BIOS
Andrea B. Wasserman, Founder and President
Throughout her twenty-year career in the field of development, Andrea B. Wasserman has emerged as an innovative and effective leader, bringing a pervasive sense of joy to the art and science of human and financial resource development to achieve social benefit. As Founder and President of Social Profit Ventures, a boutique organizational development firm, Andrea forges partnerships with executives and their leadership teams, designs and executes successful fundraising strategies, recruits emerging and seasoned talent and delivers an expansive array of leadership coaching, skill trainings and interactive learning opportunities.
Prior to launching Social Profit Ventures, Andrea served as Chief Development Officer at BBYO, Inc., the leading pluralistic Jewish youth movement that inspires teens to develop the leadership skills and networks required to fortify their local and global communities. In this capacity, Andrea initiated and led a vital change effort to revamp all aspects of the development operation to support the organization’s ambitious strategic direction. To this end, she, and her newly formed powerhouse team, executed a comprehensive campaign strategy, which resulted in a 55 percent increase in total dollars raised since 2009, with $10,280,000 generated in 2013.
Andrea’s passion for restructuring development operations to generate sustainable, growth oriented revenue streams was inspired by her tenure at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day, which began when she was recruited in 2002 to revamp the school’s annual campaign and increase its endowment. Under Andrea’s leadership, the campaign effort became a school-wide initiative with hundreds of enlivened volunteers who helped to grow both the annual campaign from $600,000 to $1.65 million within a three-year timeframe and the school’s endowment by $10 million through outright and planned gifts.
Before relocating to Washington, D.C., Andrea spent the first half of her career in New York City, working for a variety of local and international Jewish nonprofits. Her accomplishment in these roles led to her recruitment at United Jewish Communities, first as the Director of the National Young Leadership Cabinet, where she led a department that galvanized young Jewish adults around philanthropy, service and leadership and then as Director of the National Women’s Constituency, where she worked with prominent women philanthropists on engaging tens of thousands of Jewish women throughout the UJA Federation system in strengthening Israel and ameliorating poor societal conditions for Jewish people locally and around the world.
Though passionate about her work, Andrea also draws energy and happiness from her adventures with her six-year-old son Zachary, husband Adam, frequent swims and engagement in her community.
Merav Levkowitz, Communications Manager
The daughter of an Israeli father and Colombian mother, Merav Levkowitz grew up in Massachusetts with stints in Brazil and Israel and received her bachelor degree from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. During college, she worked at the university’s Jewish Chaplaincy-Hillel and interned at the European Union of Jewish Students through the American Jewish Committee’s Goldman Fellowship. Fluent in English, Spanish, Hebrew, Portuguese and French with intermediate knowledge of Arabic, Merav spent two years working as Project Manager and then a Program Manager at a Maryland translation company after graduation. She then worked at The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington on an outreach and engagement program, the Jewish Food Experience. She is passionate about writing and editing and working with entrepreneurs, and in addition to managing communications for Social Profit Ventures, she runs her own writing, editing and social media consultancy for startups, small businesses and academic institutions, including Georgetown University and the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Merav loves languages, traveling, finding typos in all sorts of publications and all things food-related, including cooking, hosting dinners, trying out new restaurants and reading and writing about food.