Dr. Yakir Englander is the Senior National Director of Leadership programs at the Israeli-American Council. He also teaches at the AJR (a rabbinical school) in NY. Originally from the Hasidic community of Israel, Englander obtained his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in Jewish philosophy and gender studies. He is a Fulbright scholar and was a visiting professor of Religion at Northwestern and Rutgers Universities, the Shalom Hartman Institute and Harvard Divinity School. Englander’s books about body, gender and sexuality in the Ultra-Orthodox and Zionist-Orthodox communities have changed the discourse on sexuality and gender inside the Jewish religious societies in Israel.  After leaving Orthodoxy, Yakir was drafted to the Israeli military, spending most of his service in an elite unit tasked with the identification of human remains. As a result of his service, he joined as a director at Kids4Peace, an interfaith youth movement in Jerusalem and other cities in North America.