Our Team

Dr. Erica Brown is the Vice Provost for Values and Leadership at Yeshiva University and the founding director of its Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership. She was both a faculty member and a student of Rabbi Sacks’ at Jews’ College, where Rabbi Sacks served as her Masters’ thesis advisor. Erica previously served as the director of the Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership and an associate professor of curriculum and pedagogy at The George Washington University. Erica is the author of twelve books on leadership, the Hebrew Bible and spirituality. Erica has a daily podcast, “Take Your Soul to Work.” Her latest book Esther: Power, Fate and Fragility in Exile (Maggid) was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

Erica is also the author of Jonah: The Reluctant Prophet, Take Your Soul to Work: 365 Meditations on Every Day Leadership and Happier Endings: A Meditation on Life and Death (Simon and Schuster), which won both the Wilbur and Nautilus awards for spiritual writing. Her previous books include Inspired Jewish Leadership, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, Spiritual Boredom, Confronting Scandal and co-authored The Case for Jewish Peoplehood (All Jewish Lights). She also wrote Seder Talk: A Conversational Haggada, Leadership in the Wilderness, In the Narrow Places and Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe (All OU/Koren). She is currently working on a commentary on Ecclesiastes (Maggid).

She has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Tablet, First Things, and The Jewish Review of Books and wrote a monthly column for the New York Jewish Week. She has blogged for Psychology Today, Newsweek/Washington Post’s “On Faith” and JTA and tweeted on one page of Talmud study a day at DrEricaBrown. She has master’s degrees from the Institute of Education (University of London), Jews’ College (University of London) and Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Baltimore Hebrew University. Erica was a Jerusalem Fellow, is a faculty member of the Wexner Foundation, an Avi Chai Fellow and the recipient of the 2009 Covenant Award for her work in education. She was the scholar-in-residence at both The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston and as the community scholar for the Jewish Center of New York. She currently serves as a community scholar for Congregation Etz Chaim in Livingston, NJ. 

Aliza Abrams Konig is the Senior Program Director of the Leadership Scholars at Yeshiva University, an undergraduate program to develop emerging leaders for the Jewish future. She formerly served as Yeshiva University’s Director of Alumni Engagement, Director of Student Life at Stern College for Women and the Director of Jewish Service Learning, where she built the service-learning curriculum and established student travel missions around the world. Earlier in Aliza's career she served as Assistant Principal at Central, Yeshiva University High School for Girls. She has lectured on leadership, education, faith, prayer and issues related to the contemporary Jewish family, dating, infertility, surrogacy and family in synagogues, community centers and schools. She also serves as a consultant on experiential education.

Aliza is a member of the inaugural Wexner Field Fellows program through the Wexner Foundation. She has written for the YU Torah-to-Go series and is published in Ennoble and Enable: Essays in Honor of Richard M. Joel (Yeshiva University Press).

Aliza holds a B.A. in Judaic Studies from Stern College and a Master’s in Social Work from YU’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work. Aliza and her family live in Riverdale, New York, where she volunteers with her synagogue and other nonprofit organizations. 

Leadership Scholars Faculty

Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Schiffman is an Assistant Professor at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School, an instructor at RIETS, and the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. He graduated YU with a BA in psychology, an MS in Jewish Education from Azrieli, an MA in Jewish Philosophy from Revel, Rabbinic Ordination from RIETS, and a doctorate in psychology from  St. John’s University. He has been on the rabbinic staff of Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn, NY since 2010 and practices as a licensed psychologist in NY. His book Psyched for Torah: Cultivating Character and Well-Being Through the Weekly Parsha, his academic and popular articles, as well as many of his lectures, are accessible on his website, www.PsychedForTorah.com. His writings have also appeared in the Jewish Vues, Jewish Press, and Aish.com.