Board Members
Joan Beerman received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Southern California. She has been in private practice for over fifty years. In addition, she has served as the managing trustee of the Robert Ellis Simon Foundation since 1969 and has been a trustee of the Frederick Weisman Discretionary Trust for over twenty-five years. She has served on the Insurance Trust of the American Psychological Association, is a founding member of the National Academies of Practice, and has received the Distinguished Practitioner Award from the California Psychological Association. She was married to Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman from 1988 until his death in 2014.
Judith Beerman O’Hanlon, the eldest daughter of Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and Martha Fechheimer Beerman, grew up in Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from Barnard College and her M.A. in French Literature from Columbia University. Since 1976, she has taught a variety of English and French courses at Brentwood School, where she initiated the AP English program as well as the first community service program and the school’s magazine of literature and the arts. As a charter member of the high school honor society, Cum Laude, she was elected its first president at Brentwood, serving in that position for ten years, and became the first director of the Senior Seminar program. She has received recognition for her influence as a teacher: twice from Stanford University and once from Cornell University. She is married to Neil R. O’Hanlon and has two children.
Eve Beerman received her bachelor's degree from the University of the Pacific and her master's degree from Boston University. For over thirty years, she has worked as a clinical social worker in pediatrics, much of that time in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the University of California, Los Angeles. She works with hospitalized children and their families regarding illnesses and coping with long-term hospital stays. She has trained nurses, medical students, doctors and social work students on these issues, and has spoken to numerous groups about being hospitalized. In addition, Eve is a member of the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect team at the UCLA Medical Center.
Salam Al-Marayati, president and co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, is nationally recognized for his commitment to improving the public understanding of Islam and policies impacting American Muslims. He oversees MPAC’s groundbreaking civic engagement, public policy, and advocacy work. He is an expert on Islam in the West, Muslim reform movements, human rights, democracy, national security, and Middle East politics. He has spoken at the White House, Capitol Hill and represented the U.S. at international human rights and religious freedom conferences. His writings have appeared in every major national news publication (including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times).
David N. Myers is Distinguished Professor of History and holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History in the UCLA History Department. He is the founding director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. He also serves as the director of the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate. From 2018–2023, he served as President of the Board of the New Israel Fund. He is the author of seven books and editor or co-editor of twelve volumes. An alumnus of Yale College (1982), David undertook graduate studies at Tel-Aviv and Harvard Universities before receiving his Ph.D with distinction in 1991 in Jewish history from Columbia University. He has written widely in the fields of Jewish intellectual and cultural history. David served from 2010-15 as Robert N. Burr Chair of the History Department at UCLA. He also served as Director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies (1996-2000, 2004-09, 2010-11). He has received numerous fellowships, and has taught at theÉcole des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris) and Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow). David is a member of the board of the New Israel Fund, writes frequently on matters of contemporary Jewish concern, and since 2002, has served as co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, as well as a Fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. David edited a book of Rabbi Beerman’s sermons and letters, The Eternal Dissident: Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act.
Jane Olson chaired the International Board of Human Rights Watch from 2004 to 2010, having founded the California Committee South in 1989 and served on the HRW Board for 16 years. She was founding board chair of Landmine Survivors Network and served as chair for 13 years, through its transition to Survivor Corps. Jane currently serves on the board of the Pacific Council on International Policy and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a former board member of The Salzburg Seminar on International Studies. Jane has received numerous awards, including the inaugural 2005 Eleanor Roosevelt Award from Feminist Majority; the Silver Achievement Award from the YWCA of Greater Los Angeles; the Community Achievement Award from Public Counsel, and The Alison Des Forges Award in 2010 from Human Rights Watch. She and her husband, attorney Ronald L. Olson, reside in Pasadena, CA. They have three grown children and eight grandsons.
Tracy Rice received her B.A. from the University of Kansas and her Juris Doctorate from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. After law school, Tracy worked as a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, focusing on civil rights cases pertaining to criminal justice, including conditions of confinement at prisons and jails, death penalty appeals, and police misconduct. She then served as the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s Los Angeles Bureau Chief before becoming the inaugural Executive Director of the California Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. Long active around civil and human rights issues, Tracy, along with Rabbi Leonard Beerman, is a founding board member of Death Penalty Focus, an organization committed to the abolition of the death penalty. Tracy currently serves as Vice President and Chief Development Officer at Public Counsel, a legal nonprofit which works with communities and clients to create a more just society through direct legal services, policy advocacy, and civil rights litigation.
Michael Tubbs is the founder of End Poverty in California (EPIC), Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI), and Tubbs Ventures. He is the Special Advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom for Economic Mobility and Opportunity. Tubbs served as the seventy-ninth mayor of Stockton, California, his hometown, from 2017–2021. He was the city's first Black mayor and the youngest-ever mayor of a major American city. Tubbs has also served as a Stockton city council member and a high school educator. He has been a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, The MIT Media Lab, and the Stanford Design School. He is the author of The Deeper The Roots: A Memoir of Hope and Home.
James Morris Lawson, Jr. (in memoriam, September 22, 1928–July 9, 2024) was an American activist and university professor. He was a leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement, training many of the movement's future leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Diane Nash, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, and John Lewis, in tactics of nonviolent direct action. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his Civil Rights activism in 1960, and later served as a pastor in Los Angeles, California, for 25 years.