Board of Directors

Rachel joined the Kehillah Board in 2019 and serves as chair of the Finance Committee and the Financial Strategy Committee.  She is also a long-term Executive Board member at Congregation Beth Jacob in Redwood City.  She and her husband, Andy Hewett, have two Kehillah graduates: Isaac ’18 and Rhea ’20 (both of whom are pursuing Mechanical Engineering degrees at University of Wisconsin, Madison).

Professionally, Rachel continues to dedicate her 20+-year career to improving operations in start-up and established companies.  She is currently Chief Operations Officer at Santa Cruz-based electric bike company, BlixBike, applying her experience to scaling the business. Previously, she was Vice President Business and Service Operations at electric scooter and skateboard company, Boosted, Inc. 

She is the initial co-founder and founding investor of Waggit.dog, an innovative health and safety tracker for dogs. Rachel has had a long and successful career as a strategic operations consultant at PRTM Management Consulting where she served on the Governance Committee, built and led the global Customer Experience Practice Area, and helped grow the company to 600 consultants internationally.  She influenced the integration of PRTM into PwC to jump-start PwC’s strategic operations capability.  Her experience spans Customer Experience, Supply Chain Management, Product Development Management, and Systems Integration.

Rachel has an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester.  Rachel served for four years on the board of Mercado Global, a non-profit that empowers rural Latin American women to become entrepreneurs.

An owner of a young long-haired German Shepherd, Rachel thoroughly enjoys training and frisbee-throwing sessions aimed at tiring him out.  She’s also working hard on improving her tennis game, sometimes with her husband, Andy, as her doubles partner.

Matthew Gemello is a corporate partner and the chair of Orrick’s global corporate business. A seasoned lawyer, Matthew guides global technology companies and their financial sponsors through transformational domestic and cross-border transactions. Matthew currently serves as the board chair of Think of Us, a design-thinking lab seeking to transform child welfare through systemic change (Audacious Project grant recipient 2023), and the board vice chair of the Youth Law Center, a San Francisco-based legal advocacy for children in foster care and the juvenile justice system.

Matthew and his wife Moon live in Redwood City and are the proud parents of Delilah (University of Oregon class of 2026) and Bodhi (Kehillah class of 2025). A fourth generation resident of the Peninsula, Matthew is passionate about his family, the outdoors, skiing, mountain biking and other alpine activities. His love of the beautiful game means you can find him up very early in front of the TV on weekends.

Bio coming soon.

Cary is the founder of Kletter Law, a San Mateo civil litigation law firm focusing on real estate and employment matters. Cary is also an active real estate investor, organizing real estate syndicates for multi-family apartment building renovation in San Mateo County. Cary and his wife Ha Nguyen are the parents of a Kehillah student and students at the Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City.

Cary is also active in the Belarus Holocaust Memorial Project which creates and maintains holocaust memorials at sites of atrocities during WWII in Belarus.

Jody Kramer is a communications and marketing leader. She began her career in Washington DC as deputy press secretary for a U.S. Senator from NY. After moving to the Bay Area, she joined a leading public relations firm, and provided strategic counsel on media relations, political affairs and crisis management, for clients such as Applied Materials, Cypress Semiconductor, Xerox, Apple Computer, and Second Harvest Food Bank.

From there, Jody was an early hire at Netscape, helping to build one of the first, and best-known Internet brands. After AOL acquired Netscape, Jody went on to lead communications for a host of start-ups as well as major technology companies, passionately crafting narratives regarding corporate visions, engineering genius, customer successes and community involvement.

In addition to her professional pursuits, Jody is passionate about child development. She serves on the boards of Kehillah as well as 4City, a new non-profit dedicated to building connections through youth sports.

Jody graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor of arts in English Literature. Jody has three children, including a recent 2020 graduate of Kehillah who is now attending Dartmouth College.

Corinne Lipman is the mother of four boys – two Kehillah graduates, a current Kehillah student and a prospective Kehillah student. She has spent the last 20 years raising her family and cares deeply about Jewish life and education.

Corinne is active in the Kehillah and Wornick Jewish Day School communities where she has chaired multiple fundraising and community building events. She has a BS in International Relations from UC Davis and began her professional career as Program Director at Hillel at Stanford University before spending several years in technology industry event management.

Corinne is grateful for Kehillah’s role in her boys’ lives and is honored to serve on the board of directors.

Jonathan and his wife, Elana, live in Palo Alto. Their son is in the class of 2023 at Kehillah and they have a daughter in middle school.

Jonathan is a lawyer and startup advisor, focusing on technology companies. Previously, he was Associate General Counsel at Google, where he oversaw teams of lawyers who advised on a variety of product and business issues.

Prior to joining Google, he was an attorney at the law firm of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, where he counseled a wide range of technology companies on commercial and technology transactions. Before practicing law, he was a researcher in the physics department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Jonathan has a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University, a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a law degree from Stanford University.

A tech entrepreneur, investor and mentor focused on great teams and high impact opportunities in security, public safety, enterprise software and connected transportation.

Guy was co-founder and CEO of AtHoc, a leader in crisis communications for public safety and enterprise security. AtHoc gained over 70% share of the U.S. Federal market incl.

Defense and Homeland Security, as well as strong presence in Healthcare and Industrial markets. The company enjoyed high growth and profitability for 7+ years, reaching approx. $50M in annual revenues before its acquisition in 2015 by BlackBerry for approx. $300 Million. The company raised $25M from lead investors Greylock and Intel Capital.

At BlackBerry, Guy was a member of the executive team, reported to CEO John Chen, and contributed to the turnaround of BlackBerry to a security software business for the enterprise IoT and connected transportation markets. Guy served as Division President and later as Chief Strategy Officer.

Prior to AtHoc, Guy was the Co-Founder and CEO of Kinetica, an Internet web services firm based in Israel. Kinetica grew from a zero-capital start-up to profitability, achieving #1 position in its market and culminating in its acquisition. Prior to Kinetica, Guy held various leadership positions incl. an officer in the military.

Guy earned his MBA at Harvard Business School and B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) from the Technion. He holds nine patents in crisis communication. Guy is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, serves on the advisory board of the Harvard Business School Entrepreneurship Center Rock 100 Summit, and on several boards of educational nonprofit organizations. Guy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children. In his free time, he enjoys biking, hiking, traveling, scuba diving and photography.

Larry has extensive experience at all levels of financial and general management with senior executive experience at: the North Peninsula Jewish Campus (CEO), Semio Corporation (COO), Zitel Corp (CFO), and IBM (various executive positions).

Larry has served on various boards including: Teach With Africa (Co-founder and Treasure), ETEC (a semiconductor equipment manufacturer), the Mental Health Association of Westchester, the Lincolndale Guidance Clinic, the Children’s Psychological Trauma Center, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

He has an MBA in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in Mathematics from the Johns Hopkins University.

Joanna Strober is a technology and finance executive focused on helping companies scale and evaluating new investments. In addition to founding, raising capital for, and running her own successful company, she brings more than 20 years of experience in direct private equity and venture capital investing in digital health and consumer companies. As an advisor to and investor in a number of notable consumer Internet companies that went public, including BlueNile, eToys, Babycenter (as part of eToys), HotJobs and Flycast, Joanna is a seasoned board director whose experience includes membership on BlueNile’s Compensation and Audit Committee.

A former practicing corporate attorney, Joanna is a persuasive advocate with expertise in a variety of corporate transactions, including public offerings and mergers and acquisitions. She has spoken extensively to corporate and graduate school audiences on the topic of women and leadership. 

Joanna is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kurbo Health, the largest global provider of pediatric obesity treatments. The company was acquired by Weight Watchers Reimagined (WW) in 2018, at which time Joanna became the head of the child/teen division of WW. She also currently leads business development efforts for WW Health Solutions to generate relationships with platforms and health insurers. In her present role she regularly presents to the WW Board of Directors. 

Prior to creating Kurbo Health, Joanna spent six years as a Managing Director at Sterling Stamos Capital Management, where she established and managed the firm’s Private Equity and Venture Capital fund of funds and raised over $200 million to invest in buyout funds and venture funds globally. She has also raised and invested capital for private equity and venture funds at Pacific Community Ventures and Symphony Technology Group, as well as at Bessemer Venture Partners, where she was a General Partner and generated gains of over $250 million over a five-year period. 

Joanna is also the co-author of Getting to 50/50, a Random House book that focuses on women and leadership. An experienced public speaker and repeated Guest Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, she has given many talks on this subject to corporations and educational institutions. 

Joanna has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and a J.D. from UCLA Law School, where she served as an Editor of the UCLA Law Review.