Our People
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Senior Staff
Please find our most frequently contacted numbers and information on our Contact Us page.
Andrew Masich, PhD
President and CEO
Andy Masich is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Senator John Heinz History Center and a commissioner (former chairman) of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Under Andy’s leadership, the History Center has been recognized for its award-winning exhibitions and innovative educational programs. He has forged strategic partnerships with the Smithsonian Institution, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Allegheny Conference for Community Development, Boy Scouts of America, VisitPittsburgh, American Association for State and Local History, and 125 History Center affiliate museums in Western Pennsylvania. Andy is an adjunct Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University and is a recognized authority on the preservation and interpretation of history. He has served on the American Alliance of Museums Accreditation Commission and as a faculty member of the prestigious Seminar for Historical Administration. He makes regular television appearances on KDKA (CBS), including the popular “Pittsburgh’s Hidden Treasures” programs and the regular feature, “Pittsburgh History Today.” Known for his extensive knowledge of Pennsylvania history, he has also authored or co-authored award-winning books on a wide range of subjects. His newest book, Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861-1867 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), delves into the multicultural and transnational dimensions of the conflict in the American West and Mexico.
Tonia Rose
Executive Vice President
Tonia Rose serves as Executive Vice President at the Heinz History Center and its family of museums. Tonia implements strategic direction and oversees the institution’s philanthropy, membership, and capital campaign planning, government relations, board of trustees’ governance and the education team.
She ensures Smithsonian-quality programs and exhibitions while fostering valuable community partnerships.
Tonia joined the History Center in 2003 contributing to the growth of the institution in strategic planning, accreditation, donor cultivation, and project management with iconic exhibitions Destination Moon and Vatican Splendors and partnerships for elevated programming connected to Pittsburgh’s Bicentennial. Prior to joining the History Center, Tonia worked in museum education at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, and the Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts. Tonia has an MA in museum education from the University of the Arts and a BA in art history and museum studies from Juniata College.
Todd Hipwell
Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations
Todd Hipwell joined the Heinz History Center and its family of museums in 2023 as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In his role, he has primary day-to-day responsibility for planning, implementing, managing and controlling all financial-related activities of the History Center and works to foster the overall financial vision of the History Center to ensure sustainability and growth. This includes direct responsibility for overseeing investments and management of the endowment, budget and financial planning, financial reporting, cash and debt management, accounts payable and accounts receivable. In addition to financial matters, Todd leads the teams responsible for information technology, visitor services, the museum shop, online store and café, events and external rentals, facilities and operations, as well as security at the History Center.
Prior to joining the History Center, Todd held various financial roles with DICK’S Sporting Goods, most recently as the Vice President of Finance. He has also worked for Bayer Corporation, General Electric, and Arthur Andersen. Todd holds a B.S. in Accounting from Miami University and a M.S. in Taxation from Robert Morris University.
Brian Butko
Director of Publications
Brian Butko is author of books about Isaly’s, diners, the Lincoln Highway, roadside attractions, and, most recently, Kennywood Park. Brian started with the History Center as a volunteer and intern in the 1980s and is now director of publications. He serves as editor of Western Pennsylvania History quarterly magazine and project manager of the society’s book program, which has published on topics ranging from the Civil War to Pittsburghese, and African Americans in the Vietnam War to a kids book on Bill Mazeroski. A lifelong resident of West Mifflin, Brian graduated from Duquesne University with an M.A in history.
Renee Falbo
Chief Human Resources Officer
Renee Falbo is the director of human resources for the Senator John Heinz History Center’s museum system. Renee began her career with the History Center in 2005 as a part-time human resources assistant. In her current position, Renee oversees all human resources including staff, interns, and the volunteer program.
Alan Gutchess
Director of the Fort Pitt Museum
Alan Gutchess is the site director at the Fort Pitt Museum, where he oversees staff, exhibits, and programing. He is recognized for his knowledge of the material culture of the colonial American frontier and has acted as a consultant to numerous history museums and documentary films. Prior to joining the History Center team, he had worked at the Museum of the American Revolution, Sauder Village, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
Allison Herrmann
Director of Visitor Services
Allison Herrmann oversees daily frontline operations related to admissions, group tours, the museum store and café, wholesale operations, and museum accessibility initiatives. Since embarking on a career in public history, Allison has worked extensively for the both the National Park Service and National Trust for Historic Preservation, specializing in historical interpretation, museum education, and frontline operations management. Prior to joining the staff at the Heinz History Center, she worked for a wide range of sites across the country, including Minute Man National Historical Park, Gettysburg National Military Park, Petersburg National Battlefield, President Lincoln’s Cottage, Weir Farm National Historic Site, the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, and, most recently, the Drayton Hall Preservation Trust. She holds a B.A. in History from Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and an M.A. in History (with a concentration in Public History) from American University in Washington, D.C. Originally from Connecticut, Allison joined the Heinz History Center staff in 2018.
Anne Madarasz
Director of the Curatorial Division, Chief Historian, & Director of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum
Anne Madarasz, director of the curatorial division, chief historian, and director of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum has been at the Heinz History Center since 1992. A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., she completed the coursework for her PhD. at the University of Pennsylvania. Awarded a Richards Fellowship for research from the Corning Museum of Glass, Anne lectures and writes frequently on the subject of Pittsburgh glass, regional industry, and the history of Pittsburgh sports. Anne has served as the project director or curator for five exhibitions that have received the national Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History.
David Scofield
Director of Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village
David Scofield is the director of the Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village in Avella, Washington County, Pa. David began his museum career in 1988 as a demonstrating craftsman at Old Salem in Winston-Salem, N.C., where he practiced the 18th century trades of blacksmithing, carpentry, joinery, and white oak basket making. After working to develop a new turn-of-the-century living history farm as a North Carolina state historic site, he moved to Western Pennsylvania to be part of the effort to develop Meadowcroft. He is a graduate of Delaware Valley College and the Williamsburg Seminar for Historical Administration.
Brady Smith
Chief Communications Officer
Brady Smith oversees all marketing and external communications initiatives for the Heinz History Center and its museum system. Prior to joining the History Center in 2010, Brady worked for two internationally-acclaimed public relations agencies in Chicago – Hill & Knowlton and Cramer-Krasselt – where he helped plan and execute award-winning PR campaigns for national brands such as Allstate, the University of Phoenix, the Big Ten Conference, TransUnion, and Crocs. He began his career in athletic media relations, coordinating publicity for the University of Pennsylvania’s 33 varsity sports and interning in the Denver Broncos media relations department. A southern New Jersey native, Brady is a proud graduate of West Virginia University and has a B.A. in communications.
Matthew Strauss
Director of Library & Archives
Matthew Strauss oversees the acquisition, description, digitization, and preservation of the Heinz History Center’s library & archival collection. After obtaining his Master of Library and Information Science degree with a focus on Archives and Records Management from the University of Pittsburgh, Matt joined the History Center in 2008 to manage the organization’s first film digitization project. Since then, Matt has directed archival processing and digitization initiatives funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Matt has served on working groups and committees of the Society of American Archivists, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, and PA Digital.
Melissa Tran
Director of Learning
Melissa Tran is the Director of Learning at the Heinz History Center. As an artist, educator, and museum professional originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, she has held positions at The National WWII Museum, MOCA (Los Angeles), the Museum of Latin American Art, and the Dallas Contemporary. Tran has produced the award-winning, Emmy-nominated Electronic Field Trip, telling key pieces of history in an interactive broadcast for over 140,000+ learners. In 2023, she was selected to be part of the Southeastern Museums Conference Jekyll Island Management Institute cohort and previously served on the board of directors for the Museum Educators of Southern California. Tran has attended artist residencies internationally in the Arctic Circle and Dijon, France; exhibited work at Le Consortium and the Texas Biennial at the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum; and has sent artwork into outer space. She received her MFA from Southern Methodist University and her BFA from the University of Houston. Melissa is a firm believer in the transformative power of museum education and strives to create equitable learning opportunities.
Samuel W Black
Director of the African American Program
Samuel W. Black is the Director of the African American Program at the Senator John Heinz History Center. He is a former President of the Association of African American Museums (2011-2016) and served on the Executive Council and the Advisory Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH) as well as the program committee of the American Alliance of Museums. Black is a member of the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society of Pittsburgh and the former vice president of the ASALH Dr. Edna B. McKenzie Branch. He serves on the board of directors of the International Black Business Museum. He is the recipient of the Dr. John E. Fleming Award of the AAAM in 2016, a 2018 graduate of the Jekyll Island Management Institute of the Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) and a 2019 Fulbright Germany Transatlantic Seminar Curator of the Smithsonian Institution and Leibniz Association of Germany.
Black is the curator of award winning exhibitions, “Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era” America’s Best Weekly: A Century of the Pittsburgh Courier” “From Slavery to Freedom” and “The Vietnam War 1945-1975” (2019). He is the curator of African American historical and cultural content at the Heinz History Center including the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum.
He is the author of a number of essays, book reviews, and narratives including, “African American Photographers of Cleveland, 1930-1965” in “Yet Still We Rise: African American Art in Cleveland, 1920-1970″; “The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center: Museum of Conscience” in “Ohio Valley History Journal.” His pending articles and reviews include “African Americans in the Vietnam War” in Oxford University Bibliographies.
Black is the editor of “Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era” (2006) and co-author of “Through the Lens of Allen E. Cole: A Photographic History of African Americans in Cleveland, Ohio” (2012) and editor of “The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience” (2013).
Eric Lidji
Director of Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives
Eric Lidji started with the Heinz History Center in 2011 as a volunteer and later as a researcher and has been the director of the Rauh Jewish Archives since 2017. He curates its Jewish history website “Generation to Generation,” oversees its Small Towns Jewish History Project, and hosts its history podcast “The Cornerstone.” He has written extensively about the Jewish history of Western Pennsylvania for local periodicals. He is the author of The Seventeenth Generation: The Lifework of Rabbi Walter Jacob and a coeditor of the anthologies Her Deeds Sing Her Praises and Bound in the Bond of Life.
Melissa E. Marinaro
Director of Italian American Program
Melissa E. Marinaro is the Director of the Italian American Program at the Senator John Heinz History Center where she oversees the Italian American artifact and archival collection, and manages the program’s community and educational outreach and public programs. She was raised in the northern suburbs of Detroit and, for a time, São Paulo, Brazil. Marinaro has a BFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago and an MA in Art History with an emphasis in the History of Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design. She worked in after school programming for The Princeton Review, museum education at The Art Institute of Chicago, in special collections at The Chicago History Museum, and was the Interim Director of Education at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. In 2009, Marinaro co-founded a small commercial art gallery in Chicago with two peers from Columbia College, hosting over 40 exhibitions and participating in art fairs, neighborhood festivals, and public art works. She also taught courses at Chicago Semester, an off-campus program for college juniors and seniors through Trinity Christian College, and The Chicago Photography Center.
Since joining the History Center’s staff in January of 2013, Marinaro has cultivated significant artifact and archival collections related to post-war Italian immigration to Western Pennsylvania, the Passionists’ first monastery in North America, Italian folk-revival troupe I Campagnoli, former Vice Consul of Italy in Pittsburgh, Joseph D’Andrea, and local Italian American foodways businesses. Her research interests include post-war Italian immigration, Italian American identity and culture, and oral history and storytelling as a research device. Marinaro is currently the Exhibition Review Editor for the journal the Italian American Review. She authored the book Highlights of the Italian American Collection: Western Pennsylvania Stories and regularly contributes to Western Pennsylvania History Magazine.
Dr. James Adovasio
Director of Archaeology
James M. Adovasio, Ph.D, D.Sc, achieved international acclaim with his archeological excavation of the Meadowcroft Rockshelter beginning in 1973. His work at the Meadowcroft site brought the first serious challenge to the existing paradigm that people had only been on the North American continent for 13,000 years. Evidence from the excavation at Meadowcroft has demonstrated a human presence at the site of at least 19,000 years. The Meadowcroft Rockshelter is known around the world as an important North American archaeological site and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005.
In addition to his work at Meadowcroft, Dr. Adovasio has excavated at locations around the world and he is recognized as a global authority on perishable materials such as ancient basketry and textiles. He is the author of multiple books including “The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology’s Greatest Mystery” (Random House, 2002), “The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory” (Harper Collins, 2007), and his latest, “Strangers in a New Land” (Firefly Books Ltd., 2016), which documents 35 of the earliest sites in North and South America. He received his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona, his Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of Utah, and completed a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution.
Board of Trustees
Howard W. Hanna, III, Chair, Board of Trustees
Christine Bryant, Vice Chair, Board of Trustees
Beverlynn Elliott, Vice Chair, Board of Trustees
Scott Lammie, Treasurer, Board of Trustees
Laurence Glasco, PhD, Secretary, Board of Trustees
Diane P. Holder, Immediate Past Chair, Board of Trustees
Andrew E. Masich, President & CEO, Senator John Heinz History Center
Kevin Acklin Arthur L. Baldwin David E. Barensfeld Latasha Wilson Batch Charles W. Bitzer Cynthia Bognar Eric Boughner Charles R. “Chip” Burke, Jr. Kirk Burkley Christina Cassotis Verna Corey, ScD The Honorable Jay Costa, Jr. Joseph Dougherty Daniel Fitzpatrick The Honorable Ed Gainey†† Stan Geier James M. Gockley Ken Gormley William Haldeman Dana Dokmanovich Harris Donald J. Heberle Chancelor Humphrey The Honorable Sara Innamorato†† Gerardo Interiano |
Ed Karlovich William M. Lambert Diane Beynon Landers, PhD Judy Linaburg Catherine Loevner James C. Martin, Esq. Michael Mascaro Albert Neupaver The Honorable Donna Oberlander The Honorable Nick Pisciottano Robert P. Randall Matthew Rhenish Brian Roman Art Rooney II Izzy Rudolph Joy Starzl Joe Trotter Jr., PhD Brian Trudgen Mark Twerdok Nish Vartanian The Honorable Kim Ward Dennis A. Watson Anne Zacharias |
Emeritus & Honorary†
Robert Cindrich
Sigo Falk
The Honorable D. Michael Fisher
Floyd “Chip” Ganassi, Jr.
Teresa Heinz†
Torrence Hunt
Maxwell King
Robert B. Knutson†
The Honorable Frank J. Lucchino
Martin G. McGuinn
Sandy Mellon
Bruce Wiegand
*Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania
†† ex officio