She served on the boards of Adas Israel, American Friends of Ben Gurion University (co-founding the Washington chapter), the Jewish Women’s Archives, was an advisor to Moment magazine. This past January Esther was part of an Encounter trip to the West Bank. In 2008 Esther was recognized as one of the “Forward 50” Jewish leaders in the country and in 2015 the Washingtonian Magazine named her one of the most powerful women in Washington. She is active in the Washington chapter of J Street.

She is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, whose story she tells in “I Want You to Know We’re Still Here,” published in nine languages, was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. She is married to Bert Foer (a retired antitrust lawyer and retail executive) and the mother of three sons who are authors, Frank, Jonathan, and Joshua, and who are all active in national Jewish projects.

Jonathan is a founding member of the NY Jewish Agenda (NYJA) Leaders Network and an elected member of the Brooklyn Democratic County Committee. He previously served on the Genesis Prize Foundation Advisory Board and the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue Board of Trustees, and he has been a member of both the Hatikvah and ARZA slates for the World Zionist Congress.

Jonathan is a Partner at FGS Global, where he advises organizations on strategic and crisis communications, and he is a veteran of the Clinton White House and the Obama ’08 and Clinton ’92 campaigns. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters, and he is an alumnus of Emory University (BA) and GWU Law School (JD).

She is a past president of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, has served on the Board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and is a member of the J Street Clergy Executive Committee. She is also actively involved with T’ruah and the Task Force on Arab Citizens of Israel. Rabbi Reines has written for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Kveller, The Art of the Sermon, and other Jewish and faith-based publications. She has also been featured in national and international media, including ABC’s Good Morning America with Robin Roberts, Slate’s What Next Plus, and the European cultural television network ARTE, discussing contemporary Jewish life and Israel.

In 2017, Koltai was Lead Mentor World Bank XL Africa (World Bank President’s Award 2017). From 2009-2012, Koltai was the first State Department Senior Advisor for Entrepreneurship (under Secretary Hillary Clinton) where he created and ran the Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP). Prior to 2009, Koltai had a 40 year business career including stints at Bankers Trust Company and Salomon Bros (both in the international project finance groups), McKinsey & Company (in the media group), and 10 years as Corporate Senior Vice President for Strategy and Business Development at Warner Bros. Koltai has also been a repeat entrepreneur, whose own start-ups included serving as co-founder of a publicly traded (Frankfurt and Luxembourg Exchanges) $16 billion market cap Luxembourg-based SES television satellite company.

Among his non-profit activities, Koltai is a board member of HIAS, one of the largest and oldest refugee resettlement agencies in the world, Chair of J Street Maine, Founding Advisory Board Member of Midcoast Villager (a local independent community news organization), Chair of the board of Advisors at University College, Tufts University and a board member of the National Digital Equity Center. Koltai has long been involved in LGBTQ issues, including participating in the Tufts and Harvard LGBTQ alumni organizations and a long time supporter of the Human Rights Campaign.

In the startup space, Koltai is a frequent angel investor, Supervisory Board Chair of Skilllab (an Amsterdam-based developer of skills assessment apps for refuges, migrants and other job seekers), General Partner and Entrepreneur in Residence of Atlantica Ventures (a Series A-B venture investor in African tech startups), and a member of the Board of Omnic.ai, an esports artificial-intelligence powered analytics company.

Koltai earned a BA in History, magna cum laude Tufts University, MA Tufts’ Fletcher School. Licence in European Economics (as Fulbright Scholar) from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. Koltai was an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (where he has been a member for over 35 years) Koltai was a Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow in 2018.
Steven Koltai was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1954 and came to the US following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He lives with his husband, Ivan Zizek, in Lincolnville, ME and has two adult sons and three grandchildren.