Meet Our Board of Directors

Board of Directors

*Northside resident

Kevin McKeegan, 2022, Chair

Kevin F. McKeegan is a partner at the Pittsburgh law firm of Meyer, Unkovic & Scott LLP, where he served as Managing Partner from 2006 to 2011.  He was formerly the chair of Allegheny County’s Board of Property Assessment Appeals and Review. He currently serves as vice-chair of the Allegheny County Community College Educational Foundation Board and will start a three-year term as chair of that Board in 2023. He and his wife Sybil are the parents of three adult children and grandparents to four granddaughters (of whom they are especially proud).

Anne Billiet Lackner, 2013, Vice-chair

A native of Belgium, where she was a lawyer, she came to the United States in 1980 and now serves as Honorary Consul of Belgium. She is co-founder of The Lackner Group, Inc., a software company committed to providing innovative solutions in trust and estate administration, to law firms, bank trust officers and C.P.A’s, and a member of the external advisory board at the University of Pittsburgh’s EU Center of Excellence/European Studies Center.

Akhil Sharma, 2015, Vice-chair

Author of A Life of Adventure and Delight, An Obedient Father, and Family Life (selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2014.) He is the winner of IMPAC, the International Dublin literary Award, The Folio Prize, The Folio Society/Rathbone Investment Management, the PEN/Hemingway Prize, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Susan Kaufman Prize. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Award Stories. A native of Delhi, he is the Adele Schiff Professor of the Practice at Duke University.

Charles F. O’Hanlon III, 2010, Secretary/Treasurer

Independent consultant to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry.  Prior to 2022, President and CEO of Celsense, Inc. Prior to his affiliation with Celsense in 2005, Mr. O’Hanlon spent 29 years in commercial banking and financial services.

Heather Bednarek, 2025*

Senior counsel at Highmark Inc., where she primarily advises on the implementation
of new laws impacting the delivery of health insurance. She was one of the lead
attorneys responsible for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and
continues to advise on matters relating to the Health Insurance Marketplace.
Heather is a member of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History Advisory Board, as
well as the Allegheny County Bar Association, where she was a past chair of the
Health Law Section.

Craig Dunham

A native of California’s San Francisco Bay Area, Craig has actively managed the planning, design, and construction of new and renovated best-in-class commercial, residential, hospitality, sports, and institutional structures over the past three decades in coastal markets and Pittsburgh, PA. Craig received formal training in fine arts and architectural history from the University of California at Santa Barbara and received a Master’s Degree in Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Craig formed Dunham reGroup LLC in 2011 as a full-spectrum real estate consulting firm. Dunham reGroup focuses on providing project-based analysis and implementation services to private sector developers, investors, and partnerships, as well as non-profit, civic, cultural,l and higher education organizations. From 2022-2024, Craig was the Pittsburgh Penguins Senior Vice President – Development with primary responsibility for advancing the redevelopment of the 28-acre mixed-use Lower Hill, site of the former Civic Arena, as well as all Penguins related real estate activities. Craig has been an active member of the Green Building Alliance, Sustainable Pittsburgh, Urban Land Institute, CEO’s For Cities, Congress for New Urbanism and Smart Growth America. Craig currently serves on the boards of the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, and City of Asylum.

Gwendolyn Moorer, 2011*

Northside community resident Gwendolyn Moorer joined the board in 2011. She is the Financial Systems and Project Manager at the City of Pittsburgh and owner of the Northside franchise of Rita’s Water Ices. She is on the Development Board of the Central Northside Neighborhood Council and on the board of Artists Image Resources.

Irina Peris, 2025

A bilingual and bicultural immigrant from the former Soviet Union and a volunteer Russian-language teacher for adults at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Currently serving on the board of the International Poetry Forum, contributing ideas and comments on the programming and publicizing of the Forum’s readings.

Caryl Phillips, 2025

St. Kittian-born English novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, with awards including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain’s oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, shortlisted and longlisted for the Booker Prize, Commonwealth Writers Prize, PEN/Open Book Award, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and Anthony N. Sagba Caribbean Award for Excellence. Currently a Professor of English at Yale University for over 20 years, an Honorary Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford University, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Arts and Lectures.

Henry Reese, Co-founder*

Entrepreneur (co-founder/former principal in Reese Brothers and Communications & Commerce), former Treasurer of Cave Canem: A Home for Black Poetry, Board International Cities of Refuge Network, and former Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Programming Advisory Committee member.

Diane Samuels, Co-founder*

A visual artist with both studio and public art practices. Her permanent site-specific artworks include Luminous Manuscript (Center for Jewish History, New York) and Lines of Sight (Brown University), and The Alphabet Garden, (Grafeneck, Germany.) Formerly on the Boards of the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Mattress Factory museum, and the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill University.

Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds

Chair, The Hillman Family Foundations. Trustee Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Term Trustee Carnegie Mellon University, Board of National Poetry Series, Board of Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society, Board of Autumn House Press.

Barbara Talerico, 2015*

Retired from BNY Mellon as an Information Technology Project Manager and manager of the bank’s International Help Desk. Prior to BNY, she was a Certified Financial Planner. Her 16 years of volunteer service includes Past President and Treasurer for the Allegheny City Central Association; Past President of the Mexican War Streets Society; Member of the Allegheny Commons Master Plan Steering Committee; Chair of the Fundraising Committee for Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild/Bidwell Training Center.

Damon Young, 2024*

A noted Pittsburgh author, commentator, and Northside resident, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and Barnes & Noble’s Discover Award, founder of the culture blog VerySmartBrothas, and was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post Magazine, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, a columnist for GQ, and was the creator and host of the Crooked Media podcast “Stuck With Damon Young.”  Currently, he is the inaugural writer-in-residence at the University of Pittsburgh’s David C. Frederick Honors College. 

David Finegold, 2024

Dr. David Finegold is the program officer for Golub Capital’s impact philanthropy program, the Chief Sustainability Officer for Torrgreen, a biofuel and renewable energy company, and the founding Executive Director of the National College Transfer Network. He began his work with City of Asylum during his tenure as President of Chatham University. 

Janet Sarbaugh, 2024

Janet retired from The Heinz Endowments’ Vice President for Creativity Programs in December 2022. Her previous board service has included the boards of Chorus America, Americans for the Arts, Grantmakers in the Arts, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania and Leadership Pittsburgh.