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

She previously 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 family, and is a published writer of a series of children’s stories Manyera the Witch.