Barbara Sofer of Jerusalem, Israel is the Israel Director of Public Relations and Communications for Hadassah. She is a popular columnist in the Jerusalem Post, a journalist and novelist.
Connecticut President of Young Judaea, she made aliyah the week after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her MA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem while teaching in a development town and at Jerusalem�s University High School. Always a writer by profession, she has been a contributing editor at Hadassah Magazine for more than a decade, and has covered articles in all sectors of Israeli society.
In addition, her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Women�s Day, Reader�s Digest, and Parent�s to name a few. She has also served as contributing editor for Inside Magazine and editor of Ohr Torah Stone Newsbriefs. Barbara is the author of Kids Love Israel, Israel Loves Kids, Shalom Haver, Goodbye-Friend (Karben) written with Rachel Rabin, and The Thirteenth Hour, a novel, which received wide critical acclaim, published by Dutton, Penguin and Keter Publishing, in Hebrew, and llan Ramon, Israel�s Space Hero, (Lerner) a children�s biography of the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. She is currently writing a children�s book on the Israel Defense Force and an adult book on spirituality, At Home with God. As the liaison from Hadassah�s projects to the foreign press, which included such top tier media programs as Sixty Minutes and Nightline, she contributed to the CNBC program Jerusalem ER, which won a 2003 Emmy Award. The positive press exposure was a key factor in Hadassah Medical Organization�s nomination for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.
An impassioned lecturer, Barbara has spoken to many audiences in Israel and America on Jewish, Women�s and Spiritual topics. She has served as a Scholar-in-Residence at both the Asilomar Conference in February 2000 and the Young Women�s Voices Conference in January 2001, the MAC Young Women�s Institute, Detroit February 2004, and the Women of the West Conference in Dallas in May 2005.
Barbara is the winner of seven Rockower Journalism awards for outstanding Jewish journalism and of the Sydney Taylor Award in 1996 for the best Jewish children�s book for her Shalom, Haver. She won the 2004 Special Award of the Israeli Association of Public Relations for her international campaign, �Island of Sanity� about the ability of Hadassah staff to maintain their values despite the experience of terror.
In addition to her BA and MA, she studied writing and film at the New School of Social Research and Fiction Writing at the Harvard University Extension. She completed the two-year forum in Zionist Leadership at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. She is member of the ASJA European-Middle Eastern Journalist, the American Society for Journalists and Authors, the Israel Public Relations Association and the London-based International Public Relations Association. Barbara is involved in Women for the Sanctity of Life and Keren Klitah for new immigrants, as well as the Israel Women�s Network. She is a member of the Yakar Learning Community synagogue and, since its first year, the innovative Shira Hadasha congregation in Jerusalem.
Barbara and her husband, scientist/author Dr. Gerald Schroeder, have raised and educated all five of their children in Israel.
