Our Team

Ariela Ronay-Jinich

Founder and Executive Director, Lead Educator

Ariela Ronay-Jinich (she/her/ella) grew up in Mexico City, where her family is from. She has been serving Bay Area youth and families since 2005, focusing her work on innovative Jewish educational programs that center nature connection and community-building. Programs she has founded and directed include Urban Adamah’s youth and family programs, B'Hootz (Wilderness Torah), and Edah (Berkeley), and garden programs at Camp Tawonga and Gan Shalom Preschool.

Her signature professional development and consulting project, “Jewish Outside,” has trained over 80 preschool teachers throughout the Bay Area in nature-based Jewish learning.

She most recently served as Program Manager for Project Shamash, a racial justice initiative of Bend the Arc focused on supporting Jews of Color leadership and racial equity work among Jewish organizations in the Bay. Ariela serves on Jewtina y Co.’s Advisory Board, and is a recent recipient of a research grant from the Jews of Color Initiative.

Trained as a qualitative researcher, her current research focuses on heritage language learning and intersectional identity among Latinx Jewish families.

Olamim uniquely blends her equity work with her extensive background in nature connection, early childhood education, and community-building.

Ariela lives in the Bay Area and, along with David Doostan (Octopretzel!), are raising their young daughter, Alma, to delight in speaking Spanish and feel nourished by her Jewish, Mexican, and Persian cultural roots.

Education & Awards

  • Bachelors in Education Policy and History, Brown University

  • Masters in Educational Leadership, Mills College

  • Bend the Arc Selah Leadership Program

  • Rockwood Leadership Institute

  • Helen Diller Family Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, 2015

  • Kevah Teaching Fellowship

  • Torah Trek Guide

Publications

Amanda Nube

Lead Educator, Olamim Family School

Amanda Nube comes from a family of Jewish immigrants to the Emerald Isle of Ireland. Her family's search for Jewish community led them to England, Spain, Israel, and eventually the United States. Amanda feels at home in all 5 of these countries, and enjoys linguistic facility with English, Spanish, and Hebrew. She is the mother of two bilingual English/Spanish youth and a co-founder of Las Semillitas, a cooperative preschool for native Spanish speakers along with her co-parent, Mateo Nube.

Amanda Nube brings a wealth of experience as a teacher and tutor of Jewish spirituality, adult and youth bnai-mitzvah, rites of passage, art and meditation. Amanda was ordained by Rabbi Jill Hammer of the Kohenet Institute in 2018 and earned her Masters of Jewish Studies with a concentration on Creativity in Jewish Communal Life. As a Jewish ceremonialist, mother, and educator, she is passionate about sharing her love of Judaism, Hebrew, Spanish, music, and embodied spirituality.

Education & Awards

  • Masters of Jewish Studies at the Academy for Jewish Religion LA, concentration on Creativity in Jewish Communal Life

  • Bachelors in Education, UC Berkeley 

  • Kohenet Ordination, Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute 

  • Yeshivat Maharat Community Fellowship

  • Graduate Theological Union Community Fellowship

  • Jewish Studio Project Educator Cohort

  • Jewish Learningworks Mentee

MOlina Butler

Lead Educator, Olamim Family School

Molina Butler was born and raised in Oakland, and grew up the daughter of a Chilean mama who was a teacher at Temple Beth Abraham’s Gan Avraham preschool (where she eventually became the co-director, the first Latina and non-Jewish member of the school’s leadership). Since childhood, Molina has been immersed in learning about Jewish Early Childhood Education and as a teen started serving children and families at Temple Beth Avraham’s childcare programs. She holds a passion for exploring the power of language as part of heritage, identity, and spirituality.

Molina is a preschool teacher and serves enthusiastically as Family Engagement Coordinator at Gan Avraham Preschool in Oakland, and leads a monthly Shabbat service for families with young children at Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland. She followed in her mama’s footsteps as an educator in the most interpersonal moment of teaching: young childhood, when a child and their family are a unit and holistic connection is key. Molina’s passion is setting up spaces in which children feel a sense of belonging and comfort to engage in play-based experiential learning, independently and with their families, and in guiding children in discovering Jewish spirituality and the wonders of the world.  She lives in her beloved hometown of Oakland and in true multi generational fashion, raises her nephew James, alongside her parents. They are proud owners of a small white dog, Luna.

Education & Awards

  • American University, Political Science

  • Merrit College, Chabot College; Early Childhood Education

Liliana Lucia Peliks

marketing & operations Consultant

Liliana Lucia Matos-Garcia Peliks (she/ella/mami) is a Mexican-born, Dominican woman, and mother of a Jewish household. She is also the grandchild of a self-taught kindergarten teacher, and an oil artist who shaped her childhood and still informs many of her choices as an adult. Liliana is committed to putting her professional and personal skills to work at the intersection of spiritual fulfillment, social justice and environmental sustainability through educational experiences. She spends a lot of her time learning from her colleagues and senior educators at Jewish LearningWorks.

Liliana and her family take pride in elevating all parts of their overlapping identities. She comes alive listening to her daughters speak in Spanish and Portuguese, praying in Hebrew, dancing Dominican merengue, goofing around with a Brazilian berimbau, being kind to people and other animal friends, and learning the lessons you can only learn in a garden.

Education & Awards

  • Bachelors in Business Administration (Valedictorian), Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo

  • Masters in Marketing Management, IE Business School

  • Marketing for Nonprofits Certificate, Duke University

Vivian Santana Pacheco

Community Educator and PARENT LEADER

Vivian Santana Pacheco is Chicana, daughter and granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, and has worked to retain her ability to speak her familial language and pass it on to her son. Vivian is also an urban farmer dedicated to relearning ancestral food ways, and reclaiming sustainable ways of living on this land. She currently helps run Alemany Farm in San Francisco and was trained at UC Santa Cruz’s Agroecology farm.

Vivian is excited about supporting others in nurturing Spanish in their family and bringing her training and knowledge of early childhood education, farming and nature to Olamim. Vivian is passionate about the role of music in bringing community together, and offers Olamim the best songs and tunes for the party and the playgroup. As an Olamim parent and program educator, Vivian makes families feel welcome in their own uniqueness, and lovingly engages our community in how to creatively merge Latinx and Jewish identity through family life.

Education & Awards

  • Bachelors in Sociology, Pomona College

  • Masters in Public Policy, UC Berkeley’s Goldman School

  • Child Development Certificate, Merritt College

“We were honored to have the opportunity to partner with Olamim and look forward to partnering on future programs. This event was wonderful, and came alive with heart from the small details to the broader vision! Gracias!”

— Kiyomi Gelber, Associate Director and Director of DEI at Camp Tawonga