Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, Keshet staff have gone above and beyond to ensure meaningful days for our program participants. Their dedication to our participants, families and each other has been evident in everything they have created and developed during this unusual time.

Last year, we established six core values to guide the work of our staff: Positivity, Patience, Integrity, Teamwork, Communication and Respect. To demonstrate how our staff are bringing these values to life, we initiated the Keshet Staff Values Awards.

We are thrilled to announce the Summer 2020 recipients:

Doug Bennett, Ariella Joy Frankel Keshet Day School | Respect
Doug is a class act! He regularly treats his students and coworkers with the utmost respect. He has a great attitude. He helps anyone. He is mindful of how he speaks and never says a mean word to anyone. He supports the students he works with in a way that gives them the opportunity to shine without taking the spotlight himself. He is a kind, gentle person who clearly loves helping the children he serves.

Yaakov Brimm, YTT | Integrity
Yaakov takes time, personal resources, and mindfulness to create activities (morning group, parsha, and shabbat) to reach his students in unique and thoughtful way every week. He goes above and beyond to support his teacher partner to ensure success in his student programming. He is a gold standard for approaching his job with integrity. 

Ana Kapinos, GADOL | Communication
Ana has done an outstanding job of finding ways to communicate with GADOL team members during virtual programming. Ana is known for always demonstrating person-centered communication. Many of them have not been able to connect through Zoom or the phone so Ana has creatively found ways to send them special messages from her. She has recorded videos, sent pictures and even played music for them. In these difficult times, Ana has found a way to continue to continue to communicate and connect with her GADOL team members.

Nikki Katz, MY Life | Positivity
Nikki was not working at MY Life since the beginning of year so she could finish college in North Carolina. She came home because of the pandemic and has been an integral part of our team every moment since. Nikki is very compassionate and caring when speaking to everyone. She has contacted at least five residents each day for entirety of the pandemic. She is ever the optimist and comes up with such fun things to do, including making Tik Tok videos, birthday videos, dances and more.

Kelly Troup, Day School | Teamwork
Kelly was instrumental in the success of our remote learning program this spring. She jumped right into the fire, assisting administration and staff with setting up Google forms and protocol, assisting staff with technology issues as well as training on how to use specific technology and applications. She spent many hours, often into the late evening, helping staff learn and/or trouble shoot programs, lessons, and technology. Kelly took the initiative and went above and beyond. She proved herself to be an asset to the team who is available whenever anyone needs her.

Lamaria Wimberly, GADOL | Patience
Lamaria demonstrates patience every day in every way. While GADOL has been closed, it has been difficult connecting with some of our team members who struggle with Zoom. Lamaria reached out to one specific team member multiple times in multiple different ways. Lamaria would text, call, and FaceTime with this gentleman until she could find a way to best reach him. When she realized how much he missed his friends, she set up a private Zoom for him to connect to the group. Lamaria never gives up and does all that she can to help our team members experience joy.