Margie Bryen elected Federation’s 53rd President

Margie Bryen Installed as New Federation President

On December 7 at Buffalo Jewish Federation’s 119th Annual Meeting, Marjorie (Margie) Bryen was elected and installed as Federation’s 53rd President. She succeeds Shelly Yellen who has served in the role for the past two years. In addition to Margie, Marc Brown and Rise’ Kulick were elected as Vice Presidents, Shawn Frier as Treasurer and Cheryl Stein as Secretary.

In her acceptance remarks, Margie thanked Shelly for his strong and steady leadership particularly as the agency made its way through the pandemic.

“I am honored and humbled to be able to step into shoes worn in the past by so many great leaders,” she continued. “As an organization and a community, we have so much to be proud of, from welcoming new refugees to Western New York to another transformative trip to Israel for over 50 community members, to beautifying our cemeteries, to the integration and growth of HRC, to ongoing new programming within LiNK and more.”

Margie’s complete remarks can be found in her President’s Column on page 3.

From left, clockwise: New officers in attendance: Cheryl Stein, Margie Bryen, Shawn Frier with Shelly Yellen; Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein delivering a D’var Torah; Shelly Yellen offering his President’s Repor; Andrew & Amy Shaevel presenting the Ann Holland Cohn Award; and Lana Benatovich accepting the Cohn award for Jim Biltekoff.

The Annual Meeting was hosted by Congregation Shir Shalom and held in conjunction with the Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies. During the meeting, Foundation and Federation honored three outstanding leaders in Jewish Buffalo: Howard Rosenhoch, who received Foundation’s highest honor with the Endowment Leadership Award, Rabbi Sara Rich, who received the Kantor Professional Service Award, and Jim Biltekoff, who was honored with the Ann Holland Cohn Community Impact Award.

Federation also welcomed four new Governors to the board, each elected to serve a three-year term beginning this month: Kirstie Henry, Jim Kramer, Robin Raphael and Blaine Schwartz. This group joins Kenneth Dauber, Deborah Goldman, Marina Maulucci-Finkelstein and Ezra Rich who were nominated for a second three-year term. During his remarks, Shelly Yellen also recognized and presented gifts to Hadar Borden, Brenda Feldstein, Nina Lukin, Andy Shaevel and Ellen Weiss who have completed their terms of service on Federation’s Board of Governors. “We are grateful to each of them for their commitment to Federation and their many contributions to strengthen Jewish Buffalo,” noted Shelly.

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