Board of Directors

Nancy Adams

PRESIDENT

Nancy Adams has served on the NSL Board since 2020 and is the current Chair of NSL’s Board.  She has hosted NSL delegates sine 2018.  She served for 30 years as an international trade negotiator with the Office of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR).  She served as USTR’s Middle East negotiator and as staff negotiator of the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement (1982-1984), (an outgrowth of the Camp David Accords). Subsequently, she served as Assistant United States Trade Representative for the Asia-Pacific, Senior Trade Official to the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum (APEC), Executive Director of the Presidential Commission on Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment, Senior U.S. Trade Representative to the European Union at the U.S. Mission to the EU in Brussels, Belgium, and as Senior Counselor at the U.S. Mission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland. In retirement she volunteers with organizations focused upon refugee and asylee resettlement, inter-faith communication and activities, Middle East peace, and teaching negotiating skills.  She obtained a B.A. from American University’s School of International Service and obtained a MA in Management of International Programs from American University.

Joy Markowitz

VICE PRESIDENT

Joy has served on the NSL Board since 2020 and was elected as the Vice President in 2024. She and her husband, Rick Eisen, have hosted NSL delegates in their home four summers. Joy lived in Israel for two non-consecutive years—one year on a kibbutz (1970-71) and one year in Jerusalem while attending The Hebrew University (1973-74). In 2011, Joy went to the West Bank on a study tour and has been active in Israel/Palestine peace initiatives since that time. Prior to her retirement in 2017, Joy managed federally-funded special education projects, after providing services directly to young children and their families earlier in her career. Joy has a doctorate in education. Since her retirement, Joy was a court-appointed advocate for children in foster care, has been tutoring adults who are learning English, leading tours on the Underground Railroad experience trail (regional park in Montgomery County, MD), delivering food for Meals on Wheels, and serving on boards for two local organizations.

Rawan Odeh

SECRETARY, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Rawan Odeh is Partnerships Manager for social impact at monday.com. Prior to joining monday.com, she was the Executive Director of New Story Leadership. She often found herself as the only Palestinian, woman and under 30 in political halls of power in Congress, the White House, and Diplomatic channels. She understands that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution and yet they don't have access, and she saw the same story working for Women's World Banking in micro-finance for low-income women across the world. Over one billion women remain outside formal financial systems, and that is why she joined monday.com, where she leads partnerships with different social and tech organizations to close the digital divide for nonprofits around the world.

Mark Nadel

TREASURER

Mark Nadel joined the NSL board in 2019 and currently serves as NSL Treasurer.  He was an attorney advisor at the Federal Communications Commission, where he was in charge of writing the original rules for the FCC’s schools and libraries program (E-rate), which provides more than $3 billion/year in discounts for the purchase of Internet access and the like. He was also on the board and treasurer of challengingracism.org from 2019-2022, and co-chaired Temple Rodef Shalom’s Lens on Race program from 2016-19.  

He has also written law review articles proposing public policies for improving affirmative action, the economics of local journalism, organ donations, real estate broker commissions, copyright, and analyzing different aspects of the First Amendment.  He majored in economics and political science at Amherst College and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Greg Robison

Gregory Robison has served as senior manager in both new and established ventures in the financial, industrial and non-profit sectors. His work has taken him throughout the United States and various parts of the world, including Eastern Europe, where he was director general of an investment fund, and the Caribbean, where he was general manager of a manufacturing company. He has undertaken consulting assignments on economic development issues for the World Bank, the United Nations and other organizations in the Middle East, as well as for the Inter-American Foundation in various countries of Latin America and has taught in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Greg has been on the NSL Board since its inception and is its immediate past president.

Liane Dorsey

As a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Liane Dorsey worked in places as diverse as Uganda, Scotland, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Turkey, Jerusalem and the West Bank. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, she taught high school students in what-was-then Zaire, and she has also worked for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Washington, D.C. Much of Liane’s work has focused on international humanitarian relief and has included responsibility for U.S. government assistance programs aiding refugees and displaced persons in Pakistan, East and Central Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Turkey. Liane spearheaded the U.S. government’s humanitarian response to Syrian refugees in Turkey and was Senior Humanitarian Advisor in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. She has a BA in Political Science from Yale and did her graduate work at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In 2017, Liane launched an NSL sister program, RefAmerica, a leadership program which brings together recently resettled refugee teens with local American counterpart volunteers and American host families in the national capital area. The goal of the program is to help promote a warm welcome for (and full inclusion of) refugees in America and to provide participant refugees with the tools to tell their stories and to help forge for themselves, their families and their fellow refugees – like generations of Americans before them – a new American story. Liane has been an NSL Board Member since 2017.

Margreta Silverstone

Margreta Silverstone currently has an independent business providing consulting services to IT firms and State & local governments. The firm provides business development, proposal development, training and business analysis on social service delivery, particularly focused on child protective services and case management. She held similar roles with two information technology firms. 

Margreta spent 15 years in the federal government, serving as a senior analyst within the Administration for Children and Families within the US Department of Health and Human Services. She supported public affairs, wrote child welfare policy materials and managed the technical assistance and training contracts for child care and child welfare information technology. 

Margreta also loves to create custom handbags, wallets and reusable straw holders. This work evolved from her interest in creating quilts. She has had work juried into international quilt shows. 

Margreta holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from The George Washington University. She is also a credentialed Project Management Professional. 

Margreta is an active member of Seekers Church. She, her husband and their 14 year old adopted son live in Takoma Park, MD.

Joyce Schwartz

Joyce has been an active host mother for the Washington Ireland Program and the South Africa International Program as well as the NSL program. She served as NSL Treasurer from 2013 to 2024, and concurrently as Vice President from 2020 to 2024. She earned a B.S. in Chemistry at Vassar College and has taught science, art history and cooking to children for the past 45 years. She has also co-authored several published biographies and science articles for children. Since 1976, she’s been a school-tour docent, first at the National Museum of Natural History and presently at the National Gallery of Art. An active member of the Vassar Club of Washington, DC since 1973, she was elected to several officer positions including a term as president. She is also active in politics, serving for over 20 years as Vice-Chair and Chair for the Democratic Party in her precinct.

Ira Weiss

Ira is a neurophysiologist by profession now retired after 30+ years at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC. He grew up on the lower east side of New York City where he attended an Orthodox yeshiva. He then attended MIT and The City College of New York where he received his B.A. He received his Ph.D. in Physiological Psychology from Syracuse University after which he served a three-year post-doctoral fellowship in Sensory Neurophysiology at the Callier Center in Dallas, TX.

Ira helped found and run an NGO called Projects Encounter which, for four years, brought Palestinian and Israeli high school students to Spain for summer coexistence workshops. After that, he spent about a year developing a 16-hour adult education course called History of the Arab-Jewish Conflict: Parallel Narratives Never Meet, which he has taught in several venues in the Washington DC area

Barry Leopold

Barry and his wife Wendy Cohen have hosted 10 NSL delegates since 2017.  Barry enjoyed a 30 year career managing environmental programs, projects, and organizations in the public, private, and non-profit sectors.  He then capped off his professional career by becoming a middle school counselor before retiring after 13 years.  In retirement, Barry maintains a small Executive Coaching practice and is the Coaching Coordinator for his local Little League.

Barry holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in Religious Studies, a Master’s degree in Public and Private Management from Yale University, and a Master’s Degree in School Counseling from Marymount University.

Ron Kraybill

Ron Kraybill has taught and worked full-time in peacebuilding throughout the world since 1979.  As founding director of the Mennonite Conciliation Service, he was an early leader in the US conflict resolution movement.  He was director of training at the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, 1985- 95 and served as Training Advisor to the National Peace Accord in South Africa.   He was Professor of Conflict Transformation at Eastern Mennonite University, 1996-2007, and Quaker Representative to the Middle East, based in Jerusalem, 2008-2009.   Since 2009 he has held three appointments as Senior Peacebuilding Advisor for the UN, in Lesotho, the Philippines, and the Solomon Islands.  Author of the widely used Style Matters conflict style assessment he publishes at www.stylematters.ne