Pursue Staff Bios

Chanel Dubofsky – New York Program Associate. chanel@pursueaction.org
Chanel spent several years lurking on college campuses (Oberlin, Columbia) as a Hillel staff person and in the meantime, staffed educational immersion adventures to Israel, Uruguay, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and New Orleans. She is also a Group Leader for AJWS. She has BAs in English and Jewish Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and enjoys a nice cardigan sweater, caffeine, folk music, dog parks, extremely bad television, and photographing living things that do not move. You can read her essays and short fiction at various locations, including the Forward, Jewschool and the Pursuit of Harpyness.

Rachel Ann Gross-Prinz – Program Associate, AVODAH. rachelann@pursueaction.org
Watch out in the bike lane, Rachel Ann’s trying to get to work! …when she’s not running across the Manhattan Bridge to get there. Rachel Ann hails from the Midwest via college in New England and has happily made Ft. Greene Brooklyn her oasis in the urban jungle. Rachel Ann graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA with a degree in Religion and Sociology. She has worked previously as a teen educator, tour guide, fundraiser and trainer for Jewish professionals and lay leaders.

Erica Hymen – Bay Area Program Officer. erica@pursueaction.org
Erica is a Midwesterner by birth, but Bay Area proud since 2003. Her childhood summers at Jewish summer camp, high school weekends full of BBYO events, and trips to Israel set the foundation for her commitment to Jewish community and meaningful learning. Erica is moments away from completing her MA in Education, where she is examining experiential education through the lens of equity and social justice. She holds a bachelors degree in Psychology from The Ohio State University, studied International Studies at the Anglo-American College in Prague, and Jewish Service Learning at San Francisco State University. Erica previously worked as a teen educator and directed a leadership and cultural exchange program with Americans and Israelis.

Suzanne Lipkin – Program Officer for Operations, AJWS. suzanne@pursueaction.org
When Suz isn’t planning the next People of the Book Club, she can be found playing violin around town or enjoying NYC’s theater scene. An alumna of two AJWS service programs, she holds bachelor’s degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University and can occasionally be persuaded to discuss her thesis on Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. She believes Brooklyn to be a reasonable facsimile of her hometown of Philadelphia.

Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay – Director of Alumni and Community Engagement, AVODAH. stephanie@pursueaction.org
Stephanie Ruskay is the Director of Alumni and Community Engagement at AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. Prior to receiving rabbinic ordination and an M.A. in Jewish education from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (2008), she was trained as an organizer by Jewish Funds for Justice and the Industrial Areas Foundation. She served as Program Director for Face to Face/Faith to Faith, a multifaith youth leadership and conflict resolution program for Christian, Jewish, and Muslim youth from the Middle East, South Africa, Northern Ireland, and the United States run under the auspices of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York.  She also served as the Associate Director of Education at American Jewish World Service and as a volunteer in Bulgaria for the Jewish Service Corps of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. She is a 1996 graduate of the Joint Program of the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University, with B.A. degrees in Talmud from JTS and European history from Columbia.

Audrey Sasson – Senior Program Officer for National Campaigns. audrey@pursueaction.org
Montreal native Audrey Sasson spends half her time in the streets being an ally in farmworker justice struggles and the other half rooting for her beloved Habs. Now a resident of Brooklyn, Audrey has been known to bust out with Michael Jackson tunes or West Africa travel tips… depending. Audrey has two bachelor’s degrees from McGill University and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University. Before joining Pursue, Audrey worked for three years at a community based anti-poverty organization in Montreal, providing direct services and doing community organizing with low-income tenants, welfare recipients, immigrants, and seniors.

Merrill Zack – Associate Director of Education and Community Engagement, AJWS. merrill@pursueaction.org
Though Merrill can point out her Michigan hometown on her hand (because Michigan is shaped like a mitten, of course), she’s a diehard Brooklynite, 15 years and counting.  She is also a Jewish social justice junkie, having spent her entire career at organizations like the New Israel Fund, the National Council of Jewish Women, and AJWS.  Merrill graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in Religion and Anthropology and received her Masters in Public Administration from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University.