Our Staff

In addition to structural support from KIVUNIM administrators and from the KIVUNIM Americas Alumni Committee, KIVUNIM Americas is guided by a team of dedicated educators, leaders, and experts in sustainable tourism.

 
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Daniel Magerman

Co-founder and Director of KIVUNIM Americas, Daniel recently completed two years as an English Teaching Assistant in Brazil with the Fulbright Student Program. After he participated in KIVUNIM: New Directions (2011-2012), Daniel began at the Schreyer Honors College at Pennsylvania State University where he studied Linguistics, Spanish, and Jewish Studies. He has led many international student groups, including as a mentor for international freshmen at Penn State, as a cultural tour guide during an embedded course trip on archaeology in Israel, and as the regional mentor for 11 first-year teachers in Brazil. In the fall of 2019, Daniel began a master’s program at the Penn Graduate School of Education in his home city of Philadelphia. He is excited to dedicate his free time and energy to creating and facilitating a new, meaningful educational adventure.

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DANIEL STAROSTA

Co-founder and Marketing Director of KIVUNIM Americas, Daniel is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis where he studied Archaeology and Marketing and helped establish the school’s gap-year students organization. While he is still very much influenced by his KIVUNIM year (2008-2009), being a First Generation American son of First Generation South Americans, the idea of bringing together disparate cultures and languages has always felt very close to home. In his 28 years, he’s been an archaeologist, furniture designer, and disaster relief worker. He aims to create spaces and experiences that make people think harder about where they are and what they’re doing. He currently lives in San Francisco and works at Airbnb.

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Meghan Siritzky

Program Director of KIVUNIM Americas, Meghan is a PhD candidate studying Social and Political Psychology at the University of Oregon. After participating in KIVUNIM: New Directions (2012-2013), she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science at Barnard College, where she taught crisis counseling for a peer-listening hotline and led music outreach trips to Jewish communities around the world with a co-ed Jewish a cappella group. She is deeply passionate about the study and practice of intergroup dialogue, which she has explored as a Kraft Global Fellow in Chile and a Consortium for Human Rights Fellow at Oxford University. In her copious free time as a graduate student, she is thrilled to be putting her energy towards creating this more-than-just-a-summer-program.

Karen Steiner

Yaakov Rodríguez

Paola Salem

Additional Support From:

  • Peter Geffen, Founder and Executive Director of the KIVUNIM gap-year program

  • The KIVUNIM Board of Directors