Dr. Danielle Shani is the co-founder of BeDo – Generating Change, Differently a relatively new non-for-profit whose mission is to promote a new type of leaders who will operate from a place of awareness and effective listening, spearheading new ways to deal with the grave challenges faced by Israeli society.
Previously Danielle was the executive director of aChord: Social Psychology for Social Change at Hebrew University (previously based at IDC, Herzliya) and the founder and director of the Mandel Center for Leadership in the North, which promotes social and educational leadership in Arab and Jewish localities in Israel’s periphery.
Danielle holds MA and PhD degrees in political science from Princeton University. For her doctoral work, she researched the origins of citizens’ motivation for political participation. Her dissertation won Best Dissertation in Political Psychology by the American Political Science Association. Danielle also holds a BA in philosophy and political science and an MA in political philosophy from Tel Aviv University.
Danielle is a Schusterman Senior Fellow, and was a Fulbright Scholar, a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Scholars program at Princeton University, and the winner of the Israeli Parliament award for exceptional academic achievements.
Previously she worked at the Israel Democracy Institute where she led the first Israeli Democracy Index project. A journalist for almost a decade, she was head of the news desk at the the widely spread national newspaper, Yediot Acharonot, and served as a political correspondent, news editor and broadcaster on Galei-Tzahal radio station.
Danielle Lives in Moshav Rinatya with Yaniv and their four children.