Board of Trustees

Board of Trustees

Officers of the Board 

President: Marci Dollinger
Vice President: Martin Lowenstein
Secretary: Becky Genet
Treasurer: Dave Horowitz
At Large: Jennifer Grossman, Deb Stadtner


Trustees

Michelle Barenbaum
Scott Barshack
Mariah Calarco
Sofia Chancey
Jill Deitch
Marci Dollinger
Debbie Findling
Becky Genet
Hallie Goldstein
Jennifer Grossman
Steve Grossman
David Horowitz
Barbara Iungano
Erin Kahn
Martin Lowenstein
Roman Polonsky
Ruth Rosenthal
Tony Smorgon
Deb Stadtner
Matt Wulfstat

 


Michelle Barenbaum

Michelle joined the Brandeis Marin Board of Trustees in 2021-2022 and serves on the Governance committee. Brandeis Marin has played and continues to play a central role in her life. Michelle’s son, Sam, graduated from Brandeis Marin in 2019, and her son Henry, graduated in 2022. Michelle is the immediate past president of the Brandeis Marin Parents Association, and her husband, Daniel, is an alum, where he started in Brandeis Hillel Day School’s inaugural year, in 1978. Michelle is dedicated to the well-being of children. She is a teacher at Winston Preparatory School in San Rafael, which offers innovative and unique focus curricula for students with learning differences. She is also a Marin Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), where, since 2015, she has formed bonds with youth in different places in the foster care system and advocates on their behalf to government welfare and education institutions and courts. Michelle is a proud Chicagoan and earned her BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and her MPH from Emory University.
 

Scott Barshack

Scott joined the Brandeis Marin Board of Trustees in 2018-2019. He has served on the Strategic Marketing Committee, the Governance Committee and has chaired the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force. Professionally, Scott has been serving the residents of Marin and Sonoma counties as a psychiatrist for the past 30 years with a special interest in teenagers and young adults. He spent his first 20 professional years as the Medical Director of Mental Health at Marin General Hospital. Currently, he is the Medical Director of the Paradigm San Francisco Residential program for young adults in San Rafael and retains a private practice in Corte Madera. During his 14 years as a Brandeis parent, Scott served the school as room parent many times, created and organized the Family Talent Show, and was the Chair of the Chesed Committee. He is the proud father of two Brandeis alumni.
 

Mariah Calarco

Mariah is excited about everything that is Brandeis Marin. She joined the Brandeis Marin Board of Trustees in 2021-2022. The school has had a profoundly positive impact on her family and son, Charlie (Class of 2023), who has been given a sense of community and belonging at Brandeis that is far from given for a kid as seriously disabled as he is.  Mariah has actively volunteered at Brandeis since her son entered kindergarten, including serving two years on the Executive Board of the Parent Association.  Before having her son, Mariah worked in special education and women's health. Both of these areas were places in which she found a passion for service, and a deep interest in problem solving to cater to individuals' needs across a variety of settings. Mariah is an avid hiker and loves all things nature. She grew up in Chicago, but has lived in the Bay Area since 2001 and has lived in Fairfax since 2011 where she lives with Charlie and their two dogs.
 

Sofia Chancey

Sofia joined the Brandeis Marin Board of Trustees in 2021-2022 and has served on the Advancement Committee and the Strategic Marketing committee. This year, Sofia will serve as Chair of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force. She has been an active volunteer from the time her family moved to Marin from Melbourne, Australia and joined the Brandeis community in early 2017. Sofia and her husband, Jeff, were looking for a seamless transition for their two daughters from their Jewish education at the King David School in Melbourne and, from the moment the family stepped onto the campus, they knew they were home at Brandeis. Sofia’s younger daughter is a current Brandeis Marin student and her older daughter is a 2020 grad. Sofia served as Secretary of the Parent Association in 2018 and 2019 and was on the Spring Simcha planning committee for 2020 and 2021.

Sofia is the Head of Strategy at Intune Collective, a strategy and management consultancy, and serves on the Board of the Northern California chapter of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Prior to these roles, Sofia was a Managing Director with Accenture for 21 years in the US and Australia. Sofia co-founded, and held various roles including that of President, Get Your Frock On! a non-profit formed to raise awareness of and funds for Ovarian Cancer Research from 2010 until 2016, donating 100% of funds raised to the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation of Australia.
 

Jill Deitch

Jill joined the Brandeis community in 2020 when their son Drew was a 6th grader.  When they realized the school was a game changer for their son, they decided to move their twins Caitlin and Michaela to the school in 2021. Jill has served as the Chair of the Brandeis Fund and a room parent.

With a long background in event marketing, Jill is a marketing consultant who has had extensive engagements with a diverse list of clients including the San Francisco Symphony, SFJAZZ Center, Bay to Breakers, Wells Fargo and SYPartners. Her current passions (aside from Brandeis and her family) are the family dog, “Mama Rasha” and Pickleball.

Marci Dollinger

Marci is thrilled to be President of the Board of Brandeis Marin, after serving on the faculty as a teacher for 12 years. Her roles on the Board include serving as Chair of the Advancement committee, Vice President of the Executive committee, member of the Governance committee and co-chair of Staff/Faculty happiness project on behalf of the Board. Marci chaired the Community Engagement workstream for the Strategic Planning process in 2021. Professionally, Marci has been a Jewish day school educator for her entire teaching career. Marci currently serves on the Boards of A4BGU and Camp Newman and past board service includes leadership at the Osher Marin JCC, Congregation Rodef Sholom, Jewish Family and Children’s Services, the Jewish Community Relations Council and co-President of the Osher Marin JCC preschool. Marci is an alumna of the Wexner Heritage Program and A4BGU’s Zin Fellows Leadership Program. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brandeis University, and a Master’s in Education and teaching credential from UCLA. Marci and her husband, Marc Dollinger, Ph.D., (past President of the Brandeis Hillel Day School Board) live in San Rafael, California, and have two daughters – Rivi (Rebecca) (masters student at CIIS for creative arts therapy) and Shayna (HUC Rabbinic student), both alums of our beloved Brandeis.
 

Debbie Findling

Debbie is a senior advisor at the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund and a philanthropic consultant to the Laura and Gary Lauder Family Venture Philanthropy Fund, the Laszlo N. Tauber Family Foundation, among others. She previously served as Deputy Director of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. Debbie is the co-founder of the Memory Garden, a Jewish memorial site for reflection and healing after pregnancy loss. In 2019, she was honored by Jewish Family and Children's Services with their Fammy Award for her work to raise awareness in the community about fertility, loss and infertility. She currently serves as secretary on the executive committee and board of directors of Planned Parenthood Northern California and previously served on the executive committees and boards of Brandeis Hillel Day School (now Brandeis San Francisco) and the Jewish Community High School of the Bay. She holds a doctorate in philosophy of education and graduate degrees in Jewish education and rabbinic literature. Debbie lives with her husband in San Francisco, Muir Beach and occasionally in Rwanda. Their 22-year-old daughter is a soon-to-be college graduate.


Becky Genet

Becky joined the Brandeis Marin Board of Trustees in 2018-2019 and has served many roles during her tenure on the Board. She served as the Governance Chair, chaired the Strategic Planning process, and helped co-chair the 40th anniversary Spring Simcha. Becky has also served on the Head Support and Evaluation Committee and currently serves as the Secretary, and sits on the Executive Committee. Becky's roots on the Marin campus span for decades, as Becky is both an alum student ('93) and faculty member of the Brandeis campus in Marin. She spent over a decade as a classroom educator, teaching in both the Lower School and Middle School. During her teaching tenure, Becky also participated in the Head of School Search Committee, Compensation Committee and Israel Education Committee. Transitioning out of the classroom, she oversaw the school-wide Curriculum Mapping project, and was the school's Accreditation Coordinator for its 2017 CAIS/WASC accreditation. Becky has also served as Brandeis Marin's first Alumni Relations Coordinator and helped found Mishpacha, the family alumni association. Over the last decade, Becky has also volunteered for and co-chaired various committees at the OMJCC, Congregation Rodef Sholom, JFCS and Shalom Bayit; she has also participated in the Shalom Hartman Institute for Emerging Leaders and the Federation Fellows program. As a Marin County native, Becky remains committed to being an active member of the local Jewish community.
 

Hallie Goldstein - Trustee in Training 

Hallie (Brandeis Hillel class of 2010) majored in psychology at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. After extensive involvement with on-campus Jewish causes, she moved to Tel Aviv at the end of 2019. While living there, she worked as a content writer at a mental health app followed by a global financial technology company. She loved working in tech and learning about the world of startups for nearly four years, but is excited to finally be pursuing her longstanding dream of becoming a clinical psychologist. She recently moved to Berkeley where she is a doctoral student at the Wright Institute. She will be joining the Brandeis Marin board as a “Trustee in training” and feels incredibly honored to be an alum representative with such a deep connection to and affinity for the school.
 

Jennifer Grossman

Jennifer joined the Brandeis Marin Board of Trustees in 2018-2019 and since that time has served as the Chair of the Strategic Marketing Committee and co-Chair of the Storyforce Task Force. She also sits on the Executive Committee and Advancement Committee. She served as co-Chair of the Spring Simcha23. Before joining the Board, Jennifer served on the Executive Committee of the Brandeis Parents Association for 4 years, three of them as President, and headed up many volunteer committees during her tenure as a Brandeis parent. She also served on the Board of Children for Change, an organization that empowers youth to become global changemakers and make a positive impact in the world as well as chair of the Music School of the Arts Boosters group. Jennifer ran a Learning and Development consultancy for almost 20 years and currently works at The RealReal, the worlds largest luxury consignment store. She and her husband Steve are the proud parents of a Brandeis graduate and served as the host family to Brandeis’ first official international student graduate.
 

Steve Grossman

Steve currently serves on the Budget and Finance committee and is also chair of the Audit committee. He recently retired and is presently doing some restaurant consulting. After graduating from Baruch College in New York City, Steve worked for an international CPA firm in their New York office, specializing in restaurants, hotels and casinos for 15 years. After becoming a partner in the firm, he transferred to their San Francisco office and worked there for the next ten years. In 1994, Steve left public accounting to become the CFO for one of the largest Burger King franchises in the country, a position he held for the next 21 years before retiring. During his time in the Bay Area, he has served as President and several times as Treasurer for Congregation Kol Shofar. Currently he is an active member on their Finance Committee. Steve lives in Mill Valley with Jackie, his wife of 49 years. He has two sons and two grandsons who also live in the Bay Area. Steve’s youngest son attended Brandeis from 3-8 grade in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Steve is a sports nut and has season tickets to several Bay Area sport teams.
 

David Horowitz

David is the Treasurer of our Board of Trustees and a longtime member of the Budget & Finance Committee. Professionally, he founded Agilon Capital, LLC, a systematic, quantitative hedge fund that specializes in corporate bonds, and is headquartered in San Francisco. After selling his firm to Centiva Capital, he became the Head of Systematic Credit for Centiva. Prior to founding Agilon, David worked at BlackRock, Inc. as the Deputy CIO of Systematic Fixed Income. He has served on the Board of Urban Blazers, an organization that was dedicated to providing transformative outdoor experiences to under-resourced kids in Philadelphia. David graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Computer Science Engineering and a BA in Finance. David lives in Mill Valley, with his wife and three children, two of whom currently attend Brandeis Marin, and one who is a recent graduate.
 

Barbara Iungano

Barbara and her family moved to Marin County from San Francisco in 2016 and found community at Brandeis Marin. Her daughter, Eloise, is a seventh grader at the school. Barbara has been active in the Parents Association and is co-chair of the Advancement Committee. She is also an active member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force at Brandeis. 

Currently, Barbara is CFO of a family foundation and sits on the Board of Buen Dia Family School, a pre-school in San Francisco. Professionally, she is a chiropractor and has dabbled in organic farming. She and her family live a semi-bucolic lifestyle with their pets along with chickens and goats, in San Rafael.

 

Erin Kahn

Erin joined the Brandeis Marin Board of Trustees in 2019-2020 and has served on many committees. She is currently the Senior Manager of Studio Operations at Epic Games (i.e. Fortnite, Unreal Engine, Gears of War). Prior to Epic, Erin spent 14 years at Lucasfilm in a variety of roles - the most recent of which was in Global Talent Development. Her film credits include: Black Panther, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: Rogue One, Avengers Endgame, Ready Player One, A Quiet Place, Doctor Strange, The Revenant, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Strange Magic, Unbroken, and, Pacific Rim, among others. She sits on the advisory board of the The Tug McGraw Foundation, founded by multiple grammy winner, Tim McGraw. She has served on the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s annual gala committee and has been a past member of the Jewish Community Federation’s Power of One gala committee. Erin is an alumna of Brandeis Hillel Day School (Marin) and lives with her husband and three children in San Francisco. She loves traveling, soccer, biking and is always available for karaoke.
 

Martin Lowenstein

Martin is the Executive Director of Friends of China Camp, which operates China Camp State Park. He served six years on the Board of Brandeis Marin and chaired the Advancement Committee. Representing the Jewish Community Federation, he sits on the board of the Israel Religious Expression Platform. From 2010 to 2013, he was Board Chair of the Jerusalem American International School, where he oversaw the growth of enrollment from 65 to 149 students and the doubling of the physical plant. He also chaired capital campaigns at Peninsula Temple Beth El and at The Marin School. Martin received his MBA from Georgetown University and his BS in Civil Engineering from Tufts University. Martin and his wife, Inbar, have three children: Tamara ’20, Ben ’22, and Maya ’26. In his spare time, Martin enjoys running at China Camp, reading spy novels and spiritual books, going to farmers markets with Inbar, and making his children laugh.
 

Roman Polonsky

Roman has moved around the world many times. He has been to school in Moscow, a university in Sydney, including jobs in London and Geneva, before finally settling in San Francisco with his wife and three kids. His son, Austin, graduated from Brandeis Marin and is now at The Bay School. Twins, Melina and Jolene, are going into the 8th grade at Brandeis Marin. Roman is a software engineer who has worked for many technology companies in the Silicon Valley. Currently, he builds data solutions for clients around the world. Roman is passionate about being involved in the school's parent activities. He has served on the Parents Association and is a co-chair of last year's Simcha party.
 

Ruth Rosenthal

Ruth has been involved with Brandeis Marin since its inception in the late 1970s.  First as a campus partner board member, Ruth served for 13 years on the MJCC board, ending her tenure as board president in the early 1990s. All the while, Ruth has worked at Brandeis Hillel Day School both in Marin and SF and then at Brandeis Marin. She has taught most lower school grades, acted as school librarian and most recently as Dean of Lower School. Ruth looks forward to participating in the Brandeis Board and hopes to offer an historical perspective to current agendas. Since retiring from Brandeis Marin in 2021, she has enjoyed working with individual students at local elementary schools and studying Spanish.  She wrote a cookbook-memoir In Search of Rugelach and has loved the long stretches of time to read and cook.  Ruth is most proud of her two sons, Joel (BHDS ‘98) who is a Jewish educator in San Francisco and David (BHDS ‘02), who works in property management in Manhattan.  On any given sunny day, you may see Ruth and her partner, Dan, riding their e-bikes on trails and roads all over Marin.
 

Tony Smorgon

Tony has served as a member of the Brandeis Marin Board of Trustees from 2018-2020. He has served on the Advancement Committee, Head Support Committee and the Strategic Planning Committee.  Tony is a Director of the Jack and Robert Smorgon Families Foundation. When he was living in Australia, he was the Chairman of the Mount Scopus College Foundation, a K-12 Jewish day school. He also performed a key role in the formation and growth of Keren Hayesod-UIA’s global forum to strengthen leadership and commitment from the next generation of major donors to Israel.  Tony is a Wexner Heritage Alumni. From 2018-2020 Tony served as a delegate to the Wexner Alumni Council. Currently, Tony is actively engaged in supporting Brandeis University’s initiatives on antisemitism in higher education. Tony’s family office, Escor, is a privately owned Australian company focused on investments, property and philanthropy. Tony and his wife Jennifer have five children, and their oldest son, Noah who graduated from Brandeis Marin in 2019, is a freshman in College.
 

Deborah Stadtner

Deborah has a passion for serving the Jewish community and feels that a Jewish day school education is one of the best gifts we can give to our children.  Currently, she serves on the Governance committee, the Advancement committee and the Executive committee.  For the past two years, she has been the Governance Chair, has served as the Advancement Chair and was co-chair of the 40th Anniversary committee.  In addition to Brandeis Marin, she serves on the boards of Jewish Family and Children’s Services as a Chair of the Loans and Grants Committee, the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, and the Advisory Board of URJ Camp Newman.  Deborah has been mentored by JCF Rubin Text Talks leadership program, JCF Women’s Philanthropy, JCF Judith Chapman Women’s leadership program and several Shalom Hartman Institute Board leadership programs.  Deborah is a past president for the Osher Marin JCC where she began as an ECE volunteer and Parent Association president before serving on the Board for 11 years.  She is a former board member for Congregation Kol Shofar and the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center.  As a past 19-year parent at Brandeis Hillel Day School/Brandeis Marin, she served as Parent Association president 2006-2007, was an annual fund chair for three years, served on the Advancement committee, Marketing committee and Head of School selection committee, as well as serving on all of the various parent association committees along the way.  She has a Bachelor of Science from San Diego State University in Business Administration and worked in market research for 20 years.  Deborah is married to Larry and has four adult children, Joshua, Rebecca, Jonathan and Jacob, who are Brandeis Marin graduates.  Deborah is inspired by her family to help insure a thriving Jewish community for the next generation.

Matt Wulfstat

Matt joined the Board of Trustees in 2021-2022, bringing his experience as the CEO and President of Stratford School for nearly a decade. He led the school’s growth from 200+ to 800+ employees and from 6 to 18 campuses.  He currently serves on a number of educational boards including ISG, a subsidiary of International School Services and KSS, a growing group of immersion language schools. Matt has also served on the Executive Committee of the Brandeis School of San Francisco’s Board of Trustees and chaired the Tamalpais High School Site Council.  

Matt is a former Wexner Heritage Fellow and Young Presidents Organization (YPO) member and has been a speaker at various conferences on educational innovation and investment.  Matt received an MBA and Masters in Education at Stanford and a BA in Economics with Honors from Stanford University.  He and his wife, Amanda, have four children and their son, Jacob, is a recent graduate of Brandeis Marin. In his free time, Matt likes to ski, mountain bike and plunge with his family into Three Wells, the strikingly chilly swimming hole near their home in Mill Valley.