At the heart of every Keshet success is our staff. They work tirelessly and selflessly to ensure bright futures for every participant and family. Whether at the front lines or behind the scenes, our staff is a team that makes the mission of Keshet into a reality.

Last year, we established six core values to guide the work of our staff: Positivity, Patience, Integrity, Teamwork, Communication and Respect. To demonstrate how our staff are bringing these values to life, we initiated the inaugural Keshet Staff Values Awards.

We are thrilled to announce the 2020 recipients:

Shannique Shelton, Keshet High School | Positivity
Shannique always greets people with a friendly, warm smile and a big hello. She makes everyone feel included. No matter the challenges she or her students face, she always has a positive attitude. She sets an example of how to make people feel welcome that we can all learn from.

Kelli Wegrzyn, Business Office | Patience
As the controller, Kelli has masterfully adapted Keshet to two new database systems this year. She is continually working to make sure accounting integrity is intact and, when the systems fail us, she is remarkably patient when dealing with various constituents. She makes the effort to try and resolve the issue on her own and, even when she has reason to be bothered or upset, her demeanor is calm and collected.

Amanda Hirsch, Ariella Joy Frankel Keshet Day School | Integrity
Amanda is known to work hard and always put her students’ needs first. She is an excellent advocate for students, families and other members of her team. She regularly goes above and beyond to lead and model for others how to handle situations with honesty and grace. Her dedication to Keshet is a gift to all of us.

Michael Hornik, MY Life | Teamwork
Michael instinctively understands that it takes teamwork to make the dream work. Recently, when a coworker was unexpectedly not able to work her shift, he covered the shift—on his one day off—so that the residents could enjoy all that was planned for the day. He regularly steps in to make others’ lives easier. His reliability is second to none.

Anca Benuic, Business Office | Communication
Anca’s job requires near constant communication with parents and coworkers, often about complicated billing and financial details. Even though communicating with people in different programs can be difficult, her emails are clear, concise and always provide important information in terms that people can understand. She contributes so much to Keshet and does an excellent job making sure people across programs have the information they need.

Beth Linderman, GADOL | Respect
Whether Beth is chatting with GADOL team members or training new staff, she treats everyone in a respectful manner. Beth has high expectations and works hard to help colleagues and team members achieve their goals without letting frustration get in the way. Beth adds much needed humor to the day, as well as being creative and GADOL’s “Macgyver” problem solver. She is an asset to Keshet.

Please join us in congratulating these exceptional staff. We encourage everyone to directly acknowledge people when we see them giving it their all to make a difference in the lives of Keshet participants, staff and families.