At Large North America Director
Chris Palermo has been a member of NMRA since 1997. He has served as President of the Pacific Coast Region; Secretary of that Region; co-chair of a region convention; Publicist of NMRA's 2021 national convention; and intellectual property legal counsel to NMRA's Board of Directors. He was elected a Director in 2020 for his first term in 2021-2023.
Chris holds a full-time position as an equity partner in Baker Botts, L.L.P., an international law firm, where he practices patent, trademark, and copyright law, and has worked in IP law for 30 years. He has lived and worked in Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and Austin.
He got started in model railroading upon receiving an N scale train set as a birthday gift in 1975 and has been active in the hobby ever since. He has built several HO scale layouts and is working on a new layout focused on Southern Pacific San Joaquin Valley operations in 1956. Chris is married and has three grown daughters.