Gali Cooks

Gali is the founding President & CEO of Leading Edge, the first and only Jewish organization focused on developing professional and board talent in the North American Jewish community. Her career began in DC, where she was a speechwriter at the Embassy of Israel and worked as a Legislative Assistant at AIPAC. She was Founding Director of the PJ Library at the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and also served as Executive Director of the Rita J. & Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation. In the private sector, Gali was VP of Operations at an ed-tech startup. She is a board member of Sacred Spaces and has served on the boards of Exponent Philanthropy, Keshet, and the NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund. She holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business.