Biographies

Stan Greenspan was born in Trail, BC and raised in Toronto, ON, where he lives with his wife of over 40 years, Vanessa, and is the father of Nicole (Ramat Gan) & Jessie (Toronto). A graphic artist and internet developer, Stan graduated in the first baccalaureate class in Image Arts Programme from Ryerson Polytechnical University in Toronto. Stan has been involved in both synagogue organization and the FJMC for over 30 years, beginning at Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda Synagogue and at the Sunnybrook Hospital Jewish Chapel, which he worked to build. Stan helped form the chapel's Men's Club, and coordinated the Toronto Brotherhood Shabbat Programme. Stan served FJMC as the Great Lakes Region Vice President, as President of the Ontario SubRegion, as a founding member and President of the Lake Ontario Region, and is currently 1st Vice President of MERCAZ-Canada.

Tom Sudow - Tom Sudow lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife Michele and is the father of three children and three granddaughters.   He is the Director of Business Development for Cleveland Clinic Innovations and the Director of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Ashland University.  He also serves as an Advisor to eHealth Ventures a venture capital firm investing internationally in the digital health space; as a member of the Due Diligence Committee for the Akron BioInnovation Fund (Fund 1 and 2); and as an advisor to SCI a Chinese investment firm investing in the United States and Israel.  Tom is a member of Park Synagogue in Cleveland and served as President of the Men’s Club.  He has served the FJMC for the past 32 years as a member of the Executive Committee in various leadership capacities  and as President of the Cleveland Subregion and Vice President of both the Great Lakes and KIO Regions.  He was the founding Chairman of the FJMC Foundation for Jewish life and continues to serve on the Foundation’s Board.  Tom is committed to the community and has served in leadership for a number of organizations in the Jewish and general communities For his work, he has been recognized with awards from many economic development and community organizations.

Aaron Altman 

Bill Becker, has served his community as Temple Rodef Sholom Men’s Club President as well as serving on the board of the Jewish Federation.  After being the club’s president, Bill rose quickly through the Seaboard Region’s ranks and was its president from 2011 to 2013.  He was immediately promoted to be an FJMC International Vice President and served as the co-chair of the 2015 FJMC International Convention.  He was the Chair of this year’s international convention in Washington, DC.

Bill currently is the Director of the American Culture & Tourism Management (ACTM) program at Virginia Wesleyan University. The ACTM program brings Chinese college students to Busch Gardens – Williamsburg for an internship experience and classes. Bill was a professor at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA for nineteen years before he and his family moved to Virginia. His areas of interest are summer camps and theme park management. He’s spent more than twenty summers as a counselor and administrator at Blue Star Camps in Hendersonville, North Carolina, in addition to working at camps in Georgia, Colorado and California. Becker has written many articles on camp administration for Camping Magazine and is the recipient of two “Golden Quill” writing awards from the American Camp Association. He has worked with the Walt Disney World College Program since 1985 and was an original member of the program’s National Advisory Board. He has been awarded the coveted “Mickey” award twice from Walt Disney World for service to the Disney Company. Bill lives in Yorktown with his wife, Sherri, and their two dogs, KuKu and Rudy. 

Alan Budman, Vice President (Regional Services) was born and raised in the Philadelphia area.  He is married to Susan and they are the proud parents of Heather (married to Chris) and Traci (married to Dustin).  He is an attorney and taught at Penn State University for 28 years.  He has served as President of the Associated Alumni of Central High School, a Big Brother volunteer with Jewish Family Services, Vice President of Melrose B’Nai Israel and Chair of the Development Committee of the American Heart Association’s Philadelphia Office.  He was President of the Temple Sinai Men’s Club and the Middle Atlantic Region. He is the past Co-Chair of the Keruv Initiative of FJMC, a Senior Consultant, past Co-Chair of the Yellow Candle Program, past Program Convention Chair and past Vice President for Programs. He is a fellow of and Secretary for the Foundation for Jewish Life.

Allan Kahan, Vice President of Leadership Development and Training, was born in Bethesda, Maryland, and raised in Silver Spring, MD, where he continues to live with his wife of over 37 years, Helene, and is father of Ariel (Washington, DC), Shira (Washington, DC) and Jared (Brooklyn, NY).  After graduating from the University of Tulsa law school, Allan got involved in United Jewish Appeal Young Leadership in the Washington, DC area, where he met Helene.  Allan retired from the federal government in June 2017.  He was an attorney for the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 15 years, then went into private practice, and finally as an Analyst with the Department of Agriculture and then Transportation Security Administration for a total of 18 years.  Allan continues to practice small business collection law.

Allan has been involved in both his synagogue (Ohr Kodesh, Chevy Chase, MD) and the Federation of Jewish Men’s Club (FJMC) for over 25 years.  Allan helped reestablish the Men’s Club at Ohr Kodesh, was President of the club for three years, then went on to be Treasurer and then President of the Seaboard Region, FJMC.  Allan has held numerous positions with the FJMC, including Torch Award Chairman, Editor of The Advantage (newsletter for club leaders), webmaster for the FJMC, Secretary and Vice President, now in his third term, where he previously was VP, Communications and VP, Region and Club Services.  For five and a half years he worked with Captain Ruach, Burt Fishman, providing Leadership Development training for the Executive Committee.

Jeff Schulman 

Bruce Tomar, Vice President, was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pa and now lives in Cherry Hill, NJ with his wife of 41 years, Marcia. Bruce is the father of Jennifer, David (married to Bree), and Heather (married to Andrew) and the grandfather to Zachary and Harvest. Bruce is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy. He currently works as a vice president at Garfield Refining Company. Bruce has been involved in men’s club for over 30 years, first at Oxford Circle Jewish Community Center and then at Congregation Beth El in Voorhees, NJ. It was at Beth El that Bruce rose to the position of Men’s Club President. From there Bruce moved up to the executive board of the Middle Atlantic Region and became its president in 2008. Bruce has also served as the training chair for LDI, overall chair for LDI, training chair at convention 2013 and program chair at convention 2017. Bruce is currently the vice president for programming for the FJMC, and spends his weekends at the Jersey shore.

Stephen Dix 

David P. Singer joined the Executive Committee this term as the Secretary.  David lives in Framingham, MA with his wife Randy.  He has two sons, Daniel who is attending the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Noah who lives in Waltham, MA and works for National Grid.  David has worked Raytheon for 29 years as a software engineer on air traffic control systems, weather radar systems, and Navy radar.

David founded his club at Temple Israel of Natick, MA in the year 2000 and served as president for 5 years.  He then became involved in the New England Region and held positions as TheRetreat co-chair and Membership VP ultimately holding the position of Regional President (2015-2017).  As Regional President, he created a leadership database to improve membership involvement and he ensured that each event had a program guide for use by future program leaders.  He brought the organization into the next century using Dropbox and Google Drive.

In addition, David created the Divrei Hashavua, < link to: https://sites.google.com/a/nerfjmc.org/hebrewinitiative/> weekly parasha Hebrew word program for use in Shabbat fliers and weekly email blasts at Temple Israel.  This program has since expanded to other congregations across North America. 

Norm Katz, Board Member (Appointed), was born in Elkins Park, PA and moved to San Diego, CA in 1985 after graduating from Temple University with a BS in Computer Science.  Throughout Norm’s early career, he was a software developer, working on signal and image processing and artificial intelligence algorithms for the defense and healthcare industries.  More recently, Norm has been a software architect and engineering executive.  He is currently the VP of Software Architecture for a small startup that is developing methods to reduce health risks by combining fitness, diet, medical records and genomic data in novel ways using crowd-sourced digital health data.  Norm and his wife Roxanne have identical twin daughters, Shannah and Nicole, who live in Los Angeles.  Norm has served as Ritual and Executive Vice President at Tifereth Israel Synagogue and is a past president of TIS Men’s Club.   He currently serves as an at-large member of the FJMC Executive Committee and chairs the IT Committee.  At Convention 2017, Norm was a recipient of the Presidential Award.

Joel Kurtz 

Ken Matlick - Executive Committee.  Ken was born and raised in Oceanside. N.Y.  He currently lives in Scottsdale, AZ with his wife, Lorie, of over 38 years.  He has two married sons, Scott (Annie) and Garrett (Leah) and two grandchildren, Britta and Harrison.  He is a C.P.A. in Public Accounting.  Ken has been associated with FJMC Men’s Clubs since 1990.  He served as Men’s Club Treasurer and President at Beth Ahm Israel Congregation in Cooper City, Florida.  In 1995, Ken moved to Scottsdale, AZ and held the positions of President and Treasurer at Har Zion Men’s Club in Scottsdale, AZ.  In 2014, Har Zion merged with Or Chadash to form a new synagogue, Or Tzion.  In 2015 Ken took over, once again, as President.  Ken has also been involved in both the Regional and International level.  At the Region Level, Ken held the position of Vice President of Communication for the Western Region and also served on the nominating committee.  On the International level, Ken was trained as an FJMC Consultant, served as Chair of the Maasim Tovim Awards, the World Wide Wrap, the Convention Golf Tournament, Dues Chair, Long Range Planning Committee, and most recently Controller for the 2017 International Convention.

George Nadas - George, Executive Committee (appointed), is a Chartered Professional Accountant in the province of Ontario. He is a partner in accounting firm of Reiter & Nadas, Chartered Accountants and is also a principle owner of a bookkeeping and tax services company, Tax Team Work, Inc, both in Toronto, ON. George grew up in and still lives in Toronto. He and his wife of 40 years, Janet-Lee, have a son in Toronto and a married daughter living in Israel from whom he has two Israeli grandchildren.

Allan Gottesman - Allan was born in Toronto, Canada and he and his family have been living in South Florida for past 33 years.  Allan & Caren this year celebrated their 41^st wedding anniversary and consider themselves very fortunate that their children and four grandchild all live nearby in Southern Florida.

Gottesman, a noted CPA with the firm Gottesman Bomser & Company PA in Fort Lauderdale is also a Chartered Accountant in the Province of Ontario, Canada and a Certified Valuation Analyst from the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts.  He has been very active in the South Florida community incorporating many organizations into his daily life, including: Mercaz USA Board Member, 2003 March of the Living Participant / Chaperone, Synagogue  Treasurer, Israel Bonds Synagogue Chairman, Jewish National Fund Board Member and Friends of the Israel Defense Forces Board Member.

Allan has been a leader of the FJMC serving in many capacities at the international level.  He has just completed his 2 year term as International President / Allan received the FJMC’s Ma’asim Tovim award in recognition for his exceptional leadership in the Florida Region.  Allan is a Charter member of the International Kiddush Club, a former Florida Regional President, a former Men’s Club President and a former USY Pilgrimage participant.

Rabbi Andy Shugerman is thrilled to be the Executive Director of the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs (FJMC), a role that matches his unique career path with a decade of personal experiences in co-leading and participating in multi-generational grassroots Jewish men's groups. He is a pluralistic rabbinic educator and professional fundraiser who has specialized in engaging young and unaffiliated Jews during his 15 years of serving Conservative synagogues and institutions as well as diverse local and national organizations.

Rabbi Shugerman honed his skills as a rabbi, teacher and major gifts fundraiser while serving for four years as Rabbinic Fellow in the Florida Regional Office of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), from which he received ordination and a master’s degree in Jewish Education in 2009. His success in that position and his passion for transforming organizations from within led him to become the lead fundraiser for United Synagogue Youth (USY) while serving as the first Director of Major Gifts at United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ).

Rabbi Shugerman earned his BA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University, where he was a Schiff Undergraduate Fellow. In addition, he studied at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, worked for the Masorti/Conservative Movement in Israel, and attended the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles. Rabbi Shugerman trained before and during rabbinical school in congregation-based community organizing (CBCO); those skills, along with intensive clinical chaplaincy work at Los Angeles County Jail and at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, prepared him for the tremendous work of helping to rebuild Congregation Shir Chadash of Metairie, Louisiana, following Hurricanes Katrina and Gustave.

Most recently, Rabbi Shugerman returned both to the pulpit (as Interim Rabbi of Congregation Beth Tikvah in Wantagh, New York) and to the classroom (as a teacher of adult learners at the Solomon Schechter School of Long Island and in Midtown Manhattan for the Development Department of the Jewish Theological Seminary). When he is not training for his next marathon, Rabbi Shugerman enjoys newlywed life in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he and his wife are active members of several independent minyanim as well as the world's largest local food cooperative supermarket community.