By Ryan Torok
Dikla Kadosh has been appointed to the top leadership position of the Los Angeles chapter of the Israeli-American Council (IAC). Effective Aug. 25, Kadosh will succeed the IAC’s new national CEO, Sagi Balasha, as the L.A. regional director.
The IAC, a national organization with five regional offices, organizes the Israeli-American community around philanthropy, volunteer work, support for Israel and more. Los Angeles has one of the largest Israeli communities outside of Israel, and the IAC is becoming an increasingly important focal point for the growing population.
“The IAC mission is to build an active and giving Israeli-American Community throughout the United States in order to strengthen the State of Israel, our next generation, and to provide a bridge to the Jewish-American community,” the group’s website says.
The organization is perhaps most well known locally for its annual Celebrate Israel Festival, a Yom HaAtzmaut event that draws thousands of people every year to Rancho Park in West Los Angeles.
Kadosh formerly served as the organization’s director of community events and volunteering. In her new position, she will be charged with a range of activities, including developing the local office’s relationship with The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, which she said is developing day by day.
“We’re working hard to warm up relations with The Federation, and we have had a good collaboration with them over the summer because of the war [in Gaza], the rallies we put on together,” Kadosh said during a phone interview.
She will also be overseeing the “activity, staff, programming [and] fundraising” of the L.A. office, which is the organization’s flagship office — no easy task for the 33-year-old Israeli-American, who said her educational background is in journalism rather than in nonprofit management.
Finally, Kadosh will develop a local board for the L.A. office, which is currently governed by the group’s national board. While the organization expands nationally — which it is doing with the help of pro-Israel philanthropists Sheldon Adelson, Adam Milstein and others — each city is working on creating its own regional board.
The national board includes Shawn Evenhaim, Danny Alpert,Milstein, Yossi Rabinovitz, Naty Saidoff, Miriam Shepher, Shoham Nicolet, Tamir Cohen, Rani Ben-David, Rachel N. Davidson and Avi Almozlino.
Kadosh earned a master’s degree from the Columbia University School of Journalism and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California.
She is the former editor of the Jewish Journal’s TRIBE magazine and a former staff writer at the Journal.
