New Marblehead JCC director aims to create diversity

MARBLEHEAD – Newly hired Jewish Community Center of the North Shore Executive Director Robert Verdun pulled the Maryland-based Tennis Center out of a $100,000 deficit and, starting Monday, he will use the JCC’s six-month-old business plan as a blueprint for helping the organization expand programs and membership.”Bob is a motivated, sincere leader. He understands what we need to do to be successful,” said former JCC President and planning and implementation team chairwoman Maria Samiljan.Current President Lisa Nagel, in a press release announcing Verdun’s hiring, said the JCC spent a year soliciting director candidates from across the country before picking Verdun, 45.”Robert brings an impressive track record and an inspiring passion for community centers,” Nagel stated in the statement prepared and released by JCC public relations director Leigh Blander.The release states that Verdun, in his last job as general manager of the Tennis Center in College Park, Md., “turned a looming $100,000 deficit into a healthy fiscal year profit.” He also oversaw a $10 million renovation project as former director of the Pawtucket, R.I. YMCA.Verdun in a Wednesday interview with The Daily Item said his goal as JCC director is to carry on the organization’s efforts to enhance services at its hilltop recreational and community complex in Marblehead. The JCC celebrates its centennial on Oct. 15.”We want to make it so diverse anyone and everyone can feel a part of it. The JCC is about community,” Verdun said.A task force Samiljan headed in 2010 that took a top-to-bottom look at the JCC identified hiring a new director as the organization’s top priority. The task force included that recommendation in the business plan approved by the JCC board of directors last February.Blander said the last full-time director, Tony Daniels, left the JCC in spring 2010 and two interim directors have led the organization since then.Samiljan said the organization is on track to achieve business plan goals of strengthening core programs, including fitness, early childhood care and camp. She said summer membership enrollment surged in response to camp and swimming programs offered by the JCC.Samiljan said part of her job in overseeing the implementation team is to make sure the JCC achieves its overarching goal of becoming a wellness center.”It’s about staying fit throughout your life and that is a huge charge Bob will lead,” Samiljan said.She said the JCC is adding music and language programs in the fall in response to interests expressed by members. Verdun plans to draw on his love of tennis to expand the sport’s offerings at the JCC.”We’re going to put forward an extraordinary program and be the best we can be,” he said.Verdun formerly lived on Massachusetts’ South Shore and said he took the JCC job in part because of Marblehead’s “great small town feel.””I’m really looking forward to coming home,” he said.Earlier this year, Blander, the spokesperson for the JCC, said the economic downtown and competition from the Marblehead YMCA confronted JCC with “some financial issues” during the last two years.”There was a big discussion in the spring (2010) over whether we could keep our doors open,” Blander said at the time.