EXTRAordinary PEOPLE

Jeff Lejfer is the child of Holocaust survivors and was the leader of several Jewish organizations. Upon retirement, after a very successful 50-year career in insurance, as the creator of New Day Underwriting Managers, an award-winning insurance agency, he became a renowned speaker, visiting several civic and school groups. Jeff loves enlightening young people especially about the Holocaust and hi...

Ann Vipamaneerut is the owner of Rice Factory, a restaurant in Milltown, New Jersey featuring Thai foods. Her given name is Vilailuck Vipamaneerut, but all of the patrons and friends affectionately know her as Ann. Ann, who is 54 years old, has lived in the United States for over 27 years, and earned a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Saginaw Valley University in Michigan in 1996. Af...

Bea Lurie  is the daughter of two child Holocaust survivors, her father, Sol, and her mother, Evelyn Rebecca Lurie, whose parents escaped from Poland with two toddlers. Bea learned by her parents’ actions the importance of helping those in need and devoted her career to making a difference in the lives of others as a leader of nonprofit organizations and government agencies, and as an owner o...

Jonathan Hunger  is the author of  Agitate! , a revealing memoir of how he was able to overcome his fears by the example of Frederick Douglass. Jonathan is a native New Yorker who grew up primarily in New Jersey. He attended the University of Maryland for his undergraduate degree, and soon after spent a year working on construction as part of AmeriCorps with Habitat for Humanity. Fo...

Renee Weingarten  is the creator and founder of Renee’s Reading Club, featured on Facebook, since 2017.  Today, the club has over 62,000 members with members in every state in the United States and in over thirty countries around the world.  Renee’s Reading Club is a site for sharing book recommendations, monthly “new book” release announcements and the popular live weekly...

MARIO FRONZONI  was born on Valentine’s Day in Elizabeth, New Jersey. A resident of East Brunswick, New Jersey for 43 years, Mario is married, the father of two, and grandfather of three grandchildren. After retiring from a career as a professional engineer in Mechanical Engineering and Management, and after securing five US patents, and, as lead engineer on the latest aircraft carrier (CVN 7...

MILT HEUMANN  received a BA from Brooklyn College in 1968, and a Ph. D. from Yale University in 1976. He taught as an assistant and associate professor at the University of Michigan from 1973 to 1980, was a Guggenheim Fellow at Yale Law School from 1980 to 1981, and has been a professor (1981), and then Distinguished Professor (2013) at Rutgers until the present. He was Chair o...

Sarah Esposito, PA-C, is a certified Physician Associate at Integrated Dermatology of NJ, located in East Brunswick, New Jersey.  Sarah received her Bachelor's degree in biological sciences from the University of Delaware. She then graduated with a Master’s degree in Physician Assistant Studies from Seton Hall University, where she was awarded membership in the prestigious Alpha Eta Honors So...

Dee Gwiazdowski has been in the design field for thirty-two years, nineteen of which have been with Ethan Allen as a Design Consultant. This is a second career for Dee. She is both passionate and dedicated to creating spaces that are well designed, functional and reflect her client's lifestyle and needs. Each of her projects takes into consideration the rooms' archite...

Marj Billker Graves joined the Army Nurse Corps during her final year of nursing school in 1967. She served as a head nurse on male orthopedic wards at Darnall Army Hospital, Fort Hood, Texas, and at Ireland Army Hospital, Fort Knox, Kentucky. As a Captain, Marj volunteered for Vietnam where she continued to serve as a head orthopedic nurse with the 24th Evacuation Hospital in Long...

Simply put…Ian is camp, and camp is Ian. He began his career as a camper, counselor, Division Leader, and administrator at a traditional day camp in New Jersey. Ian has only missed 2 summers at camp since he was 3 years old! He takes pride in his hands on approach to camping. His personal leadership and spirit are reflected in Black Bear Lake’s rich traditions, extraordinary staff, and quality pro...

Mayor Brad Cohen was elected to the office in November 2016. The Mayor began his public career in 2010 when he was elected to the East Brunswick Board of Education. Working with a dedicated group of Board members, he helped navigate the schools through difficult economic times in the wake of the Recession and the draconian cuts in State Aid. He was named Board President in 2014 and helped sel...

Larry I. Brandspiegel joined the East Brunswick Jewish Center in August 2018 as Cantor and Director of Education before being ordained as a rabbi. Affectionately known as Rabbi/Cantor Larry, the spiritual leader now serves as the President of Jewish Educators Assembly and spiritual advisor of the Northern New Jersey Region of the Federation of Jewish Men’s clubs. With over 30 years exper...

Kate Lancaster is in her ninth year working as a middle school teacher at Jamesburg Public Schools. She is also a certified Reading Specialist and was recognized as an Exemplary Educator for the 2023-2024 school year for her strong knowledge and skills, inspiring presence, and positive impact on students, colleagues and the school community as a whole. Kate's own experience, as well as h...

Aparna Parthasarathy  is a high school senior passionate about remedying structural inequalities, closing educational gaps and representing Generation Z’s values to shape legislation with elected officials. Aparna is a literary advocate and author of Tales of the Invisible, a book that addresses the intersectionality of feminism and the importance of representation. Aparna served as a board m...

Marc Korpus, having had a fascination with maps since youth, took up the creation of of them as an occupation at age 42. He found that mapmaking is now one facet of the discipline of "geographic information systems" (GIS), which marries cartography with databases and statistics and is performed on a computer rather than a drafting board. Until his recent retirement, Marc was a GIS analyst for a na...

Rosa Lowinger is a Cuban-born American writer and art conservator. The author of  Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub  (Harcourt, 2005) and  Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure American Seduction  (Wolfsonian Museum, 2016), she is the founder and current vice-president of RLA Conservation, LLC, the U.S.’s largest woman-owned materials conservation...

Neil O. Lawner’s interest in photography began when he served in the Air Force on Guam from 1966-1968.  During that time, Japanese cameras such as Nikon and Pentax were being manufactured and were available at the Base Exchange. He soon became part of the Kodachrome generation and learned the basics of operating a SLR (single lens reflex) camera. Some of his work was noticed by a gallery owne...

SHIRLEY RUSSAK WACHTEL is an author, college professor, and host of the podcast, EXTRAordinary People.  In December, just before the launch of her successful novel, A Castle in Brooklyn (Little A), she appeared on the podcast,  Too Jewish Radio .  We hope you enjoy her intriguing interview with Rabbi Samuel Cohon.  For more information, go to shirleywachtel.com

Steve Cohen has over 50 years of involvement in rugby.  He has been the catalyst in developing player safety, refereeing, and promoting the game at the grassroots level.  USA Rugby Eagle, Steve Hiatt, has said that “No conversation could take place regarding administrators and contributions to American Rugby without Steve’s name being mentioned.”  Among his many contributions was pi...

Corey Caplan is the co-founder of Dolomite, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange (DEX for short). Prior to co-founding Dolomite, Corey graduated from Lehigh University with a degree in Computer Science and Business. Corey is passionate about the democratization of financial assets and self-sovereignty that cryptocurrencies and digital assets can offer the world. He has been working in the indus...

AnnMarie Karczmit has a passion for volunteering.  A general manager at NJBIZ, a business to business newspaper, she is a wife and mother of a 21- year- old son. She started volunteering when she was 13 years old working in a nursing home and never really stopped.  AnnMarie has volunteered as a docent at a small museum, den leader/committee chair for the Boy Scouts of America, and variou...

DR. AMY ROTHENBERG  has practiced naturopathic medicine since 1986. The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, 2017 Physician of the Year, she spearheaded the successful licensure of naturopathic doctors  in Massachusetts. She was the longtime medical editor for the Institute of Natural Medicine and has written and lectured widely about the benefits of preventive, natural ...

Amy Solomon was working in the television industry for 10 years before changing careers and decided to make life a little “sweeter.” Together with her mother, she started Just One Bite, a cookie company specializing in bite size gourmet cookies and pies. Her cookies and pookies (pie+cookie = pookie) are handmade, using the finest ingredients and are just the right size so that you can pop them in...

Dan Mulcahey is a radio host and voiceover artist who brings more than a decade of communications experience from corporate marketing and communications to the microphone.  Since 2012, he has been a weekend and fill-in host on Magic 98.3, New Jersey’s largest music station and one of 62 stations owned by national radio station operator Beasley Media Group.  He can also be heard on Spotif...