presentations and health fairs, developed content, and moderated national palliative care programs for National Hadassah Conventions in NYC and Atlanta. She is a Board member, at Abrams Hebrew Academy, Past Chair of, National Physicians Council, Hadassah. Jill completed her internship and residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Alpha Omega Alpha, Medical Honor Society. Jill holds an MBA from George Washington University, Beta Gamma Sigma, Business School Honor Society.