Seventeen years at the bedside
Nancy Block started as an OB/GYN and fertility nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Prentice Women's Pavilion in Chicago, and stayed seventeen years as a nurse and staff educator. She saw the fertility field from the inside: the patients who did everything right and still went home without a baby, the physicians who were building IVF into a reliable medicine, and the gap between what patients were promised and what they were told.
2000: an agency run like a clinic
In 2000 she founded The Center for Egg Options Illinois, one of the first egg donation and surrogacy matching agencies in the Midwest. She ran it the way a nurse runs a unit: every donor and every carrier screened against medical criteria, every record read, every family told the truth about risk. Over fifteen years it became one of the most sought-after programs in the country, with intended parents from the US, Europe, Israel and China. Nancy presented at assisted reproduction conferences in the US, China, Israel and Europe and became a national spokesperson for ethical third-party reproduction.
2015: the exit and the lesson
In July 2015 The Center for Egg Options merged into Fertility SOURCE Companies, a national agency. The combined program reported more than 400 matches a year and about $4 million in revenue. Nancy became Vice President of International and Major Client Relations. It was a good outcome and a useful education: she saw what scale does to a service built on judgment. Case loads grow, the person who read your file is no longer the person who answers your call, and a family becomes a number in a pipeline.
The ethics work
From 2015 to 2019 Nancy served on the executive board of SEEDS, the Society for Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy, including a term as President. SEEDS wrote the standards that reputable agencies now cite: how donors and carriers are screened, how compensation is disclosed, how conflicts of interest are avoided. In 2018 SEEDS gave her its Shining Star Award for a career of commitment to best practices. She also serves on the Advisory Board of Parents Via Egg Donation.
2017: Private Label Surrogacy
Nancy founded Private Label Surrogacy because, in her words, her heart longed to work with parents and surrogates again. The name is a statement of method. A private label is made for one client, to that client's specification. A PLS journey is built for one family, not run off a template.
The physician who reads every file
Dr. Mark Silverberg, DDS, MD, has practiced medicine for more than thirty years, most of it as an anesthesiologist in Chicago-area operating facilities where a large share of his patients were obstetric and gynecologic. Other physicians asked him to train them in safe anesthesia practice. He holds four patents.
At PLS he does one thing a parent can check: he personally reads every surrogate candidate's prenatal and delivery records and writes a physician's medical summary that goes to the intended parents' fertility clinic before anyone is matched. The agency agreement defines this review as the work of a board-certified physician. It is the most concrete safeguard in the file.
Between Nancy's agency work since 2000 and Dr. Silverberg's three decades of medicine, the two people who lead PLS bring 27 years of building families through third-party reproduction and more than 60 years of clinical practice. [CONFIRM: use 27 years only if The Center for Egg Options' founding year supports it; the public record says 2000, which gives 26 years in 2026.]
The team that stayed small on purpose
PLS has six people. Two case managers, Natalie Gaudio-Fricano and Jenni Symons, were gestational surrogates themselves; Natalie was also an egg donor three times. Jan Telman Berman, Global Surrogacy Coordinator, has managed national and international cycles for eighteen years. Jo Ann Levitan, Director of Operations, was a fertility patient before her daughter was born in 2011 and served on SEEDS committees for eight years. Julie Bendix, a registered dietitian and lactation counselor, gives every surrogate at least six nutrition consultations from pre-pregnancy to postpartum. The agency caps its caseload so this team can know every family and every surrogate by name.
What the standard produced
PLS has never held a client's money. Every dollar sits with a licensed independent escrow agent that the parents can choose and can audit. In 2025 and 2026, when two agencies collapsed and left surrogates mid-journey, PLS took three of those surrogates on pro bono and finished their journeys. On one night the after-hours team rebooked a stranded surrogate's hotel, car and flight while, across the country, another PLS surrogate delivered twins.