Shlomit Amichai has dedicated her career to improving the quality of education for pupils in Israel. Shlomit has served for almost thirty years in the Education Ministry in various executive positions, ranging from the Budget Director of Project Renewal and Director of the Matriculation Examination Division to Director-General of Pedagogic Affairs. When Shlomit completed her service in 2009 as the Director General of Israel's Ministry of Education, she decided to cross over from central government to the third sector, and try to generate change in the system by creating a new initiative: Teach First Israel. Teach First Israel seeks to bring excellent students from Israel’s' top universities, train them to be teachers in challenged schools and nurture them so that they become Israel’s' future social leaders.
Shlomit previously served as Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Education from 1999 to 2001 and was called in to serve in this role for a second time between 2007 and 2009. Shlomit returned to the Ministry of Education after six years with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) where she served as Director of JDC-Israel's Division for Voluntarism, Philanthropy and ELKA: JDC's training center for senior executives who provide social services for various communities in Israel. While at the JDC, Shlomit oversaw the training of director-generals of Israel government ministries, mayors and senior personnel from the public and nonprofit sector fields of health, education and welfare. She also directed programs to promote voluntarism in Israel as well as programs for the Israeli-Arab sector. Among her many current activities, Shlomit assists the Israel Center for Excellence through Education in Jerusalem.
Shlomit was born in Jerusalem, where she earned her BA in Israeli History and Political Science at the Hebrew University. She subsequently received her MA in Educational Administration from Tel-Aviv University.