Tami Lavie Nissim, grew up and resident of the East Talpiot neighborhood in Jerusalem. Tami is a proud “Pelech” alumnus, an innovative religious feminist high school where she met for the first-time feminist and gender theory. This exiting “meeting” had a major impact on her identity and directed her to join the first cohort of the B.A. program in gender and women studies opened in Tel Aviv university in the bigging of the millennium. Tami completed Bachelors and Masters Degrees with excellence in Sociology, Anthropology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Tel Aviv University and received certification as an inter-faith and intercultural dialogue facilitator from ‘Mozaica, the Center for Conflict Resolution.
Tami’s focus on Gender leaded her to volunteer at the “Hotline for Immigrants and Refugees” in Tel Aviv and promote the awareness of trafficking of women in Israel. Tami started working in the organization as the manager of the education department and community relations.
After returning to live in Jerusalem, she studied and worked at the “Kolot Beit Midrash” as the programs and alumni director of senior leadership development programs, combining Jewish pluralistic studies with leadership challenges of social change agents in Israel.
Four years ago, Tami initiated a project that aimed to break the “unseen walls” between her neighborhood, East Talpiot, and the neighboring Palestinian villages “Zur Baher” and “Jabel El Mukaber” enabling women to meet, communicate and build together a better future for there communities. This project found a warm and professional “home” in the community centers in the area and managed to create till 2022 a joint forum of 300 women – that are executing community and business initiatives that enable hundreds of people to take part in creating a difference.
Tami believes that this model is ready to be duplicated in several other neighborhoods and villages in Jerusalem, and thus, by a classic bottom-up process, build Jerusalem as a real city of shared life.