Mel P. Barkan

Board Member

Mr. Barkan is a member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors and in the past has served as an officer of the Foundation.  He attended Carnegie Mellon University and obtained his Bachelor of Arts and JD degrees from New York University.  After clerking for a United States District Court Judge, he became an Assistant U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and then a partner and, for approximately 30 years, the head of the Litigation Department of the New York law firm of Brauner Baron Rosenzweig & Klein LLP, which was combined with Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP, from which Mr. Barkan recently retired.  Mr. Barkan continues serving on the approved panel of mediators for the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, on which he has served for many years, mediating commercial as well as police misconduct civil rights and wrongful conviction cases pursuant to Court appointments.  During the mid-1990s, Mr. Barkan served as the Chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board shortly after it became a separate agency independent of the NYPD.  He was widely lauded for achieving rapid improvement in that agency. In addition to his long service on the Board and as a past officer of the Herman Goldman Foundation, he is currently the Executive Director of the Burpee Foundation and has served and still serves on the Boards, and periodically as an officer, of a number of not-for-profit organizations, including large organizations which serve underserved populations (the homeless and those suffering from severe mental illness) and the elderly as well as  another grant-making foundation.