Ronit Avni is an award-winning filmmaker, entrepreneur, media strategist and human rights advocate. She is the founder of a new social enterprise, LocalizED, which will channel the untapped expertise of diaspora professionals back to their communities-of-origin through an online marketplace, turning brain drain into a brain gain. Ronit is the Founder and former Executive Director (2003 – 2014) of Just Vision, an organization that supports Palestinians and Israelis who are struggling for freedom, dignity, equality, and human security using nonviolent means. Ronit produced the film Budrus (2009). Hailed in The New York Times as “this year’s must-see documentary,” Budrus won 18 awards, including the PUMA Creative Impact Award. Ronit directed and produced Encounter Point (2006), which premiered at Tribeca, received several Audience Awards for Best Documentary, and screened in 200 cities. Ronit also executive produced Just Vision’s Peabody Award-winning film, My Neighbourhood (2012). Under Ronit’s leadership, Just Vision created an Arabic-language graphic novel and a growing Hebrew-language news and analysis site, Local Call, in partnership with +972 Magazine and Active Stills, that has garnered more than 1,700,000 readers and has broken numerous stories. Previously, Ronit co-edited the book “Video for Change” with members of WITNESS.

A recipient of Search for Common Ground’s Common Ground Award and Auburn’s Lives of Commitment Award, Ronit was named a Young Global Leader through the World Economic Forum and a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations.