Selected from a competitive pool of applicants, six Ladino enthusiasts across the United States are now participating in the ALL’s first cohort of Embashadores – Ladino Ambassadors. The goal of the Ladino Ambassador Program is to strengthen connections among speakers, learners, and supporters of Ladino, while fostering new leadership and expanding community-based efforts to sustain and celebrate the language. Each Ambassador is designing an event or initiative in their community to raise awareness of Ladino. We have already held a late-summer orientation and two fall workshops, with Professor Sarah Bunin Benor and Dr. Joe Halio, to introduce the group to the field of endangered Jewish languages and the history of the American Sephardic community, respectively; the trainings throughout the year will build on this foundation.
ALL co-director Hannah Pressman says, “There is impressive energy and curiosity in this group. They are asking fantastic questions and considering the stakes of Ladino revitalization with the utmost seriousness. I also love the geographical diversity among the participants. From California to the midwest, the northeast, and the south – we have many regions of the U.S. covered! Hopefully that will make this program’s impact even more meaningful.”
Felisitasiones to each of the individuals below for sharing their passions and dreams for Ladino with us. We can’t wait to see what the first class of Embashadores will achieve!
JD Gomez is a student at UCLA studying International Development Studies, with a particular interest in culture, identity, advocacy, and cross-cultural exchange. Rooted in his heritage, he is especially drawn to Ladino—and Haketia, the language’s Moroccan expression—for its extraordinary ability to connect people across time and place. For JD, Judeo-Spanish is both a living bridge to our past and, just as importantly, a means of building relationships across communities in the present. He is passionate about carrying Sephardic culture forward through storytelling, scholarship, community-building, food, music, entrepreneurship, and other forms ofcultural advocacy, creating new points of connection among Jewish, Middle Eastern, North African, Hispanic, and American worlds. As an American Ladino League Embashador, JD hopes to honor the voices that carried this tradition to us while helping ensure that Ladino remains a source of belonging, creativity, and exchange for generations to come.
Rena Korn is an early educator and proud member of the Sephardic community, with deep roots in Seattle’s vibrant Sephardic Jewish community. Ladino has always been an important part of her family’s Jewish practice, connecting generations through language, tradition, stories, and song. As an early childhood educator, Rena is especially passionate about creating meaningful connections between language, culture, and identity from an early age. As an ambassador for the American Ladino League, she hopes to help preserve and celebrate Ladino as a living language while sharing the richness of Sephardic heritage with the next generation.
For Rena, Ladino is more than a language—it is a way of carrying family history forward, keeping traditions alive, and strengthening the connection between generations.
Rachel McCullough is a second-year PhD student in Linguistics at the University of Michigan whose research interests center around 1) documentation and reclamation of languages of the Jewish Diaspora and 2) fringe ideological discourse on the internet. She is especially interested in doing work in these areas that is both community-centered and accessible. Currently, Rachel hopes to work with first-language speakers of Ladino to document regional variation in Judeo-Spanish grammar and prosody (intonation and rhythm). She wants her research to inform the creation of authentic language-learning materials for all ages as a path to language revitalization and reclamation.
While not Sephardic, Rachel’s Jewish background is not traditionally Ashkenazi, either; she grew up in a small Jewish community in Coastal Virginia (<100 families), and her Jewish identity reflects those roots. She wants more of the world—Jewish and non-Jewish—to see that there are rich, vibrant Jewish stories that aren’t often represented in mainstream media. She is currently looking forward to taking her first Ladino course at U-M this fall and working alongside this year’s Embashadores cohort during the 2026-27 academic year.
Cindy Osleber is an MA candidate in linguistics at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. Her academic interests center on language preservation, language education, and the continued use of endangered and heritage languages. She has studied Ladino for the past year and will begin intermediate-level study this fall through the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages.
Outside of her graduate studies, she works as a substitute teacher and teach Spanish to young learners. These experiences have deepened her interest in how languages are taught, preserved, and passed from one generation to the next. She is especially passionate about making Ladino more accessible to new learners and encouraging greater involvement among young adults.
Cindy’s research interests include Ladino linguistics and the historical development of the language between 1880 and 1920, particularly Ladino written in Cyrillic script. She is also interested in the relationship between Ladino, Sephardic cultural heritage, and the ways language carries community history across generations. In spring 2027, she hopes to conduct research at the archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris. She intends to continue her education at the doctoral level and bring together research, teaching, and community engagement to support Ladino’s preservation and continued use as a living language.
Alanna Rosenberg spent 14 years working for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, in the areas of asylum and citizenship education. From 2014 to 2024, Alanna worked in the New Orleans Asylum Office in a range of capacities. She started as an Asylum Officer, interviewing and adjudicating individuals applying for asylum. She also worked as a Training Officer, Supervisory Asylum Officer and ultimately as Section Chief, overseeing the adjudicative operations of the office. Prior to that, she worked in Washington DC developing training materials for individuals applying for U.S. citizenship. She is currently writing a novel inspired by her grandparents’ lives as Sephardic Jews living in northern Greece before World War II.
Leah Varsano lives in Northampton, MA with her husband and toddler. Her Sephardi family hails from Kastoria and Salonika, and her great-grandfather Joseph Varsano printed various Ladino newspapers including La America. A devoted lover and learner of languages, she started taking Ladino classes with Bryan Kirschen in 2020 and is passionate about keeping Ladino alive for the next generation of speakers. She graduated from Vassar College where she studied Religion, and has a Master’s from Brandeis in Sustainable International Development. Professionally she works in the field of social justice philanthropy.