A veteran investigative reporter, an Orthodox rabbi, a Silicon Valley investment banking executive and a documentary filmmaker are the newest members of J.’s board of directors.

Peter Waldman, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News, Rabbi Joey Felsen, the founder and executive director of the Jewish Study Network, Alex Bernstein, managing partner at Kingfisher Investment Advisors, and Samantha Grant, an award-winning filmmaker, are joining the board as of July 1 for a three-year term.

“We’re excited to welcome these four seasoned board members who bring expertise and a sense of energy to our team,” said Carol Weitz, who is transitioning from J.’s board president to co-president along with Steven Dinkelspiel. The 2023-2024 board has 23 members.

“I’ve always regarded J. as one of the mainstays of Jewish community life in the Bay Area,” Waldman, a San Francisco native, said about joining the board. “Its role in chronicling the activities of wide-ranging Jewish institutions in our area and wide-ranging Jewish people in our area is essential to me.”

Waldman worked as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal for 22 years, spending a decade reporting from Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East (he met his wife, documentary filmmaker Charene Zalis, while based in Jerusalem). He joined Bloomberg in 2009, continuing to cover international affairs, and was one of the first American journalists to interview Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, in 2017.

Waldman said as a J. board member he hopes to bring his journalism experience to “expand the ways in which we cover our community.”

Waldman and Zalis, whose film about the Pittsburgh synagogue killings won last summer’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival audience award, have three daughters and live in San Francisco.

Rabbi Joey Felsen co-founded the Bay Area’s only all-girls Orthodox school, Meira Academy, with his wife, rebbetzin Sarah Felsen, in 2011. Born in Toronto, Felsen received a degree in political science from York University before moving to Jerusalem to pursue rabbinic studies. In 2006 he received the Grinspoon-Steinhardt National Award for Excellence in Jewish Education. Felsen teaches Jewish studies classes at the JCCs in Palo Alto and Los Gatos, and is a regular contributor to J.’s weekly Torah column.

“The circulation of the J. is broad both in terms of geography and diversity,” Felsen said. “I’m hoping to bring a perspective from Silicon Valley, as well as from the more traditional community. I know that the publication strives to be representative of the entire Jewish community.”

Felsen and his wife live in Palo Alto. They have seven children and four grandchildren.

Alex Bernstein, a technology investor who comes to the J. board with three decades of experience providing strategic and financial advice to leadership teams of tech companies and nonprofits, also hopes to bolster J.’s coverage of and connection to Silicon Valley’s Jewish community. He previously was on the board of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area and helped co-found Camp Ramah of Northern California, where he was founding board president.

Bernstein is most passionate about engaging Jewish youth in the Bay Area, “to create ways to get them involved, to help educate them on the joy of Judaism and the importance of it and the importance of Israel,” he said, “but also antisemitism, some of the things that are less comfortable to talk about, but that are required to get through high school and college and beyond.”

Bernstein, whose wife is a Colombian Jew, said he hopes to see more of the diverse American Jewish community reflected in J.’s content. They live in the city’s Richmond District have three children, 17, 21 and 24.

San Francisco filmmaker and producer Samantha Grant brings 20 years of documentary film journalism, and 15 years of teaching at UC Berkeley’s graduate school of journalism, to her role on J.’s board.

Grant is the founder of Gush Productions, a documentary production company specializing in personal and essay-style documentaries. Her own work focuses on health care, women’s empowerment and media ethics.

“The reason I selected documentary as my medium is because it is relentlessly challenging, and has infinite opportunities for learning and growth. I thrive in that kind of intense problem-solving environment,” said Grant, a Bernal Heights resident and mother of three.

Grant is also a cohort member of the Wexner Heritage Program, where she studies Torah in a group of Jewish leaders. “The program feels like a combination of a masters in Jewish studies and a certificate in business leadership,” she said.

As a member of J.’s board, Grant said she wants to think about more collaboration in the Bay Area Jewish community, “both along the lines of celebrating our victories, and drawing together to support one another during times of challenge,” she said.

“I think it’s really important to remember that we have so many more similarities than differences, and I would love to see a future where we really open up the tent and welcome one another into all the Jewish spaces that exist in our part of the world,” Grant said. “There’s so much amazing work being done.”