Nextbook Inc. Staff

MASTHEAD

Morton Landowne, executive director
Jonathan Rosen, editorial director
Alana Newhouse, creative director

ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT

Marylee Raymond Diamond, director of finance and administration
Diana Fishbeyn, office manager
Zhanetta Chernyak, bookkeeper

ART DEPARTMENT

Len Small, art director/webmaster
Abigail Miller, assistant art director/webmaster

COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC PROGRAMS DEPARTMENT

Wayne Hoffman, managing director of special projects
Jeremy Dauber, program consultant

STAFF BIOS

Zhanetta Chernyak, bookkeeper
Serving in the financial management departments of NYC not-for-profits for the last 15 years, Zhanetta Chernyak has held positions as Accountant at the New York Women’s Foundation and Fiscal Manager at Literacy Partners before joining Nextbook. She holds a master’s degree in Electronic and Communications Engineering from St. Petersburg University of Mechanical Engineering and certificates in computer operations and accounting from the SYRIT Computer School in NYC. In her spare time, she enjoys reading memoirs, listening to classical music, and going to the opera.

Jeremy Dauber, program consultant
Jeremy Dauber is the Atran Assistant Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture at Columbia University. He graduated from Harvard College in 1995 summa cum laude and did his doctoral work at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of Antonio’s Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Jewish Literature, published by Stanford University Press. He directed the National Yiddish Book Center’s “Great Jewish Books” project and lectures at the 92nd Street Y and in other venues around the country. He writes a column on television and movies for csmonitor.com that was recognized by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in 2003.

Marylee Raymond Diamond, director of finance and administration
Before joining Nextbook, Marylee Raymond Diamond served as the chief financial officer of Literacy Partners and of the Coalition for the Homeless, with responsibility for finances and administrative operations including human resources, facilities, technology, telecommunications, and strategic planning. Prior to that, she worked in New York City government, as a bureau chief in the Office of the Auditor General, director of citywide audit implementation in the Mayor’s Office of Operations, and deputy director of the Budget Office of the Department of Parks and Recreation. A former VISTA volunteer, she holds degrees in sociology from Rivier College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Diana Fishbeyn, office manager
Prior to joining the Nextbook team, Diana Fishbeyn worked briefly for Keren Keshet – The Rainbow Foundation, where she assisted the future Nextbook staff in relocating offices and organized the new space. Before assuming her position at Keren Keshet, Diana worked for many years for Accurate Convertors, a recycling company. There she managed all aspects of the office and employees, assisted in sales, and coordinated all benefits.

Wayne Hoffman, managing director of special projects
Wayne spent five years as the Forward’s managing editor, following stints editing Billboard and the New York Blade. His cultural reporting has appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, The Nation, Out, and elsewhere. His debut novel, Hard, was published by Carroll & Graf in 2006, and his novel Sweet Like Sugar is due in 2011 from Kensington Books; his fiction and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Mama’s Boy, Generation Q, and I Like It Like That. He has a B.A. in social politics from Tufts University, and an M.A. in American Studies from NYU.

Morton Landowne, executive director
As director of Nextbook, Morton Landowne is responsible for overseeing all facets of the project. Before taking this position Morton spent his career in the private sector specializing in administration and marketing. Morton has a BA from Yeshiva College and a JD from Brooklyn Law School, and served as President of Edah, a think tank dedicated to giving voice to the values and ideology of Judaism, and publisher of the Edah Journal. He also serves as vice-president of the Ohr Torah Stone Institutions of Israel, a network of institutions for Jewish Education, focusing on social justice and Jewish unity, founded in 1983 by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. He served on the Founding Board of the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan. He and his wife, Rose, have lived in Manhattan for over 30 years and are active participants in its rich cultural life, with particular interest in the visual arts, theater, ballet, and film. Morton has contributed articles to Jewish Action Magazine and The Jewish Week.

Abigail Miller, assistant art director/webmaster
Abigail, who makes sure Tablet has pictures, was a letterpress printer, a nanny, a bookseller, a typesetter, an apprentice plasterer, and a puppet maker before joining the staff. She graduated from Harvard with a degree in literature and studio art, placing her on this obvious career path.

Alana Newhouse, creative director
Alana Newhouse joined Nextbook in September 2008 and oversaw its redesign and relaunch as Tablet magazine. Before that, she spent five years as culture editor of the Forward, where she supervised coverage of books, films, dance, music, art, and ideas. She also started a line of Forward-branded books with W.W. Norton and edited its maiden publication, A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward. A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, Alana has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and Slate.

Jonathan Rosen, editorial director, Nextbook/Schocken Publishing Series
Jonathan Rosen is the author of the novel Eve’s Apple; The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds; and Joy Comes in the Morning (September 2004). In 1990, Jonathan created the Arts & Letters section of the Forward, which he oversaw for ten years. Jonathan studied English literature as an undergraduate at Yale and as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. His essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, the American Scholar, and several anthologies.

Len Small, art director/webmaster
Len Small earned a master’s in design from the School of Visual Arts in 2008. While a student there, he worked for Empax, a non-profit design firm, and edited the SVA design blog, CRIT. He started his web career at R/GA in 2000, designing for clients like IBM and Nike, and he later became and art director at Fry Inc, focusing on e-commerce websites for Kraft Foods. He’s also done freelance work for Razorfish, MTV, 800Flowers.com, and Taste of the Nation Brooklyn. Len holds a bachelor’s in fine art from Washington University in St. Louis.