Our Team
David K. Haspel, Founder
I am a documentary film producer, communications consultant and former advertising executive now living in Nashville. As a young boy in my hometown of segregated New Orleans, I witnessed both the hatred and bravery during the Civil Rights movement. This had a lasting impact on my values.
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One of my proudest achievements was writing and producing the fundraising video for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. which helped raise over $168 million enabling the museum to proceed toward opening. My interaction with survivors and my later works with this inspiring group made me realize how critical a pluralistic democracy is to the safety and well-being of the Jewish community and our nation at large. I am convinced Trump and many of his advisors, and too many supporters are adversaries of democracy and the rule of law, (or have different priorities).
In 2016 Trump questioned Jewish loyalty to the USA and Israel, if we voted Democratic. As a Republican, I was very offended by these remarks. His statement, along with other troubling ones about other immigrant groups and the Black community motivated me to join The Lincoln Project, RVAT, and to help create Jews Defending American Values. I believe we must defend the USA from Trump and his anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic, and racists actions. Democracy matters, especially to the Jewish community.
I’m a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Southern Methodist University and the executive program in management of UCLA’s The John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management. I have no known relation to Gina Haspel.
Susan D. Wagner, Founder
I was raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish family and attended Jewish day school. After retiring from a twenty-five year career in law and government, I received a master’s degree in Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary. This education taught me the fundamental principles of being a Jew, among these that we are to be a light unto the world so as to make it better for all.
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We have a moral and religious obligation to speak loudly and boldly when we witness actions which threaten the marginalized and, for the most part, Jews have historically lived up to that obligation. Now, we are faced with a threat to our own survival, a threat which we are all too familiar with. I do not want to be a bystander. Our forbearers and our history have taught us better.
A graduate of Barnard College, NYU Law School, and The Jewish Theological Seminary.
Advisory Board
Bruce Silverman,
Creative Director
Bruce Silverman is one of America’s most respected advertising and branding experts.
Prior to forming Silverman Consulting LLC in 2005, Bruce served as EVP/Executive Creative Director at three of America’s largest advertising agencies (Ogilvy, Bozell and BBDO), as President of two of the nation’s best independently-owned agencies (Asher/Gould and Wong Doody), and as President/CEO of the principal U.S. unit of the world’s largest media planning and buying shop (Initiative Worldwide).
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Bruce was the creative mind behind “Don’t Leave Home Without It” for American Express, “Bullish on America” (Merrill Lynch), “Something Special in the Air” (American Airlines), “Not made in ‘Nooo Yawk Ciddy” (Pace Picante), “The Shell Answer Man” and a dozen other award winning campaigns for such clients as IBM, Hershey’s, Baskin-Robbins, Coldwell Banker, Sizzler, Suzuki, Pabst, Sanyo, Mattel, Greyhound and Post. He is particularly proud of the very successful tobacco-use prevention campaign he created and directed for the California Department of Health Services which became the prototype for virtually every anti-tobacco campaign in the world.
A graduate of Adelphi University in New York (where he has been honored as a “Distinguished Alumnus”), Bruce is a confirmed theater, music and arts junkie, voracious reader, sports fan and world traveler.
Stephen Frohsin
Stephen Frohsin is a principal and portfolio manager with a Nashville, Tennessee-based registered investment advisor where he also serves as chief compliance officer. Stephen has more than two decades of professional investment experience as a trusted advisor serving individuals, families, not-for-profit organizations and corporate retirement plans. Stephen is Past-President and Board member of the Nashville Kiwanis Club and former Board of Directors member of CASA Nashville and Congregation Micah.
Stephen earned his B.A. in political science from Vanderbilt University, and is married with three children.
Bruce Levine
Bruce Levine is currently Associate Clinical Professor in Drexel University’s School of Education, and Director both of the Education Policy program and the MS in Education Improvement and Transformation. He was formerly the Director of Drexel’s Washington DC Center. An attorney and longtime strategy consultant, Bruce has been associated with leading firms in their respective industries, including Skadden Arps in law and Booz Allen and Deloitte in consulting. He has also served as a C-suite executive with several startups.
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Bruce graduated from New York University with a JD. He also earned a BA from Hamilton College, and a MPA from the University of Pennsylvania.
He has lived in the DC area for over three decades and has been very active in civic life, most recently, as President of the Southwest Neighborhood Assembly, the historic civic association in DC’s Southwest quadrant that traces its roots back to the 1960s civil rights era. He is currently Treasurer of the Southwest Community Foundation.
Bruce is convinced that the election of 2020 is as pivotal as any since at least the Great Depression. The corruption and cynicism of the Trump administration, magnified by the stunning abdication of constitutional and moral duties by elected Republican leaders at the federal and state levels, has already undone much of the progress the US made over the past half century. As a country, we cannot tolerate any additional time in office for these people. As a Jew and a citizen, he believes that he and the rest of the Jewish community have an obligation to stand up and assert, through voting, continued support for the bedrock values of this country and their desire to see the US make further progress towards achievement of our ideals.
Rabbi Daniel Polish
Daniel Polish is a congregational rabbi, college educator and author. I am part of JDAV because the coming election is unlike anything we have experienced in my lifetime. As a Jew and a committed Zionist who has had the privilege of being a delegate at the World Zionist Congress I am, of course, concerned about Israel. But I worry that the current administration is just using Israel as a pawn in its outreach to Evangelical voters; and encouraging Jews to adopt positions that are ultimately contrary to our interests. I worry about the effect of his character on our collective life as a society.
Steven Markowitz
Steven Markowitz’s professional career began in 1967 in Washington, D.C. as Economic Advisor and then Legislative Assistant to a prominent member of Congress. He later became head of government affairs for The Continental Croup, Inc. (formerly the Continental Can Company), a Fortune 100 corporation. In 1984 he founded MultiState Associates Inc. which has grown to become the nation’s largest lobbying company. Steve served as Chairman of MultiState Associates and retired from the company at the end of 2019.
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Steve has long been involved in local community, religious and political affairs. He has been the local Democratic Party leader for many years, and is President of the Great Neck Democratic Club and a Vice Chairman of the Nassau County Democratic Committee.
For the past seventeen years a major focus of Steve’s community activities has been the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. After serving on the Board of the Center for a number of years, Steve was elected as the third Chairman of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center in 2012 and served in that role through August 2020.
Steve attended Stuyvesant High School and did his undergraduate studies at Harpur College (now Binghamton University) and his graduate work in economics at George Washington University.
Peter Samuelson
Peter Samuelson, Co-Founder and President of First Star, and CEO of PhilmCo Media llc, Mr. Samuelson is a serial pro-social entrepreneur. In 1982 he co-founded the Starlight Children’s Foundation; by 1990 the positive psychological impact of Starlight seeded his next pro-social endeavor, Starbright World, co-founded with Steven Spielberg. 1999 saw the formation of First Star, 2005 EDAR Everyone Deserves a Roof, and 2013 saw him launch ASPIRE, the Academy for Social Purpose in Responsible Entertainment. In the midst of all this Peter has produced 26 films and raised four children. Educated at Cambridge and the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, Peter resides in Los Angeles with his wife Saryl, and continues to fight every day for those less fortunate, chief among them America’s abused and neglected children.
Sharyn Schneiderman
Originally from Rockford, Illinois, I graduated from Tulane University with a degree in Business and currently live in Boca Raton, Florida with my husband. After a career in Corporate Real Estate, I became involved in PTA/PTSA to fight for issues important to students, parents and teachers. In 2000, I became politically active by volunteering for local candidates, every presidential campaign and the League of Women Voters. My father instilled in me the importance of voting, being heard and fighting for what is right. Waking up November 4 saying I could have done more is not an option.
Sheila Rabb Weidenfeld
Sheila Rabb Weidenfeld is Chief Executive of DC Productions ltd, specializing in communication strategies. She was Press Secretary to First Lady Betty Ford and Special Assistant to the President of the United States. She created and runs the internet website snippetsofwisdom.com
Sheila has created, produced and hosted Emmy and Silver Screen winning television programs and documentaries. She was Honorary Consul General of the Republic of San Marino, who knighted her in recognition of her continuing service to the country.
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Sheila is the author of First Lady’s Lady (published by Putnam, a division of Penguin), a memoir about her time in the White House during the Ford Administration.
She also chaired the C&O National Historical Park Advisory Commission and served on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum council, the President’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee for the Foreign Service Institute, the Wolftrap Foundation, and the Women’s Campaign Fund. She was a founding judge of Project Censored and was on the board of CSPI (the Center for Science in the Public Interest) and the Eisenhower Foundation.
She is a graduate of Brandeis University and is married to Edward Weidenfeld. They have two sons, Nicholas and Daniel.