Bringing to light
An entrepreneurial lens and diversity of experience to collect the dots, connect the dots, and share in these connections.
The basics
Rebecca comes to UpStart after a decade working in international development. As both a social entrepreneur and development professional, she has spent her career scaling livelihood programming in developing countries. Previously, she was the Managing Director, North America for Solidaridad—a global nonprofit organization working to build more equitable global supply chains. Rebecca also co-founded KadAfrica, a social enterprise in East Africa that provides opportunity for out of school girls to launch agribusinesses. Rebecca is excited to couple her global perspective and deep experience in strategy with a passion for driving change in Jewish life, and sees her Jewish identity as a core to her commitment to social impact.
Rebecca is a graduate of the 2017 Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship Global Social Benefit Incubator, 2015 SPRING Accelerator, and is a 2014 Unreasonable Fellow; she was awarded the 2018 Gene Roddenberry Prize for innovative solutions to girls’ education, and as a finalist for Nestle’s Creating Shared Value prize in 2017. She has a B.S. in Political Science from Santa Clara University and a M.A. in Political Science from The American University in Cairo.
How Rebecca finds meaning and comes together with others
Rebecca finds camaraderie in sharing in failure to build resilient connections. As a Bay Area native, she now lives in Nashville, TN with her multi-cultural, multi-racial family, and finds daily comfort in how Jewish traditions and values transcend geographies. Rebecca loves hosting large gatherings of both Jewish and non-Jewish friends to celebrate in these traditions together, and has done so to feel at during her time living and working across three continents.