Another year, another chance to shine. Here, we’ve profiled 16 young Jews to watch in 2016 — those who have shown business success with a big idea and others who are ‘‘ones to watch’’...
1. The New Landlords
David Kosky and Elliot Gold, 29
David (below left) and Elliot are childhood friends. After careers in mentoring and management consultancy, they set up work.life — an impressive co-working space for creative businesses in Camden.
The Big Idea: Work.life offers freelancers, start-ups and bigger businesses flexible and affordable workspace on their doorstep from as little as £3.50 per hour. The first site in Camden opened in September and reached full occupancy in eight weeks, with brands such as Dr Martens and MTV taking up residency. There are plans for two further London sites, and expansion in Manchester and Birmingham.
2. The Budding Actress
Deli Segal, 25
Deli grew up in East Finchley and joined the National Youth Theatre whilst she was a teenager. She studied English at Robinson College, Cambridge, and while there took two shows up to Edinburgh Fringe, including a comedy sketch show, Oh What A Lovely War on Terror, about the Iraq war. After Cambridge, Deli trained at East 15 Acting School.
One to Watch: Deli founded Spectra Theatre Company, an all-female theatre company, with colleagues from East 15 in 2014. Their debut play, After Penelope, focused on life in wartime, and they took the show to Rome and the RADA Festival. Deli also starred in Harry’s Girls, a new play which premiered at RADA Studios and Upstairs at the Gatehouse Theatre, Highgate, which was selected as the Londonist’s Pick of the Camden Fringe in August 2015.
3. The Young Philanthropist
Alexandra Abrams, 25
Alexandra grew up in Hampstead and went to Haberdashers’ Aske’s. She did her undergraduate degree in theology at Cambridge and completed a Master’s at Oxford in literature and arts. Alexandra began working with the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations in 2009.
One to Watch: Having been a youth adviser, Alexandra is now a youth representative to the United Nations. Alongside this, she set up the Society of Young Philanthropists, which is dedicated to facilitating and incentivising young people to give. The society holds events, from drinks receptions to parties, luxury fashion sales to debates, trying to inject philanthropy into everyday life. Alexandra also founded Give London, an app-based project which will reward people for giving.
4. The Religious Educator
Miriam Lorie, 29
Miriam read theology at Cambridge University, where she was J-Soc president, and studied for a year in Jerusalem’s Midreshet Harova. She is a graduate of the Susi Bradfield Fellowship at the London School of Jewish Studies and the Adam Science Leadership Programme.
The Big Idea: Miriam is a co-founder of the Borehamwood Partnership Minyan, set up in 2013 with co-chair Gaby Scher, a research psychologist, and a dedicated team of 10 others. Along with the other four Partnership Minyan communities around London, this is a movement that is changing the face of Orthodox Judaism in the UK. Kehillat Nashira, which translates as the ‘‘let’s sing’’ community, meets monthly and attracts crowds of about 80 men and women. She also oversees Scriptural Reasoning, an inter-faith dialogue practice developed in Cambridge in which the Qur’an, New Testament and Torah are studied side by side.
5. The Foodie Brothers
Tom Benn, 22
Tom, who studied at UCL, started work for Vita Coco in his first term of university — probably the most dynamic and successful business in the food and drink industry of the last 10 years.
The Big Idea: Pip & Nut has a range of nut butters in Selfridges, Sainsbury’s and M&S. The nut butters have won a host of awards and have been given a kosher certificate too.
And…
Joe Benn, 27
Joe studied anthropology at UCL and then landed a role as a European Food Scout for a small start-up business. In April 2015 he helped to launch Ugly Drinks, which use only sparkling water and natural ingredients — no sugar, sweetener or artificial additives.
6. The App Entrepreneur
Zacharie Konstabler, 26
Zac’s entrepreneurial career started in school, where he founded and led an event planning organisation for students. In 2007, he joined the IDF and became an operational fighter. Having moved to the UK, he is now studying international business and Chinese at the University of Birmingham. During his second year at university, along with two associates, Zac founded the mobile application WizzLuck.
The Big Idea: WizzLuck is the first live social app that allows its users to approach others within physical proximity and uses humour to ease the approach by sending random pick-up lines. The app has 12,000 users so far, many on university campuses.
7. Fashion Siblings
Jade, 27, and Grant Goulden, 24
Jade and Grant grew up in north London, studied business and have experience in the fashion industry.
One to Watch: The Jaded label includes swimwear, lingerie, denim and accessories, and they are now stocked in over 150 countries — with celebrity endorsements from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Considering the siblings have only been trading for two years, the brand’s success has been astronomic.
8. The Young Rabbi
Deborah Blausten, 25
Deborah grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb and attended Francis Holland School. After graduating in medicine at UCL, she worked for the Movement for Reform Judaism’s Jeneration project for two years after university, working with students.
One to Watch: Deborah has held a number of Limmud team roles, organising one of the biggest ever conferences this year. She’s the youngest student at rabbinical college, and has co-chaired the programme for the largest Limmud yet. This year she is focusing on her passion — to bring Judaism and 21st century life into a meaningful and creative dialogue.
9. The Young Osteopath
Ben Cohen, 24
Ben grew up in South Woodford, and was educated at Davenant Foundation School and Leeds University.
One to Watch: During voluntary work with the over-70s, Ben became aware of the debilitating effects of pain and created specific, tailor-made treatment plans for patients. Since completing a Master’s degree in osteopathy last September, Ben went on to set up an osteopathic clinic in Essex which has grown so fast that he’s set up a second site. At Ben Cohen Osteopathy, he provides treatment for a range of different musculoskeletal conditions, such as medical acupuncture and kinesiology taping.
10. The Young Lawyer
Samuel Rabinowitz, 24
Samuel grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb and went to Haberdashers’ Aske’s before studying history at Oxford. In between that and an accelerated law degree, he worked as a volunteer for anti-death penalty charity Reprieve.
One to Watch: Samuel graduated from Jesus College, Oxford (where he was a Scholar) with a First Class Senior Status degree in Jurisprudence. He has accepted an offer of pupillage at Fountain Court Chambers, a leading commercial set of chambers and has obtained a few scholarships and academic prizes over the course of the year, including a Lord Denning scholarship from Lincoln’s Inn and a scholarship from the City Law School. He has worked on a number of interesting cases, including the case of three British men imprisoned in Dubai (whose cause David Cameron eventually took up) and that of another man sentenced to death in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
11. The Food Entrepreneur
Charlot Conway, 22
Charlot grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb, attended JFS and then founded her own health food company.
The Big Idea: Raw Ecstasy is a food company in which all the dairy and gluten-free ingredients are carefully selected and processed in a way that makes them healthier. Raw Ecstasy pioneers the activation process — which involves long soaking of nuts, removing any naturally contained tannins. Charlot has been featured in Vogue magazine and in 2014 won the Enterprise category of the Jack Wills Extraordinary Young Brits competition.
12. The Care Start-Up
Alex Hersham, 29
Alex studied at LSE, before embarking on a career in finance. He spent seven years investing in and turning around struggling companies, first at Goldman Sachs, in London and New York, and most recently at Cerebrus In London. Last year, he made the decision to quit to launch HomeHeart.
The Big Idea: Having seen the current care offering, Alex was determined to transform elderly care into something dramatically different. HomeHeart helps families find and manage the perfect care for their loved ones. They use technology to develop a new approach to homecare and deliver a service that is best in class (only the top 5 per cent of carers are accepted), personalised (they match families with their perfect carers) and affordable (they cut out the high overhead costs of agencies which means customers pay less and carers receive higher rates). Since the launch, he has had over 1,000 applications from carers in just three months.
13. The Tech Entrepreneur
Jonathan Levin, 25
Jonathan started his career with internships in mining, environmental economics consultancy and philanthropy before training as an economist. During his time studying at Oxford, he discovered digital currencies. They were just emerging into mainstream news and he decided to write his thesis on Bitcoin. At the same time, he set up Coinometrics, which offered a premium data service to investors interested in Bitcoin — the company failed after a year, so he went in search of a new team. He found them in Denmark and co-founded Chainalysis.
The Big Idea: Jonathan’s company, Chainalysis, is the leading provider of compliance software for digital currency businesses and investigation tools for law enforcement, tackling cyber crime using digital currencies. He moved the start-up to New York to join Techstars, and appeared on the BBC to talk about terrorist financing. He was also involved in busting several cybercrime cases. Bitcoin was perceived as anonymous and used only by criminals, but the company has shown how regulated financial institutions are able to assess the risk of transactions and enter a new market. They now have customers worldwide and have eight full-time employees and are working with a consortium of investors.
14. The Insurance Broker
Edward Barnett, 25
Edward studied marketing at Georgetown University and has dabbled in everything from TV to insurance, most recently gaining credits on a sitcom pilot, and campaign videos for “Time to Change” and the British Council. As the son and brother of “super-agents” Jonathan and Joshua Barnett of Stellar Group, Edward has grown up as part of the business and has always lent a hand.
One to Watch: In five months of being at RK Harrison, Alex has risen from intern to broker, working on US properties and energy facilities. His success, perhaps, is down to his unmatched connections, including world leaders from Argentina to Yemen and extremely successful business moguls, gained from the family business, his life at the exclusive and infamous Georgetown University, and his ever growing clientele from the insurance world. He has an incredible work ethic; it sees him working through all hours of the day to get whatever is in front of him done.
15. The Politico
Rachel Wenstone, 27
Rachel grew up in Liverpool and has a law degree and an MSc in human rights.
One to Watch: Rachel works as the policy and public affairs executive for The Scout Association, the largest co-educational youth movement in the UK and across Europe. She is leading its work to raise the profile of the Scout Movement across the House of Commons, devising and delivering its public affairs strategy across a number of policy areas. Previously she worked as a campaigns officer for Shelter. There she project-managed and helped deliver the campaign to successfully change the law to end ‘‘revenge evictions’’ – where a landlord evicts their tenant for complaining about disrepair. Between June 2012 and 2014, she worked for the National Union of Students in the elected position of vice-president and campaigned for the introduction of government-backed tuition loans for postgraduates, winning £150 million funding and a commitment from government to introduce postgraduate loans. She also led a successful campaign to prevent the government cut to the £350m Student Opportunity Fund, funding used to support students in university from deprived backgrounds.
16. The Design Guru
Sharonna Karni Cohen, 27
Founder and CEO of Dreame and co-founder of Streets, Sharonna was born in Israel and grew up in London. She went to Queen’s Gate School and Bristol University. She spent several months in the IDF and volunteered on a kibbutz during her gap year. She now commutes between Israel, the UK and the US.
The Big Idea: Dreame (www.dreame.me) is a platform for creativity where anyone can dream up a personalised design or piece of art and have it printed on products, from phone cases to yoga mats. This year, the company sold its 1,000th artwork and last month received its first order of $10,000 (around £6,800) worth of art. Sharonna plans a larger international presence for Dreame. She also aims to disrupt the art world with a new genre of art, which she’s dubbed Streets, co-creating artworks between designer and commissioner in different countries. A not-for-profit organisation, it aims to publish the first ever crowdsourced book, co-written by Tel Aviv residents, intertwined with the history of street names. For Streets, Sharonna organised a 48-hour hackathon with 50 top designers, developers and product heads in Israel.
