About Jerry
A life spent looking at systems—and then at the people inside them.
Jerry M. Elman
Jerry Elman is an author, speaker, educator, and son of Holocaust survivors whose work explores inherited history, memory, human behavior, and the patterns that shape people and societies over time.
Before writing became his primary public work, he spent 26 years at Eastman Kodak as an engineer and technical manager, later owned an automotive business, and served in nonprofit and community leadership roles.
His education in electrical engineering and business management, together with a minor in psychology and years applying industrial psychology in engineering and management settings, shaped the way he looks at organizations and change: not only as ideas, but as systems of incentives, pressures, behavior, culture, and human choices.
That systems perspective now sits beside something much more personal: growing up as the son of two Polish Holocaust survivors and eventually recognizing how silence and inherited history shaped his own life.
The goal is not to live in the past.
It is to recognize direction while we still have choices.The work today
Books, presentations, and community conversations.
Jerry's current work connects personal history, societal change, systems thinking, and human behavior. Miracles Through Hell preserves his parents' survival story. Echoes of History looks at the patterns that reshape people and societies before they are fully recognized. The Destination We Are Choosing brings those questions into a room and asks what we still have the ability to change in ourselves and between us.