Since 2004, Jan Meisels Allen is the chairperson of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) Public Records Access Monitoring Committee. She is the IAJGS sponsoring member to the Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC)* and has served on RPAC representing IAJGS since 2004. Jan served on the IAJGS Board of Directors from 2004-2013 first as a member-at-large and then vice president. Jan presents at the annual FGS, NGS and IAJGS conferences on records access as well as spoken on access to holocaust records in Berlin, Germany (2014) to a committee of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). In 2013, Jan was awarded the National Genealogical Society (NGS) President’s Citation for her “outstanding and continuing contributions to the Society for her work on records access”. Jan posts frequently on records access issues on the IAJGS Leadership Forum and JewishGen Discussion Group and is the responsible person for the IAJGS Records Access Alert- an announcement list specific to international records access issues. She has authored articles in Avotaynu, Venturing Into Our Past and other genealogical newsletters and journals. Jan is the president and a founding member of the Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV). She is a former board member and program vice president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles (JGSLA). Jan started her genealogy quest in 1998 and has been researching her Polish, Galician and Hungarian roots. She was the Yizkor Book Translation Coordinator for JewishGen.org for two of her shtetls: Sochaczew and Stawiski, Poland. Prior to retiring she was a lobbyist for the health insurance industry.

* RPAC is a joint committee of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS), the National Genealogical Society (NGS), and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) as sponsoring members. The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG), the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG), International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists (ICAPGen), and the American Society of Genealogists (ASG) also serve as participating members. By invitation, RPAC also includes participation from a few commercial providers of genealogical information.