Vice Chair, Chair of International Operations Committee

Sandra Spinner has been a HIAS board member since 2006. She earned her BA in elementary education from Brooklyn College, and subsequently worked as a public school teacher in both the New York City and Cincinnati public schools, as well as at the ESL program at Jewish Family Services in Cincinnati. Ms. Spinner is a commissioner on the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission. She has served as the director of the Cincinnati Council for Soviet Jews since 1980, and has been on the board of trustees for the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews since 1981.

Actively involved in the political and Jewish world, Spinner is former co-chair of the Greater Cincinnati Advocates for Darfur, and was for six years a volunteer curator of artifacts at the Hillel Jewish Student Center Museum. Ms. Spinner has also given expert witness testimony at deportation hearings on behalf of asylum seeking Jews from Ukraine in New York, New Jersey, Cincinnati, Dallas, Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as provided background information to immigration attorneys in the United States, Australia and Canada. She is a resident of Cincinnati and has two children.