My wife Inna and I have lived in Millburn since 2015. We have two kids, one in Deerfield school and one in the Middle School. Both our kids have been in the Millburn school system since kindergarten. In fact, it was my son’s positive and nurturing experience in kindergarten at Deerfield that inspired me to join our Board of Education so that I can help be a part of our celebrated school district. It’s the primary reason for my family moving to Millburn and I wanted to help maintain its excellence.

 

I was born in Ukraine and came to the United States when I was 6 years old. My wife and I are both Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The experience of being an immigrant and having to adapt to living in a new country had a profound impact on my life. I am grateful for the freedoms and opportunities our country provides and am proud to serve my community on our Board of Education.

MY STORY
 

I started my professional career in the 1990s working in information technology consulting for Lucent Technologies, IBM, AT&T Labs, and Johnson & Johnson leading enterprise-wide project management. Thereafter, I started an information technology consulting company with a field services integration staff that covered our tri-state area. I sold my share of the company in 2008 and since then have owned businesses in software development and in fitness services. 

 

I served as a student mentor for iMentor New York City and as an advisory board member for BizWorld.org. Both these organizations serve the educational needs of students nationwide.

 

I also served as president of the New Jersey chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (formerly Young Entrepreneurs Organization), a global organization of entrepreneurs and business owners. 

 

My core skill set is leadership, entrepreneurship, operations management, and finance. I have been able to apply elements of these skills to my positions in past public service

 

MILLBURN BOARD OF EDUCATION ACCOMPLISHMENTS

(6 years elected BoE member - 3 years as President)
 

In 2017, the school district was providing inadequate and unreliable transportation for our students. Immediately after being elected in 2017, I was tapped by the then-president to help rebuild our student transportation department. The Board president formed an ad-hoc committee to address this issue and I was selected to be the chair. 

 

Over the next year my ad-hoc committee, along with members of the administration, met often, sometimes 2-3 meetings in a given month (other committees meet only once a month, sometimes less), to identify the core issues contributing to the failure of the transportation department and create a plan on addressing these issues.

 

Improvements were immediate. As a result of my committee working together with the superintendent and other administrators, we resolved a legal personnel matter, hired an interim transportation manager, provided feedback and support for a new director of transportation, and reviewed and updated policies for subscription busing. We reformed the non-mandatory, but important, subscription busing program to ensure its financial sustainability by requiring that it provide non-mandatory services at financial breakeven, instead of operating at a net loss for many years, as we discovered during our audit and review.

 

In 2019, after only one year as a Board member, I was selected by my fellow Board members to be President and lead the board.

Perhaps my most important accomplishment was leading the Board during the COVID pandemic at the start of my second term as President. By any measure, the COVID pandemic was the most consequential event in our generation. There were no playbooks nor precedent to any decision involving the pandemic.  We all had to operate in, and adapt to, situations that were evolving daily, sometimes hourly on certain days.

 

Leading the Board during this time involved working closely with the superintendent, my vice president at the time, coordinating communications and decisions with the Township, interpreting rapidly evolving federal laws and executive orders of the Governor, and changing regulations of the Department of Education. We had to get the kids through school during a time when in-person school was not permitted, and at the same time ensure that the District took action to get the kids back to school as quickly and safely as possible. We had to ensure the District’s staff was cared for. We had to ensure that parents had the latest information on how we were addressing a rapidly-evolving situation while at the same time, just like everyone else, get my kids at home through it and maintain some semblance of work.

 

Leadership is and has always been my key strength not only within myself, but ensuring our Board of Education members were supported and that our District was making decisions with the needs of our community in mind. 

 

Board members are required to take into consideration how their decisions, especially at the leadership level, impact all students . In Millburn we have close to 5,000 of them. We had to ensure that our decisions take into account our teachers, leaders of our district and school buildings, and administrators. 

 

In my final year as President my focus was primarily on pandemic recovery and ensuring that the District was on the path to a normalized school year.