Melanie B. Nelkin
Raised in Larchmont, New York, Melanie has lived in Atlanta for over four decades. Her Jewish communal activism has always fueled her passion for Jewish advocacy. Co-founding the Georgia Coalition to Prevent Genocide and her more than decade long experience as a docent at Atlanta’s Breman Museum Holocaust Gallery led to a perfect Jewish advocacy fit with AJC’s global mission in 2008.
Melanie is AJC’s immediate past chair of National Policy. She joined AJC’s National Board of Governors in 2015 and was the Regional President of AJC Atlanta from 2017-2019. Currently, she serves as an Advisory Council Member of The Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights and on the Board of AJC’s Africa Institute and AJC’s Transatlantic Institute. In 2019 she joined AJC’s Executive Council.
In her local community, she has been an active member of Atlanta’s Temple Sinai, the Jewish Women’s Fund of Atlanta and board member of the Atlanta Jewish Film Society. In 2013, Melanie was awarded the National Center of Civil and Human Rights’ Porsche Driving Force Award and Jewish Council for Public Affairs’ Tikun Olam Award. She received the Humanitarian Award from the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust in 2014. In 2020, Melanie and her husband Allan were honored with AJC Atlanta’s Distinguished Advocate Award.
She holds a BS in clinical nutrition from Syracuse University and a BSMSc-Physician Assistant from Emory University. Melanie and Allan have four children, four grandsons, and a Bernedoodle.
