Sherri Mandell was born in New York and graduated from Cornell University and Colorado State University, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing. She taught writing at the University of Maryland and at Penn State before moving to Israel with her family in 1996. She is the author of Writers of the Holocaust and has written for numerous magazines and journals, including the Washington Post, the Denver Post and the Jerusalem Post.

In 2002, Ms. Mandell and her husband founded the Koby Mandell Foundation to support bereaved families, in memory of their son, who was brutally murdered by terrorists along with his friend Yosef Ish-Ran.

Her book The Blessing of a Broken Heart won the National Jewish Book Award, has been translated into three languages, and was adapted into a play. The journey Sherri has undergone and the insights she has gained have, to this day, impacted hundreds of thousands of people around the world.