Tova McGilvray (President) —

Tova McGilvray was “Battle Born” and raised in Reno, Nevada, and is a graduate of UNR’s writing program. She has worked in Title and Escrow for nearly a decade and looks forward to a long career helping people make Reno their home. She trained most of her life as a dancer and thespian, and cut her teeth at leadership managing, and choreographing productions. Her experience co-founding the Nada Dada Art Show exposed her to the plight of the residents in Reno’s weekly motels and introduced her to community activism. While always identified as a Nevada Jew, it was not until attending Temple Sinai just a few years ago that she found a home where she could practice community service from a proudly Jewish perspective. Tova is also the president of the Rotary Club of Reno Midtown.

Michael E. Gorden (1st Vice President) —

I grew up in Southern California for about 10 years and then moved to Reno in 1986. I grew up in a Reform Jewish Home. As a youth and an adult, I have always ensured to the best of my ability to belong to a Synagogue. I have been happily married (Don’t tell my wife) to my wife Jennifer for over 15 years and we have two rambunctious teenage boys and one equally rambunctious pre-teen girl – Nathaniel 17 years, Shalom 16 years (no he is not peaceful), and that red-headed child who everyone thinks is cute–boy… she has everyone fooled–Sasha is almost 11 years. I am a Social Worker and have been working for the State of Nevada for over 15 years and currently am the manager of three District Offices for Medicaid. I also have been in the bowling business (my hobby) for about 30 years. Currently, I am a supervisor at Coconut Bowl and I am an Association Manager for the Greater Reno-Sparks Bowling Association. My family and I have been members since 2014. I attended services as a teenager and into adulthood, for as long as I have been in the Reno area. I served on the Board for three years as a Member-at-Large and have served for the past several years as the Chair of the Building/Grounds and Security Committee. My family and I are always involved with events and holidays and try our best to volunteer time and labor to help out. We are very dedicated to Temple Sinai. I was very honored to serve as President and then 1st Vice-President of our greater Sinai Community and will be honored to serve again 1st Vice-President. I feel that I bring a positive, analytical, methodological, and Social Work perspective to growing and engaging our community in leading Temple Sinai.

Laura Smith (2nd Vice President) —

Thank you for considering me for an at-large position on the Temple Sinai Board. Belonging to Temple Sinai has made Reno feel like home since moving here. In this community, I have served on the Board of Trustees as a member-at-large, chaired the Jewish Practice Committee, volunteered as part of our collective effort to staff the overflow shelter tent on Record Street, coordinated biweekly breakfast deliveries to Our Place, led services, tutored students in preparation for their b’nei mitzvah, sang in the High Holiday Choir, and acted in the recent Purim spiels. In my prior affiliation with Congregation Shaarei Shamayim in Madison, Wisconsin, I served on the Ritual Committee and Social Action Committee, volunteered for The Road Home’s Interfaith Hospitality Network’s temporary family shelter program, ran monthly community meals for the Friends of the State Street Family, and had an active role in the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, engaging in friendship and solidarity with our Muslim neighbors. I currently teach math at Clayton Middle School and feel particularly invested in our cohort of active young families, as the parent of a toddler.

Michael Cohen (CFO) —

I was born in Israel, moved to New Zealand as a child, and then to the US for grad school in 2003. I have now spent over 20 years in the US, spending most of that time in Southern California (for school), and Northern California (for work). My wife Perian is a native Californian, and we moved to Reno in May 2021, during the pandemic, looking for a better work-life balance and more space for our children to enjoy. We found Sinai pretty quickly, and you may have seen us around the place in the last couple of years. My daughter Eliana and son Amiel attend Sinai School. In November 2023, I joined the staff of Sinai School as the 6-7th grade teacher, which has been a wonderful experience, and in July of 2024 I began serving as the Secretary of the Board of Trustees which has been a great opportunity to deepen my engagement with the community and my own Jewish practice.

My father once told me that children can always tell when their parents are being inauthentic, and that therefore the best way to raise Jewish kids is to do Jewish things, so I’m looking forward to taking this next step at Sinai. I’m looking forward to serving you all and learning more about all the joys we share, and the issues we face, as a community.

Alexa Foley (Treasurer) —

Alexa’s roots are in Miami with loving but crazy Jewish and Cuban families. After a 15-year pitstop in the Minneapolis area, Reno became her beloved home shortly after the turn of the century. Later, she became Mrs. Foley after meeting Jay Foley at a Reno coffee shop. Today, they are raising their two sons Quinten and Jameson. Before becoming Co-Conspirator and Chief Transportation Executive of the Foley Family, she proudly achieved a double major plus minor (Urban Affairs and Communications with a Cross-Cultural Relations emphasis; Human Resources) at St. Cloud State University while working as many hours as she could to pay for it. Her professional past included teamwork and leadership roles with various national and regional professional affiliations. Most of her career was positioned as COO of small to midsize companies. While she enjoyed the success and recognition that she earned in the Midwest, her favorite job title is that of Big Mama Foley.

She stays busy with family/friends and hobbies and is most grateful for the wonderful people she gets to walk through this life with. Temple Sinai holds a special place in her heart as it is where she chose to become a Bat Mitzvah as an adult and where she can raise her boys in our small, but enriched Jewish community. Her faith and religion are very important to her, and Alexa is thankful for this opportunity to better serve Temple Sinai.

Tommy Seidel (Secretary) —

I moved to Reno in 2020, and quickly started missing being part of a Jewish community. In 2022, along with my wife Katherine (a Reno native), we dove headfirst into Temple Sinai! We have both felt exceedingly welcome, and have enjoyed becoming more involved. I has been my pleasure to serve the Board as a member-at-large and is my honor to have been asked to join the board as secretary, and am passionate about both maintaining what we love about Temple Sinai, along with figuring out what we can improve on in order to better serve our community.

I am originally from the Bay Area, but have bounced across the US a few times. I have lived in Michigan (for school) and Boston (for work). I am a software engineer with particular interest in robotics and computer vision. In my spare time, I enjoy hiking, 3d printing, and spending time with my wife, two cats, and dog. I enjoy talking to pretty much anyone about pretty much anything, so I hope to have many opportunities to continue meeting and learning about the members of our community!

Jeremy Cohen (Member-at-Large) —

Bio coming soon.

Alan Deutschman (Member-at-Large) —

My family, on both sides, emigrated from Eastern Europe to New York City between 1920 and 1930, and I grew up in a Reform congregation in suburban New Jersey in the ‘60s and ‘70s. After working as a magazine journalist and book author in New York and San Francisco for two decades, I moved to Reno in 2011 to become a professor of journalism at UNR. I’ve become more involved in the temple community since my daughter began attending Sinai School and preparing for her bat mitzvah.

Jill Flancraich (Member-at-Large) —

A native New Yorker, Jill moved to Las Vegas in 1994 and later relocated to Reno in 2012. She joined Temple Sinai in 2015 and successfully advocated for establishing the Library Committee, serving as its Chair for nine years. During her tenure, she oversaw several projects, including converting a storage classroom into the Youth Library, creating the Faces of Sinai photo wall in the small social hall, and organizing a program on antisemitism that attracted a diverse audience from Northern Nevada to the synagogue. Additionally, she chaired the Social Action Committee from 2016 to 2018 and developed the annual Mitzvah Day. In 2024, she became the synagogue’s volunteer Events Coordinator, assisting with, and launching, events such as the ‘Who Nu?’ series while promoting community interfaith programming, including the annual Interfaith Sukkot Potluck.

Jill has an extensive background in promotion, marketing, and special event planning, supported by a forty-year career that includes executive roles in retail and non-profit organizations, as well as owning two businesses. She is fortunate to live near her daughter and son-in-law, both graduates of the University of Nevada, Reno, and their schnauzer. As a strong advocate for the importance of Tikkun Olam, she is passionate about civic engagement. Her interests include creating piano compositions, exploring various music genres, reading, and watching classic films.

John Luis Gomez (Member-at-Large) —

John Luis Gomez retired from Corporate Banking in San Francisco in 2020 and is happily settled in the beautiful southern hills of Reno, with Donald, his spouse of 34 years. During the last five years, John Luis has focused his time on returning to Judaism, studying Hebrew, attending Torah studies, and being an active member of both Temple Sinai (a member for the last three years) and the greater Northern Nevada Jewish community. He’s a member of Temple Sinai’s Jewish Practice Committee and tutored his first B’nai Mitzvah student this last year. He writes fiction and poetry and has four manuscripts being polished to “shop” around, which he finds is a long process! He walks five miles a day and reads anything from history to science fiction and fantasy. He also enjoys traveling with his spouse and friends and immersing himself within local cultures and museums. He loves his family, friends, community and life!

Elspeth Olson (Member-at-Large) —

Elspeth moved to Reno in 2019 for a job in the main library at UNR. She previously lived on the San Francisco peninsula and has master’s degrees in history and library and information science. Back home, her family is a part of Congregation Etz Chayim in Palo Alto. Elspeth did not grow up in a synagogue community, as the local options at the time were unwilling to welcome an interfaith family that intended to remain interfaith. Instead, her family attended High Holy Day services through Hillel at Stanford University with Rabbi Ari Cartun, and she attended the Palo Alto School for Jewish Education on Sunday mornings until the end of eighth grade. Elspeth and her brother had their bat/bar mitzvot in the back garden of their family home, with the assistance of private tutoring and the retired Hillel rabbi, Charles Familant. Coming from a mixed-faith immediate family and multiracial extended family, Elspeth strongly believes in the power of communities that welcome, celebrate, and value different perspectives, identities, and experiences.