Jane Eisner is an accomplished journalist, educator, non-profit leader and public speaker who is currently director of academic affairs at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, overseeing the Masters of Arts program. For more than a decade, she was the Forward’s editor-in-chief, the first woman to hold the position at America’s foremost national Jewish news organization. She is the author of “Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy,” published in 2004 by Beacon Press. She is a regular contributor to the Washington Post’s Book World; her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, TIME, NPR, and other major news outlets. Eisner lives in New York City with her husband, Dr. Mark Berger, and enjoys walking her dog in Riverside Park.