Co-Founder

Dan Brotman

Dan grew up in Boston and is a fourth-generation Ashkenazi American Jew. He first encountered Jewish life beyond the familiar at age 14, when he spent a year of high school living in Cape Town, South Africa. He lived with a Ladino-speaking Sephardic family whose roots traced back to the island of Rhodes in present day Greece, before migrating to the then Belgian Congo and later South Africa. 

Since then, Dan has traveled to more than 100 countries and documented some of the world’s most fascinating and lesser known Jewish communities, including those in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Ecuador, and Tunisia. He later returned to South Africa, where he lived for a decade and managed two travel companies that took more than 1,000 South African entrepreneurs and emerging leaders abroad. 

Dan is a global migration expert and journalist driven by a deep curiosity about the world. He has lived in five countries, and holds a Master’s degree in International Migration and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He currently resides in Montreal, Canada.

Co-Founder

Adam Heffez

Adam grew up in Chicago in an Egyptian-Lebanese Sephardic family. One of his earliest formative experiences was participating in Hands of Peace, a conflict resolution program bringing together Palestinian, Israeli, and American youth. That experience sparked a lifelong interest in dialogue and led him to pursue a career in Middle East foreign policy in D.C. and abroad.   

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Adam speaks fluent Arabic and has spent years building bridges across the region of his heritage. After studying in the Levant, he lived and worked in Israel as a Dorot Fellow and in the Palestinian Territories as a conflict resolution practitioner. He later served on the board of directors of Hands of Peace, helped resettle Syrian refugee families in the U.S., and documented the last remaining Jewish sites in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and numerous other disappearing diaspora communities.   

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Adam has led dozens of travelers to hard-to-reach destinations and is driven by a passion for building community through curiosity and discovery. He has lived in eight countries and holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He currently resides in New York City.