Mark Berlin served as the FJMC’s international president from 2009 until 2011.  Prior to that he was president of the Adas Israel (Washington, DC) Men’s Club three times and went on to be president of the Seaboard Region.  Mark held several international positions before assuming the FJMC presidency, including chairmanship of the 1999 and 2001 FJMC international conventions.  He is now a member of the B’nai Israel Men’s Club, where he organizes monthly ROMEO dinners out.

 

Mark’s Men’s Club experience has been marked by his development of new programs that have become standard operating procedure.  At the club level he developed award-winning monthly visits to assisted living homes, where he has led abbreviated Shabbat services for more than 30 years.  At the regional level he started an inter-club “It’s Academic” trivia competition that brings clubs together from all over the region.  At the international level his goal was to help Men’s clubs grow and be more responsive to the needs of men in their congregations.  To this end, he developed the Quality Club Award, the Advantage newsletter for club presidents, and the first Program Fair at a convention (in 1997).  During his FJMC presidency he traveled more than 48,000 miles for the organization and personally visited 63 Men’s Clubs across the continent.

 

Mark is a native of Louisville, Kentucky, and holds degrees from Northwestern University and George Washington Law School.  His entire career was at the Federal Communications Commission, from which he retired in 2014.  Until interrupted by the pandemic, he and his wife Leslie delivered food to shut-ins every week for Meals on Wheels, and he was a substitute teacher in math and social studies in Montgomery County public schools.  Mark and Leslie, who live in Potomac, MD, have a son Justin, who is a lawyer in Washington.