Palestine Palestine

Nivine Sandouka, is a leader aspiring to achieve social justice, peace and gender equity. She is an expert in the field of program development, management, peace building, gender issues and political affairs. Currently, she works with the alliance for ME Peace as the Regional Director. In the past she worked with the German Association for Development Cooperation – Agiamondo. She also runs a grassroots based initiative called ‘Judi- from me to you’ that aims to connect women together, and volunteers in several civil society organizations. To pursue her passion she is the chairwoman of a newly established NGO called ‘Our Rights’ in Jerusalem, focusing on civic and political rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, especially women. She was identified by the USA state department in 2014 as a young leader and participated in the prestigious ‘International Visitor Leadership Program’ on the theme of conflict resolution, and right now serves as an alumni leader. Throughout her career, she developed several programs that aim to women’s empowerment and community development with international organizations such as Oxfam, and CARE International. She was also the Co Director of IPCRI – Israel Palestine Creative Regional Initiatives. In addition, she currently sits as a board member for ‘The Jerusalem Center for Women’ and was a member representing the civil society of the International Reference Group for the ‘World Council of Churches’. She participated in several conferences tackling the issue of women’s rights in Palestine, and attended two institutes on Feminist Transformative Leadership. Nivine has an MA in democracy and Human Rights from Birzeit University and attended several courses on peace building, gender, program management, accountability and advocacy. She was also invited as a speaker on several occasions including J Street annual conference (2017 & 2018), Accord 1325 Conference in the German Federal Foreign Office, amongst others.founded the Reut Institute, Israel’s most cutting-edge nonprofit strategy and leadership group, which deploys a unique methodology to apply leadership on societal disruptions. Since inception, Reut led on dozens of pioneering efforts of research and leadership in national security and economic development. Throughout Gidi’s career, he has been committed to promoting Israeli-Palestinian and regional peace in the Middle East. Based on his experiences as the secretary of the Israeli delegation for the negotiations with the PLO (1999-2001), including during the Camp David Summit of 2000, Gidi co-authored (In)Sights: Peacemaking in the Oslo Process Thirty Years and Counting (2023). He is one of the foremost experts on IsraeliPalestinian relations, the Oslo Process and the Permanent Status agreement, and has been involved in dozens of diplomatic initiatives in so-called track-two and backchannels. Under Gidi’s leadership, in 2014, Reut launched TOM (Tikkun Olam Makers), which is an Israeli-Jewish-American international humanitarian project with the goal of helping millions of people within a decade by creating and distributing radically affordable and accessible solutions to neglected needs of vulnerable populations. To date, TOM has ~900 products in different phases of development and has operated in 35 countries, including in all nations who signed the Abraham Accords, as well as in the Palestinian Authority. Since inception, TOM was recognized as the “next big idea of the Jewish People” and wasn nicknamed “a superhero startup coming out of Israel” and one of “fifteen Israeli companies to watch.” Throughout his career, Gidi has served the long-term wellbeing and security of the Jewish People. Gidi’s seminal book: Flexigidity: The Secret of Jewish Adaptability explores the secrete sauce of the resilience, recurring prosperity and permanent leadership of the Jewish People. The ideas of Flexigidity underlies Gidi’s extensive path-breaking work on strengthening Israel-World Jewry relations and on fighting antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel. Earlier in his career, from 1995 to 1999, Gidi led the Israeli team that co-designed Birthright Israel, which is the largest generational project of the Jewish People. And following Gidi’s government service, he founded Yesodot Group for constitutional reform. Yesodot’s visionary platform has since been accepted by key leaders in Israel. As mentioned, Gidi is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School as a Wexner Israel Fellow (2002) and of Tel-Aviv University Schools of Law (1999) and Economics (1991). He served with distinction in the Israeli Navy and is a long-distance runner, having completed nine officials marathons. He is married to Betty and they have five children.