Ronit Heyd

Ronit Heyd is Vice President and Director of the Center for Israeli and Jewish identity at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Ronit comes to the Shalom Hartman Institute after more than 20 years of developing and leading initiatives that address Israel’s most complex social challenges. She is a leadership and social change expert and adaptive leadership educator who has worked with dozens of leaders and changemakers from the public and non-Profit sectors in Israel.

Ronit served as the executive director of Shatil, the capacity-building arm of the New Israel Fund. Prior to assuming her role as director, Ronit led the Social Justice Initiative and the Religious Freedom Project at Shatil, providing organizational consultancy to dozens of organizations, coordinating coalitions and campaigns, and facilitating trainings for organizations and activists who work to strengthen Israel’s democracy.

Ronit holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School as a Wexner Fellow and an MA in social psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a devout Jerusalemite who lives in Ein Kerem with her husband, three children, two cats and (currently) three chickens, and is a published writer of a series of children’s stories Manyera the Witch.