"I Will Defeat You with the Next Generation" Rene, my mom
Immigrating from Morocco when she was 12, my mom experienced a twofold barrier. One obstacle was the pervasive discrimination against the 1950s immigrants from north Africa, and the other was growing up in a conservative family, in which she was not allowed to leave her parents' home before getting married—not even for higher education. As a young adult I started to understand her deep, continued frustration from longing for a job that matched her capabilities, yet knowing it was out of reach due to what she had to endure. Rather than giving up she invested her life in pushing me and my sisters to the top. After she passed away, I asked her work colleagues to share memories. They came up with a sentence she repeated many times: “I will defeat you with the next generation.”
My mom was an outlier in so many ways. Her legacy inspired me in developing the outlier-ism approach which calls for studying outliers to improve policymaking and advance public well-being.
Growing up in the city of Bat-Yam, with its amazing beach, I could never live too long away from the shore. Now I commute from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, where the view out of my office is simply breath-taking. (see for yourself). My career path was anything but traditional. After completing a BSc. in Computer Science in the early 1990s, then an MA in Business Administration, I worked for eight years in the high-tech industry. But all I wanted was to become a school principal. So I enrolled in the Mandel School for Educational Leadership, where I was lucky to meet Prof. David Dery, whose classes made me fall in love with the Policy Sciences. After completing my PhD, I spent one of the most influential years of my career with Dave Weimer at UW-Madison. Since 2008 I have been a faculty member in the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I was honored to obtain a research fellowship at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (CIDE) Mexico.
To female young scholars who have reached this point in the text I want to say - YES - there is a way to be a mom and an academic. Never give up either. If you need to talk to someone - email me.
Two main mottos guide me:
Almost everything is a muscle that needs training, and if neglected will hurt when you start to move it.
The most important plan in life is Plan B.
