John has a solid background in the telecommunications industry. He gained operational experience at COO at Onsite Access, Executive VP at E-Link Communications, AT&T as Regional VP; TCG as VP Engineering and Product Management; and Time Warner Telecom as VP/GM Northern California.
Having grown up in the telecom industry, he had an appreciation of telecom cost management: a company needs to be the low cost provider, not the low priced provider. Margins are essential to the success of any business or non profit organization.
Active in SF Bay Area Business Community John is on the Borad of Directors of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), where he helps bring private equity, investment banking and operating companies together for their mutual benefit. He also works with several Private Equity firms to help their portfolio companies improve profitability and value.
As Managing Director, John is able to marshal ERA Bay Area and U.S. resources to quickly address client needs. As a result, he has produced millions of dollars in savings for Bay Area clients.
John has an MBA in Management, Finance and Marketing.

Our collective knowledge and proprietary E-SCAN (Strategy-Costs-Alignment-Numbers) go to work and keep on working for you. Our clients call it their “Continuous Value Improvement Cycle.” We call it common sense that becomes common practice.

You will gain perspective from our Advisors, clarity from our technical Analysts, and access to relationships and resources for business growth through our extensive network of Advocates.

Mr. Gross has been actively involved in the DC metro area since 1974. Prior to joining ERA, he has held senior financial and operating positions with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Cresap McCormick and Paget, Inc., MCI, AOL, DrFirst, and several other telecommunications and healthcare related entities. He has served as the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship and as an Adjunct Professor at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He has served on the Board of Directors of several companies, including InforMedix, a public healthcare technology company.

Mr. Gross earned his BA and MPA degrees from Syracuse University and received the Certified Internal Auditor and Certified Public Accountant designations earlier in his career.

Dr. Browning is the author of 40 grants-related publications, including Grant Writing For Dummies™ (Wiley.com); Grant Writing for Educators (Solution-Tree.com; How to Become a Grant Writing Consultant and Faith-Based Grants: Aligning Your Church to Receive Abundance (www.bevbrowning.com); Perfect Phrases for Writing Grant Proposals and Perfect Phrases for Fundraising (McGraw-Hill.com), and Rule of Thumb: A Guide to Small Business Sustainability (Rule-of-Thumb.biz).

She holds degrees in Organizational Development, Public Administration, and Business Administration. Dr. Browning is a grant writing course developer and online facilitator for Ed2Go.com. Her online courses (taught to thousands of students annually on www.ed2go.com) are Advanced Proposal Writing and Becoming a Grant Writing Consultant. Dr. Browning is a current member of the Grant Professionals Association. She is CEO of Bev Browning & Associates (BBA, Inc.); Founder and Director of the Grant Writing Training Foundation, and the Vice President for Grants Professional Services at eCivis Inc. (www.ecivis.com).

In 2011, eCivis formed a new entity, Grants Professional Services (GPS), under the leadership of Dr. Beverly A. Browning (www.bevbrowning.com), a national education grants consultant. GPS was created to meet the needs of existing and future eCivis clients. Valuable cost-effective services available include: grant writing, mock peer review, grant office coordination, evaluation, and grant-related and capacity building training.

Our award-winning blog, www.communityorganizer20.com, offers advice, strategies and opinions about using social media in the nonprofit sector.

After several years as a fundraiser at a Chicago nonprofit, Cheryl moved on to become an account manager for a national software company.

Working exclusively with nonprofits, Cheryl developed and delivered software training programs, performed various data-related services, organized and hosted users groups, provided on- and off-site consulting services and provided input into software updates.

In 1993, believing she could more efficiently serve the nonprofit community without the overhead of a larger company, Cheryl founded CJW Consulting & Services, Inc.

CJW founded in 1993 to help non-profit organizations make the most effective use of their software resources.

Cheryl Weissman, CJW’s President, has 25+ years of experience with fundraising, the nonprofit community and its associated software.

Cheryl’s background, along with her commitment to providing affordable, high-quality services, allow CJW to provide high-quality consulting and services at prices designed to fit your budget.

CJW Consulting & Services, Inc. offers a wide variety of services, including on-site and on-line software training, data analysis, consulting and temporary staff replacement, all tailored to your specific needs.

To date, CJW has assisted nonprofits in over 30 US states and 4 Canadian provinces.

She also teaches, speaks, and writes regularly on data-driven decision-making for strategy, assessment, communications, and for managing change. She has been a regular guest speaker on utilizing survey and focus group research for community and stakeholder strategy at both the Harvard Business School and the Yale School of Management. She holds degrees in Demography and Population Studies from the University of Illinois and Brown University.

Demographic Perspectives works with each client to approach problems with a customized data-driven process, stressing a full strategic outline. Participants in Rena’s previous webinar on “Data-Driven Decision-Making for Nonprofits” will recognize this process: articulation of the problem and goals, data gathering and analysis, project communication and public outreach, development of planning steps, project implementation, post-project evaluation and assessment.

Dr. Mersky was the chief development officer for the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston—Boston’s Jewish Federation where he was responsible for planning and implementing all the fundraising and marketing of the nation’s sixth largest Jewish community. Prior to serving in Boston, he was the President of Ampal Securities Corporation, an investment-banking firm that raised capital in Europe as well as North and South America for private enterprise in Israel.

Mersky, who is a Reform rabbi, served on the national staff of the then Union of American Hebrew Congregations as the Reform movement’s chief development officer. He was responsible for all resource development and created the Conference of Presidents of Major Congregations.

Now a successful consultant to nonprofits and family-controlled enterprises, David is also a faculty member in the Graduate School at Brandeis University and is director of fundraising management at The Hornstein Program in Jewish Professional Leadership as well as Director of Education and Professional Development of the Fisher-Bernstein Institute for Jewish Philanthropy and Leadership at Brandeis. Formerly an adjunct professor in the Simmons College Graduate Program in Communications Management, where he taught strategic marketing planning, Mersky has been a member of the faculty of the Institute for Charitable Giving and a contributing writer to a number of publications, notably the New England Nonprofit Quarterly where he wrote a regular column on major gifts as “The Artful Solicitor.”

During his forty year career, he has trained thousands of professionals and volunteers who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars. In private business, he has counseled management on issues ranging from strategic marketing planning to sales force training and development. He advises families on the creative use of philanthropy for business and estate planning as well as transmitting enduring values from one generation to the next.

At Mersky, Jaffe & Associates, we:

•invest in the success of our clients;
•believe a talented, dedicated, enthusiastic and mutually respectful leadership team is central to our clients’ ability to achieve their goals and advance their mission;
•maintain an atmosphere of integrity and the highest professional standards through teamwork, personal development and recognition of accomplishment;
•value imaginative thinking and creative change, because innovation continually improves the services we provide our clients;
•treasure personal relationships within MJA as well as with our present and past clients;
•embrace new technologies to stay at the forefront in service to the nonprofit community;
•assist our clients in maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with their members, donors, funders, vendors, volunteers, board and staff leadership who work with us to achieve their mission and fulfill their vision; and
•pledge that each of our clients will benefit by the direct involvement of the principals of the firm in their endeavor.

At Mersky, Jaffe & Associates, we assure the success of the nonprofit organizations we counsel by joining with our clients in their exemplary dedication to the public good. We enable them to thrive and prosper in any philanthropic environment, today and in the future.

Known for the quality of our consulting, Mersky, Jaffe & Associates continuously invests in our own professional development. Thus, we endeavor to be the most experienced and skillful in the field, dedicated and committed to the best practices of our craft. Providing expert consulting and planning services to cultural, educational, medical, advocacy, religious and social service organizations, we offer our knowledge and passion in support of nonprofits around the world.