Staff
Jayne K. Guberman, Co-Director and Co-Founder
Jayne is an independent scholar and oral history consultant who has spent the past decade conducting research on the American Jewish adoptive experience, including in-depth interviews with young adult adoptees. The former Director of Oral History at the Jewish Women’s Archive, she received her B.A. from Harvard College and her Ph.D. in Folklore & Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania, where her work focused on cultural expressions of Jewish identity among American Jews. Jayne is the mother of two adult daughters, one of whom was adopted through a same-race, domestic adoption.
Jennifer Sartori, Co-Director and Co-Founder
Jennifer has a decade of experience researching issues around adoption and identity in the Jewish community and teaching adoption studies at the college level, as well as two decades of academic work on the shaping of modern Jewish identities more broadly. She received her B.A. in History from Haverford College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Emory University. From 2004 to 2013, she was Associate Director of the Jewish Studies program at Northeastern University. In addition to her work with the Adoption & Jewish Identity Project, she also currently serves as Editor of the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women at the Jewish Women’s Archive. She is the mother of a daughter adopted from China.
Advisory Board
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan is a Deputy Director for the All on The Line campaign of the National Redistricting Action Fund. She was previously Director of External Relations at the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE). She was also the primary liaison to the LGBTQ community under President Obama from 2015-2017 and was the first openly transgender staffer at the White House. Having served in a variety of capacities in the non-profit and government sectors, Raffi currently sits on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and is a board member of SMYAL, a service provider which works with LGBTQ youth. A graduate of St. Olaf College in Minnesota, Raffi was adopted from Honduras and grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Martha Gray
Martha is a transracial adoptive parent of two robust, young adult men. She is a founding member of the Jewish Multiracial Network, whose mission is to create, nurture, and sustain an expanding, inclusive community for Jews of color and their allies. She is also a member of The Brookline Havurah Minyan and Temple Beth Zion. Martha works as a literacy specialist at Roca, a non-profit in Chelsea, MA, that works to disrupt the cycle of incarceration and poverty by helping young people transform their lives.
Hannah Green
Hannah is the Director of Disease Center Operations at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Her professional background is in public health, with specific focus on women’s health and an interest in health disparities. Being an adoptee has always been an important component of her identity and she is greatly excited by the tremendous benefit of work in this area. Hannah currently lives with her husband, two biological children, and their highly energetic border collie in Needham, MA.
Lindsey Newman
Lindsey is the New York Regional Director of Be’chol Lashon, an organization that advocates for the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the Jewish community. She received her B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University in 2009. Lindsey is a transracial adoptee and grew up in a Jewish family on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Adam Pertman
President of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency, Adam previously headed the Donaldson Adoption Institute and was Associate Editor of Adoption Quarterly. Author of the classic Adoption Nation, he was nominated for a Pulitzer for his adoption writing at the Boston Globe. Adam presents keynotes and trainings internationally, and through his research, writing, and advocacy, he has helped improve/shape adoption practice and policy. Adam is the adoptive parent of two adult children.
Jessica Radin
Jessica was born in Thailand and adopted by a single, Jewish woman of Polish descent. In high school, she was the president of the Reform Jewish youth organization and a Bronfman Fellow. She studied sociology at Yale, concentrating on race and education, and received her Masters in Teaching Social Studies from Columbia Teachers College. A high school history teacher, Jessica has organized anti-bias workshops for adoptive parents and run a support group for adoptees, thanks to Bronfman Alumni Venture Grants. She lives in Queens with her husband and two children.
Shelly Tenenbaum
Shelly is a professor of sociology at Clark University, where she also coordinates the undergraduate activities in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She is the recipient of Clark’s Outstanding Teaching Award and Outstanding Academic Advisor Award. A specialist on the shifting identity constructions of American Jews, Shelly’s research on ethnic enterprise, mutual aid, gender, education, and identity intersects the broad areas of sociology of American Jews and historical sociology. In addition to several books, Shelly co-edited a syllabus collection Gender and Jewish Studies: A Curriculum Guide. Shelly is the mother of two children, one of whom was domestically adopted and is now a college student.
Toby Zaitchik
Trained in the United States and Israel, Toby is a licensed mental health counselor and a co-founder of Adoption Associates in Boston, MA. Adoption Associates is a post -adoption therapy practice designed to identify and address the frequently unmet and misunderstood needs of an increasingly diverse and complex adoption community. Toby’s professional training and work in Child and Family Therapy, Art Therapy, and mental health, coupled with her personal experience as an adoptive parent, all contributed to her passionate commitment to her work. Today, when adoption brings together children and parents from every corner of the world, with a myriad of experiences, losses and traumas, Toby sees the need for the Jewish adoptive community along with the entire family of adoption to adapt, learn together and find better ways to respond to everyone whose lives are touched by the experience of adoption.