Team Umachaka

Meet The Team

Currently, the team consists of eight full time employees, a composer and sound producer on retainer, and outsourcing relationships with top animators, illustrators, software programmers and Apps designers in Israel, USA, India and China.

Ashley Lazarus

President and Creative Director

TJ & Pals was created by Mr. Lazarus, an award winning film maker, who for many years directed films for Mattel's toys, games and learning products. Gifted in working with children, Mr. Lazarus created many memorable commercials for their Disney and Sesame Street brands, including "Winnie the Pooh" and "Dr. Seuss" - as well as other national U.S. brands. Mr. Lazarus has over forty years' experience as a director and producer of films, documentaries and commercials for U.S. and international clients. He has won over 80 professional awards including Clios and first prizes at the Cannes, London, & Tokyo Film Festivals. He also wrote and directed the acclaimed movie "eLollipop" which tells the story of the friendship between two boys, one white and one black, growing up in an African village in Lesotho, during the height of the apartheid era in South Africa. Mr. Lazarus has also won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion Award for Canvas in the Sky, a film about flying trapeze artists. His marketing documentary Spring and Spring Hill launched General Motor's new car company Saturn. It won first prize at the New York Marketing Awards Festival. General Motors purchased the full, prime-time, half hour before the Super Bowl to screen the film that launched Saturn. TJ & Pals has been a vision of Mr. Lazarus for several years. Each character and everything that is associated with TJ & Pals has Mr. Lazarus' attentive eye for detail and reflects the depth of his experience in global branding for U.S. and international clients.

Beverly Beard

Director of Education and Communications

Beverly Beard is a producer/director and art director who has worked with Ashley Lazarus for the past 30 years on many projects. She recently produced an educational documentary series, "Faith and Fate, the Story of the Jewish People in the 20th Century". She managed a team of leading educators from around the world to provide the maximum educational value to the 7 year project. She has worked with many international corporate clients to produce and art direct their commercials and documentaries including Disney, Mattel, Coca Cola, IBM, UPS, Hewlett Packard, M&M's, Snickers, Nokia, Toyota, Home Depot, Kelloggs, CNN and Georgia Pacific. Beverly was also senior television editor at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. She is now responsible for the educational content and communications for TJ& Pals.

Anne Tseng

Director of Education for China

Ms. Tseng, an MA from the University of Toronto, Canada, is a freelance editor and writer with over thirteen years of experience in educational publishing. She served as an in-house editor for Time Life for six years and then as a development editor for McGraw-Hill Education for four years. Ms. Tseng has helped create and edit many successful school and home-education series for ELT markets in China, Japan, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, and other Asian countries. She develops a diverse range of educational material, including textbooks, storybooks, audio CDs, CD-ROMs, websites, flashcards, and posters, for all levels (preschool to university). She specializes in ELT material and works in English and Mandarin Chinese. Based in Hong Kong, Ms. Tseng is responsible for producing the TJ & Pals Chinese website and ESL (English as a 2nd language) learning programs for the China/Asia market.

Lisi Gopin

Educational Technology Coordinator

While earning her Master's in Educational Technology from Boise State University, Ms. Gopin studied the effect of digital games and videos on learning. She worked closely with two professors in the EDTECH department doing research for a year as a graduate assistant and wrote briefs on social media in education, science in K-12, storytelling, 3D communications and interactive video. Ms. Gopin has over 12 years of experience using and teaching technology. She has worked as a project manager for various web development companies where she conducted many training workshops for employees. Ms. Gopin has a Master's in Educational Technology from BSU as well as certification in Online Teaching. She has taught Digital Storytelling and Game Making classes to middle school students and enjoys experimenting with ways that technology can encourage kids to use their brains in creative ways. Ms. Gopin specializes in web 2.0 tools in education, digital storytelling and games in education and blogs about technology in education.

Ari Lieberman

Business Development

MBA Marketing & Finance: Fox School of Business, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa. Ari has over 25 years' experience in strategic, hands-on international business development & marketing including: Law Firm of Allen L. Rothenberg (Pa, NY, NJ) - Director of Marketing: leading USA legal services firm including television, direct marketing, radio, print (10 years). MicroCall Israel - VP Marketing Telephony Company marketing to leading phone companies & distributors worldwide including management of Beijing, China office (5 years). Tri-United Technologies -Business Development for Hi-Tech Investment Incubator working with over 30 innovative start-ups (3 years). VP and Owner of Hypersell: business development, deal making, licensing, product sourcing, working with leading content providers, publishers, distributors, international portals etc. including Eurotalk, a Language Learning Company (10 years).

Mitch Clyman

Audio Producer and Composer

A graduate of Berklee College of Music in Boston, and the University of London, Mr. Clyman has 20 years of experience in music and sound for television and films. He wrote the words and music for 65 children's songs, produced and arranged albums for various artists - and scored music for over 30 children's films, documentary and industrial films, and writes original music for commercials and jingles. He is a successful producer of soundtracks for EFL (English as a First Language) programming for Cengage Learning, USA and ESL (English as a Second Language) programming for McGraw Hill and Time Warner, targeted at 6 - 12 year olds, in China and other foreign language countries. Mr. Clyman currently owns and operates Muso Productions, Ltd, in Jerusalem an audio post facility specializing in music and sound design. His international clientele includes the BBC, HBO, Warner Bros., (Clash of the Titans), Miramax, CinevisionUSA, William H. Macy, and David Milch (NYPD). In Israel he has worked with Aniboom, Animation Lab and Incredimail. Mr. Clyman has also worked with major sound studios around the world such as Todd A.O., Hollywood, Sony Studios, Los Angeles and Reel Sound, Pinewood Studios, London.

Seth Aronstam

Head of Design

Seth is originally from Johannesburg, South Africa. After graduating design school in 1993, he worked in various ad agencies in South Africa, including Saatchi Saatchi, Framptons Intl and various below the line design firms. As senior designer, he specialized in print design, package design, corporate identity, campaign art direction, etc. In 2000 he joined the Aish.com team, the largest Jewish website in the world, where he created the overall site design. Seth was also the art director of Aish HaTorah's popular one-minute movies. Mr. Aronstam's specialties include branding and identity, website user interface design, print and package design.

David Komer

Head of Interactive Technology

Influenced by his father, a computer network engineer for the City of Houston, David began to specialize in computer programming by the age of 14. He started working professionally as a programmer at IDT N.Y. After serving in the Israeli Army, he joined Ashley Lazarus where for three years he worked on developing interactive media and websites for CinevisionUSA and The Destiny Foundation. During that time, working for COJS- the Center for Online Jewish Studies in New York and Ardon Bar-Hama, Israel's leading archival photographer, David developed online websites and touch screen museum exhibitions for international clients including the Juilliard Music School Manuscript Collection in New York, the Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Exhibition at the Israel Museum Jerusalem, and a project for the New York Philharmonic Digital Archives. David is responsible for developing forward-thinking solutions in programming architecture and implementation, interactivity, and exploration of new technologies for TJ & Pals.

Jennifer Zelcer

Head of Administration and Comptroller

After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seneca College Toronto, Jennifer went into the nonprofit sector and over the next 25 years worked for Aish Hatorah, Nitza, Netivot Hatorah and CAEJ in various accounting positions. She also ran her own business for 6 years as a forensic accountant, consulting for leading companies and accounting firms in Toronto. In 2008, she joined CinevisionUSA, Inc as office/manager comptroller. She is now responsible for the financial, legal and administrative functions at Umachaka Media, Inc.

Darrell Cohn

Director of Production

After graduating from Columbia University, Darrell worked for interactive media production agencies in NYC with clients such as Panasonic, Nautica, Olympus, Time Warner Cable, and Avaya. He coordinated teams of programmers, designers, and copywriters, and oversaw the creation of interactive media such as websites, online games, and interactive training programs. Adapting his production, client relationship, and project management skills to software implementation, Darrell then went to a large healthcare organization, where he was tasked with deploying an enterprise-wide electronic medical record system. Following this, he was the program and business analysis director for a Northbrook, IL-based payroll company. It was there that he was able to use the production skills he had amassed to streamline the company's workers' compensation department and bring it online. At the same time, he was the business process improvement director for the Columbia Alumni Club of Chicago. Two of his main roles in this organization were treasurer and webmaster. Additionally, Darrell became a certified project manager in 2008 through the Project Management Institute.

Office/Outsource Team

Administrative Assistant - Raizy Zelcer
Serverside Architect - Shaul Behr
Apps Development - Jonathan Caras - appSTUDIO, Rapidsoft Technologies
Illustrators - Jason Cohen, Sofia Polonsky-Federov
Video Editor - Gilad Levy
Animation Production - Oren Avigdor, Arsinii Libin

Consultant Services

eCommerce Innovators is a full service marketing and research firm providing support and internet marketing consulting services to companies and organizations, assisting them in taking their online presence and sales to higher levels. Founded by Fran and Sol Jakubowicz who have over 40 years of combined marketing experience. They are experienced both in the 'traditional' areas of pre-sales, sales, marketing, project management plus the ever-morphing areas such as brand development, SEO, social media marketing, viral marketing, competition research and analysis and end-user usability analysis.

Morris Silver and Associates, Public Relations. Founded more than 35 years ago by former newspaper journalist Morris Silver and now co-owned with marketing communications specialist Virginia M. Sheridan, M. Silver Associates Inc. is ranked among the country's top independently owned public relations firms. The agency is known for its premium client roster, talented and passionate staff, client retention, non-traditional thinking, measurable bottom-line results, integrity and hard work, depth of knowledge and experience and a highly service-centric philosophy that puts client welfare above all else. Headquartered in New York City, the agency also specializes in the domestic Hispanic or Latin American market and has links to P.R. agencies internationally.