partner, Director of Business Development

Netanya, Israel

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Todd is Sapere’s Israel-based partner and Director of Business Development. A graduate of Brandeis University, with dual US-Israeli citizenship, Todd brings valuable experience navigating the legal, cultural, and entrepreneurial complexities that bind his countries. 

 

Todd began his legal career as an Assistant Appellate Public Defender on Oklahoma’s Death Row. He rose to Tulsa County Assistant District Attorney, prosecuting felony crimes, including death penalty cases. In 1995, by the election of Oklahoma district court judges, he was appointed to the bench as a special district court judge, presiding over criminal, civil and family court. Upon retiring from the bench, Todd founded Heartland Consulting Inc., an Oklahoma and Washington DC based lobbying firm that secured federal contracts, allocations, and competitive funding for its clients. In Israel, Todd continues to build upon this success as the founder of T.S. Merging Strategies, Ltd., an Israel-based lobbying group that facilitates contracts between the US federal government and the Israeli defense, cyber-security, and space industries.

 

Todd’s passion for building relationships has earned significant acclaim. Notably, prior to making Aliyah to Israel in 2015, Todd fulfilled a lifetime dream to teach American and Holocaust history in the Blue Ridge Mountains which led to a collaboration between his class of rural, Appalachian high-school students, Yad Vashem, and the International Tracing Service in Germany. Using his personal collection of Holocaust ephemera, which later become an exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.,Todd's students made history themselves by repatriating a 1939 letter, from a German Jew imploring an American family to save her and her husband from the ravages of post-Kristallnacht Germany. Later murdered at Auschwitz, the students returned the original letter to family members now residing in the United States, Australia and Great Britain. Featured as a model of Holocaust education, Todd received a fellowship to travel to Israel to further develop Holocaust curricula with teachers from around the world, at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. 

 

From 2001-2010 Todd served as an adjunct professor of law teaching Trial Practice, at the University of Tulsa College of Law, his alma mater.

 

Todd has provided leadership on a number of volunteer community boards including Neighbor for Neighbor Pro Bono Legal Clinic, Mainstay Family Shelter, and the State of Oklahoma Department of Human Services Subcommittee for Children in Crisis. For four years, Todd served as Chair of Tulsa Jewish Federation’s Community Relations Committee focusing on building  interfaith relationships and currently volunteers at The AZ House, a Jerusalem-based substance abuse transitional living recovery center.

Todd and his wife Tamar reside in Netanya and enjoy spending time with their 7 children and six grandchildren. Proudly, he continues to serve as a Yad Vashem Certified Tour Guide for The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.