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Purple Paint

Board of Directors

Zach Richter

Zach Richter is an artist and creative director known for his work at the intersection of technology, interactivity and storytelling. Richter came to prominence through his work in Virtual Reality — As the Creative Director on experiential music projects for Beck and Pharrell, and as the director of The New York Times first VR film, “Walking New York” and “Hallelujah,” a revolutionary re-imagining of Leonard Cohen’s most iconic song.

Richter’s work has premiered at Cannes, Tribeca, Sundance and SXSW Film Festivals, and has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Montréal (MAC), The Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo and others.

Most recently, Richter has been the Executive Creative Director of “Supernatural” a first-of-its-kind virtual reality fitness and wellness experience for the Oculus Quest that was named one of Time Magazine’s “Best Inventions of 2020.”

During the height of the pandemic, Zach and his wife Becka welcomed their son, which led Zach on a path to rediscover his Judaism. On a beautiful day with his family in Hawaii, he had a long phone call with Rabbi Lori and he’s been active in classes, high holidays and Shabbat services at Open Temple ever since.

Nick Orenstein

Nick Orenstein is an engineer and entrepreneur. His career has focused on introducing technologies which can improve lives broadly around the world. Before moving to Los Angeles over 10 years ago, he led a startup which patented a medical device to improve women’s healthcare during pregnancy and then directed a non-profit’s project which used early mobile app software to simply visualize 200 years of global climate change data. 
 
Nick first joined Open Temple around 2016 when he lived in Venice. He is inspired to co-create Rabbi Lori’s vision of thoughtful Jewish life in the modern spiritual world.
 
Nick is currently Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of HStar Space Transport. HStar is building humanity’s spaceship, a heavy-class launch vehicle which will bring satellites, cargo, and passengers into earth orbit from spaceports around the world. For six years prior to HStar, Nick was among the team of engineers who designed, built, tested, and operated the first four missions of Crew Dragon at SpaceX. 
 
In addition to Open Temple, Nick has volunteered for two other non-profit boards: Upstart Productions, a black box theater in Dallas, TX, and the Global Space Industry Trade Association (GSITA), which advocates for under-represented communities in the space industry workforce.