Our Team

Dr. Daphne Kopelman-Rubin

Head of SEL.IL

Dr. Daphne Kopelman-Rubin is the founder and head of the SEL.IL Center for Promoting Social-Emotional Learning at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel. An educational psychologist, she focuses on applied research. Among other activities, she initiated and developed the I Can Succeed (ICS) program which trains educators to cultivate social-emotional learning skills in their students, from preschool through high school. In recent years, she has focused on systemic, research-based SEL development processes, such as articulating SEL developmental standards, city- or town-wide SEL implementation, and creating a suite of assessment and measurement tools for SEL skills. Previously, she established the Learning Disabilities Clinic at Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel, directing the clinic for a decade. At the clinic, she spearheaded the development of interpersonal psychotherapy for adolescents with learning and attention disorders (IPTA-LD). Over the years, she has served as a member of various committees, such as the consensus committee on Social Emotional Learning in Schools of the Initiative for Applied Education Research at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities as well as the Israeli Ministry of Education’s Margalit Committee II to formulate policy guidelines for treating students with learning disabilities. More recently, she has served as a board member of the SEL Challenge competition and a member of the editorial board of the journal Social Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy.