BOARD MEMBERS

BOARD MEMBERS

Stephen Sideroff, Director

Dr. Stephen Sideroff is an internationally recognized expert in optimal performance, resilience, neurofeedback and alternative approaches to stress and mental health.  He is the co-founder and Clinical Director of Moonview Treatment and Optimal Performance Center, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA's School of Medicine.  Dr. Sideroff is an original Board member of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics and became its Director in 1991.

Dr. Sideroff has traveled nationally and internationally presenting more than 600 seminars and professional training programs.  He has helped to establish innovative treatment approaches in psychosomatic medicine, optimal functioning and attention deficit disorder in China and Europe, and conducted cutting edge research in brain and behavior at UC Irvine, McGill University in Montreal and UCLA.  His published research using Neurofeedback in substance abuse is a model for applying this innovative approach.  He helped establish the Gestalt Therapy clinic in Los Angeles, and is also the founder and former Clinical Director of Stress Strategies, a hospital based program addressing stress, burnout and psychosomatic conditions at UCLA/Santa Monica hospital.

Dr. Sideroff has written and produced a number of self-help audio programs aimed at helping individuals develop greater resilience including: Stress control with biofeedback (which has been translated into four languages and has sold over 50,000 copies), Journey into Sleep, Resilience, Peak Performance in Golf, and his most recent, Resilient Living, in which he presents his new and innovative nine component model of resilience.

Rebecca Tobias, Program Director

Rebecca Gonzalez-Tobias, Program Director of the Institute also serves as a Global Trustee of the United Religions Initiative. As an interfaith educator and and social change activist she designs and facilitates community programming that seeks to foster a culture of peace on a local, national and international level.

In an effort to bring ethics to government and public policy she regularly addresses civic and academic institutions on behalf of Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives, forwarding the agenda outlined in Rabbi Michael Lerner's version of a Global Marshall Plan. Recently introduced to federal legislators on Capital Hill (HR1078) the bill offers practical and substantive legislative steps to expedite the eradication of poverty, homelessness and social inequity in the US and abroad.

As a fellow at the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva she assisted Special Rappateur Miguel Alfonso Martinez in the drafting of resolutions for the Working Group for Indigenous Populations for the Human Rights Sub-Commission meeting held in August 2005. Rebecca serves as a delegate to the UN's Tripartite Forum on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace and the Committee of Religious NGOs. She resides on the board of the LA-PSR's Non-nuclear Proliferation Committee, Levantine Cultural Center, the Immortal Chaplains Foundation, LA 's planning and coordinating council for the Parliament of the World's Religions, and is a US representative of the Interfaith Encounter Association of Israel/Palestine.

She has been invited as guest lecturer and presenter on issues of ethics and inter-cultural cooperation at the Palaise de Nations in Geneva, the Global Assembly of the United Religions Initiative in Mayapur India, the IHRC/CIDH UCLA Brain Trust, California State University Northridge, Arlington West and others. Her work has been a concerted effort to build coalitions and to empower citizen advocacy in an effort to improve the lives of all stake holders on the planet.

Rebecca attended the University of London in 1984, graduating from Florida International University in 1989 with a degree in Political Science and Comparative Religion. In 1996 she went on to study ethics, culture and mysticism of early Christianity and Islam throughout Turkey with the Catholic Sisters of Notre Dame College. In 2003 she attended the Elijah Interfaith Academy of Jerusalem studying sacred tests of the Abrahamic faiths with Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein who is a founding member of the World Congress of Imams and Rabbis.

Mehnaz-Mona Afridi

Mehnaz M. Afridi has a B.A. and MA in Religious Studies from Syracuse University and has studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her PhD was on "Mahfouz and Modern Islamic Identity" from the University of South Africa in Religious Studies. She has had a deep interest in Judaism and Modern Jewish Diaspora, and Secular Islamic Identity. Her recent research projects are focused on Europe and Islam, Muslims and Jews in Italian culture; she taught in Rome and participated in a seminar sponsored by the National Endowment of Humanities on "Jews, and Italian Culture" in Venice, Italy. Recently, she was invited by the University of Munich to present her work on "Egypt: A Nexus of Anti-Semitism" in Elmau, Munich. She has recently published an article on "Sacred Tropes: The Qur'an Cruel or Compassionate" published by Brill. Her book project that she is currently working on is on "Shoah through Muslim Eyes".

She is currently teaching Islam and Judaism, Cultural Diversity, Genocide Studies and Humanities at Antioch University and National University.

Roger Eaton

Roger Eaton is a computer programmer for Princess Cruises. He is on the Board of Unity-and-D iversity World Council in Los Angeles and also a Progressive Action Group Leader with the Westside Progre ssives.

A lot of his time goes towards coordinating the Los Angeles Nuclear Disarmament Coalition. With the help of a fellow programmer in Uruguay he is developing the "InterMix Group Software" which the Wallenberg expects to use for its 2010 Middle East Peace Dialog.

Ron Klemp

Ron Klemp, Ed.D. was the Coordinator of Secondary Literacy for the Los Angeles Unified School District in charge of implementation of reading intervention for middle and high schools. He has been a reading teacher and a Dean of Discipline in several schools in Los Angeles before he began coordinating the literacy intervention in L.A.He is currently an instructor at California State University, Northridge in secondary teacher education, and has a middle school advisory curriculum in publication. He was previously on the NMSA Research Committee, and has co-authored three books on reading and literacy including "Building Literacy in Social Studies."

Ron developed and coordinated the Middle School Peace Institute during the 1990's. He established fourteen Institutes in Los Angeles and helped to create a Peace Institute school in Jackson, Mississippi. Currently he is consulting for literacy intervention and creating cooperative classrooms. He is an instructor at California State University, Northridge, and has taught at National University and at California Lutheran University. His website information can be found at www.3TLiteracygroup.org.

Stephen Krashen

Stephen Krashen was the 1977 Incline Bench Press champion of Venice Beach and holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.  He is also a researcher and consultant in language acquisition, bilingualism, and literacy and is emeritus professor of education at the University of Southern California.

Orli Peter

Dr. Orli Peter is the Director and Founder of the Center for Accelerated Psychology. She is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience contributing to the field of psychology as a practitioner, researcher, and educator. She has conducted psychological research at the University of California at Berkeley, UCLA, and the RAND Corporation. She served as a professor of psychology for eight years at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles, where she directed the graduate program in psychology and provided clinical supervision to over 100 therapists in training.

After earning her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Peter was awarded diplomate status in Clinical Psychology from the American Board of Psychological Specialties. Dr. Peter also completed postdoctoral fellowships in social and clinical psychology at UCLA and the Deveraux Foundation.

Dr. Peter then further advanced her education and training by focusing on the emerging field of neuroscience, earning numerous certifications: she is certified in Applied Neuroscience by Cambridge College, is a certified screener for Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome (SSS) by the Irlen Institute, and is a certified provider of Electroencephalogram (EEG) - Biofeedback by the Biofeedback Certification Institute of America (BCIA). Combining her knowledge of psychology with neuroscience, she became an innovator in using neuroscientific techniques to increase the efficacy and efficiency of traditional and cutting edge psychotherapies.

Charles Sadler, MD

Trained in both America and Europe , Dr. Sadler is board-certified in orthopedic surgery and is Medical Director of The Sadler Medical Group, Inc (SMG). He has taught spinal surgery at the professorial level and published numerous scholarly articles.

SMG is a multispecialty medical group specializing in musculoskeletal pain management. With main office in Beverly Hills , CA , SMG provides treatment to sufferers of both acute and chronic pain in the Beverly Hills , Ontario , and San Bernardino areas. Patients are provided treatment through a holistic combination of such  specialties as orthopedics, anesthesia, spine surgery, neurology, chiropractic, accupuncture, psychology/psychiatry, etc.

Hoori Sadler

Mrs. Sadler is currently CEO of The Sadler Medical Group, Inc. (SMG), Chair of Friends of UMMA Clinic, and Founding Chair of the Persian-American Cancer Institute (PACI).

SMG is a multispecialty medical group specializing in musculoskeletal pain management. With main office in Beverly Hills , CA , SMG provides treatment to sufferers of both acute and chronic pain in the Beverly Hills , Ontario , and San Bernardino areas. Patients are provided treatment through a holistic combination of such  specialties as orthopedics, anesthesia, spine surgery, neurology, chiropractic, accupuncture, psychology/psychiatry, etc.

The UMMA Clinic provides free medical care in South Central Los Angeles, ensuring availability of medical care to upwards of 22,000 people. The Friends of UMMA Clinic is the organization primary responsible for introducing individual/high-net-worth donors to the clinic.

In April of 2005, Mrs. Sadler was a principal on a $350,000 grant from the Susan Kohmen Foundation, doing breast cancer research through UMMA Clinic and UCLA's Public Health Department when she was, herself, diagnosed with breast cancer. Her experiences during treatment and the results of her research, which she continued despite surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, brought her to the conclusion that minority groups in this country were desperately in need of a better approach to cancer in their communities. She began PACI as a pilot study to develop that better approach. PACI, envisioned as a model for any minority community, has worked to expand awareness of cancer-related issues in the Persian-American community. Last year, among myriad smaller activities such as bone marrow registration drives and radio, television, and web-based programs, PACI held two events in UCLA's Ackerman Ballroom, each of which drew nearly a thousand members of the Persian-American community.

Miriam Stein

Shepha Vainstein

Shepha Vainstein MA, LMFT co-founded Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation four years ago after a visit to educational communities in Israel and Palestine convinced her of the critical role that education plays in building interpersonal and intercultural bridges across divides of cynicism and despair.

Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation promotes conflict resolution training and innovative educational modalities aimed at nurturing the minds and souls of Jewish and Arab children living under the chronic stress of conflict within Israel and her surrounding territories.  Its Palestinian kindergarten teacher education program developed in collaboration with educators and health care professionals from the Occupied West Bank seeks to broaden children's problem solving skills and provide models for sustained cooperation and community development.

Ms. Vainstein received her Masters of Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and is a practicing psychotherapist specializing in trauma recovery and personal empowerment. She is a facilitator of Nonviolent Communication and the Way of Council and an executive board member of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics.

Robert Willard

We are very sorry to report that Robert Willard has passed away.  A wonderful man and a valuable member of our Board, Bob, we will miss you.  Bob Willard, a fourth generation Californian, was trained as a mechanical engineer at Stanford, BS'47 and the California Institute of Technology, MS'49. He served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army in World War II, active in the European Theater of Operations and in the U.S. Subsequent to completing his education and military service, he founded an independent business to distribute specialized industrial components to industries manufacturing complete machinery, mining enterprises, and ore and scrap processors. He directly managed all operating functions. Following his retirement in the late '90's, Bob joined the nonprofit world. Presently president of the Board of Directors of OPICA, a west Los Angeles day care center for the mentally fragile elderly, which serves persons with dementias, including Alzheimers Disease, and provides professional counseling to their families and caregivers. Bob is a member of the Levantine Cultural Center's Advisory Board. He is an advisor on fund development planning and/or strategic planning for the South Los Angeles LAMP, and the Progressive Jewish Alliance, he is an active member of Leo Baeck Temple, a west Los Angeles liberal Reform Jewish congregation. There he serves on several standing committees including Personnel Committee, Peacebuilders group, and Archival Planning Committee.