36 | JANUARY 11 • 2024 to present him an award at a Jewish Historical Society event. Not sure if he was the first member of the Jewish community to work in the front office for the Tigers, but I’m certainly proud that people like Jeff, Ben, Mike and I have been able to follow in Irwin’s footsteps. MEET MIKE SINGER Mike Singer, 42, lives in Birmingham and is the vice president of Business Strategy and Activation with the Detroit Tigers. JN: Could you describe your role? MS: This role has respon- sibility for the Detroit Tigers, the Detroit Red Wings, 313 Presents (music and entertain- ment division) as well as spon- sorship strategy for the District Detroit. I lead our corporate Partnership Strategy Team, which generates new sponsor- ship ideas, constructs our part- nership presentations, manag- es the Corporate Partnership budget and maintains the rate card of our sponsorship assets, among other special projects. And I lead our Activation Team, which implements all of the sponsorship assets in con- tracts and are the day-to-day relationship experts with our clients. JN: What is the most excit- ing part of working with the Tigers organization? MS: The people, by far. Each day is different and having the opportunity to work with so many great internal and external people in different departments and industries, both local and national, is fan- tastic. I learn something new every day, and I get to spend time with the most talented sports marketers anywhere in the world. JN: Is there a particular day/ game/moment that stands out the most? MS: Opening Day 2022 for the Tigers after the pandemic ended was a fun day. Tigers fans were eager to get back to the ballpark and enjoy the day, and you could feel the excite- ment in a sold-out Comerica Park. The Tigers won on a walkoff, and all of the hard work from planning Opening Day was experienced by every- one in attendance. Those are the moments that are fun to be shared with your teammates. JN: What has it been like to work in Detroit? MS: I grew up outside of Chicago, so Detroit sports were always a rival. I moved to Detroit in 2013, and I love the comeback nature of the city. There is such a sense of pride for living in Detroit and there is a desire to continue to improve. The Detroit versus everyone mentality is real, and it helps they are very passion- ate about all of their sports teams. JN: What connection points might you have to the Jewish community? MS: With my wife’s fami- ly residing in Michigan, we celebrate the major holidays around family. The High Holidays, Passover, Chanukah highlight our holidays. We belong to Temple Shir Tikvah in Troy and participate in sev- eral programs there. MEET BEN FIDELMAN Ben Fidelman is the direc- tor of Communications and Broadcasting — Ilitch Sports + Entertainment. He lives in Downtown Detroit. JN: Could you describe your role? BF: I work with our senior vice president of Communications and Broadcasting. We handle two specific areas. For our group, it’s the strategic communica- tions of the clubs — a lot of larger scale campaigns and emerging issues that face our business, some positive and some crisis situations, and then also the day-to-day broadcast operations. We work a lot with the social media teams and the media relations teams to make sure that the way that we engage with fans is consistent and highly engaging. JN: What is the most excit- ing part of working with the Tigers organization? BF: I think the most pow- erful thing that we do is the everyday nature of base- ball. People choose to be at Comerica Park and in the offices of a baseball team because everyone’s rowing in the same direction. Everyone’s making the same sacrifices of their summer holidays and weekends to make sure that we give our fans a first-class experience and make sure the players have a first-class expe- rience. That probably is my favorite part. That was particularly on dis- play with the Miguel Cabrera celebration for his retirement. It was an incredible weekend that I had the good fortune to be project managing alongside our director of marketing; the full season celebration of Miguel, one of the greatest players of all time. But, specif- ically, that final weekend was OUR COMMUNITY continued from page 35 Ben Fidelman, Jordan Field and Mike Singer sharing a laugh.