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BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Tom Cajka, President & Co-Treasurer, is an entertainment business manager, certified public accountant, and the CFO of Ogulnick Leventhal & Cajka, LLP, with over 30 years of experience in running the financial activities of entertainment clients and small businesses. Tom has served on the board of The Miracle Project, previously as treasurer, since 2011.
Lauren Katz, Secretary & Co-Treasurer, has been involved in executive management and major fundraising for various non-profits and foundations for the past 25 years. She is the Past President of the Board of Directors for the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara and sits on their executive board. Her roles include Major Gifts chair and member of the Jewish Family Service advisory board. She is also a member of the National Women’s Philanthropy Board of Directors. In addition to serving on the board, Lauren is a strategic advisor on TMP’s fundraising endeavors.
Rob Eshman, Vice President, is the former Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of TRIBE Media and the Jewish Journal. Rob is also the recent recipient of the Jewish Communal Professionals of Southern California Lifetime Achievement Award. Rob’s reputation, connections, and passion for both the Jewish community and the disability community are why he has been a central figure on our board for many years.
Lauren Katz, Elaine Hall, and Neal Katz
TMP's Spring Showcase, 2023
Elaine Hall, Founder of the Miracle Project, also known as “Coach E,” has been referenced by The New York Times as “the child whisperer” and is a pioneer in using theatre and movement practices as a portal for connection among individuals with autism and related disabilities. Elaine was a top Hollywood acting coach when her adopted son was diagnosed with severe autism. When traditional behavioral therapies did not work for him, she developed an innovative methodology combining mindfulness and the expressive arts with what she was learning from autism experts, Dr. Stanley Greenspan, Dr. Ricki Robinson, and Dr. Barry Prizant. These methods are chronicled in her book, Seven Keys to Unlock Autism: Making Miracles in the Classroom, which is used as a textbook in several universities, including Brown University. Elaine’s memoir, Now I See the Moon: A Mother, A Son, a Miracle, was selected by the United Nations for World Autism Awareness Day, where she has been a featured speaker. Elaine has been lauded in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, as well as on CNN, CBS, and the Oprah Winfrey Network. The Emmy Award-winning HBO documentary, AUTISM: The Musical, profiles Elaine’s early work with The Miracle Project, which has since been deemed evidence-based and is now being replicated nationally and internationally.
Dr. Jess Block Nerren is a researcher of Disability Inclusion, Public Relations and Teacher Education and she serves as a full time faculty member at CSUSB in the Department of Communication Studies. In 2023/24 and again in 2025/26, Dr. Nerren was on special assignment as the Faculty Disability Inclusion Fellow at CSUSB. Previously, she served as Interim Faculty Director of the Services to Students with Disabilities office, where she oversaw accommodations for over 2,000 students attending the university. She is the editor and contributing author of the scholarly book Rethinking Perception and Centering the Voices of Unique Individuals: Reframing Autism Inclusion in Praxis.
As an alum. and product of the CSU, Dr. Nerren completed her Educational Doctorate in 2021 at CSUSB. In addition, she has an M.A. in Communications from CSU Fullerton, where she was awarded as the CSUF College of Communications Outstanding Graduate Student in 2012.
She has sourced and/or served as PI for over $1.23M in internal and external funding for the benefit of her students and for the development of an important research agenda on inclusion in many forms. She is a scholarly reviewer for the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the International Communication Association (ICA), the Journal of Education, and Disability Studies Quarterly.
In the community, Dr. Nerren is heavily involved in the autism nonprofit and behavioral health community with past and current service: on the Autism Parent Advisory Board to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, on the executive committee of the Riverside County Special Education Local Plan Area as Public Information Officer and Legislative Chair, as a founding board member of The Miracle Project national nonprofit, as the communications chair of the Los Angeles, Orange County, Santa Barbara and San Diego Autism Walks, and on the Stakeholder Committee and Diversity Special Interest Group for CalABA, the state governing body for behavior analysts in the State of California providing services to individuals with autism and other developmental and behavioral needs.
Dr. Nerren is the founder of CoyotePR, the student-run PR agency on campus. In that role, she led a team of students to win the PRSA Inland Empire Polaris Capella Award for excellence in PR tactics in 2019.
For more than twenty years, outside of the CSUSB community, Dr. Nerren worked as a public relations, marketing, and photography professional including as the president of her own public relations firm, Felten Media Services. In this capacity, she served as PR and Marketing Director for multiple law firms, and she was also the publicist for a major national autism nonprofit for many years. Her work led her to serve clients in sports, entertainment, media, the arts, event, nonprofit, publishing, and professional services.
Dr. Nerren also previously served as a contributing photojournalist for the Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Daily News Group, with a daily readership of over 800,000 homes.
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS
Rabbi Naomi Levy is the founder and leader of Nashuva, a groundbreaking Jewish spiritual outreach movement based in Los Angeles. Levy was named one of the top fifty rabbis in America by Newsweek and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today show, and NPR. Her latest book, Einstein and the Rabbi, was published in September 2017. She is the author of the national bestseller To Begin Again, as well as Talking to God and Hope Will Find You. She was in the first class of women to enter the Jewish Theological Seminary’s rabbinical school and the first woman in her movement to head a congregation on the West Coast.
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Dr. Barry M. Prizant, PhD, CCC-SLP, is among the world’s leading authorities on autism, with more than forty years of experience as a scholar, researcher, and international consultant. He is an adjunct professor at Brown University, author of Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism with Tom Fields-Meyer, and coauthor of The SCERTS Model: A Comprehensive Educational Approach, now being implemented in more than a dozen countries.
Dr. Ricki Robinson is co-director of Descanso Medical Center for Development and Learning in La Canada, California. She is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and Senior Attending Physician at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. She has been in private pediatric practice for over 30 years, specializing in children and adults with developmental delays for over twenty years.
Dr. Stephen Shore is a professor at Adelphi University, where his research focuses on matching best practices to the needs of people with autism. In addition to working with children and talking about life on the autism spectrum, Stephen is internationally renowned for presentations, consultations, and writings on lifespan issues pertinent to education, relationships, employment, advocacy, and disclosure. A current board member of Autism Speaks, president emeritus of the Asperger’s Association of New England, and advisory board member of the Autism Society, Dr. Shore serves on the boards of the Asperger Syndrome and High Functioning Autism Association, the US Autism and Asperger Association, the Scientific Council of OAR, and other autism related organizations.
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