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When you think of a pioneer, what comes to mind?

At Marietta College, our pioneers have the knowledge, the passion and the courage to pursue change for the greater good, to make a difference in the lives of others, and to pave the way for generations to come. These are stories of people who are committed to making an impact in their professions, their communities and beyond.

Adriana Roberts ’90

B.A. Radio/Television, Minored in Art

Darren LaShelle ’89

B.A Radio/Television, Marietta College

John V. Ulakovic ’81

B.S. Petroleum Engineering, Marietta College

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Canada

Angela Mestemacher Vande ’95

B.S. Petroleum Engineering — Marietta College

Collage graphic for Angela Mestemacher Vande

Connecticut

Bart Gullong ’70

B.A. English – Marietta College; Teaching Certificate – Marietta College; M.A. Counseling & Psychology – Central Connecticut State University

D.C.

Lindy Nester ’09

Physician Assistant Studies Graduate Program

Florida

Amy Giannotti ’95

B.S Biology — Marietta College; Minors: Environmental Studies, Leadership & Political Science — Marietta College; M.S. Environmental Science (focus on Marine Ecology) — university of Virginia; MCAA 2011 Distinguished Alumna

Story Musgrave ’60

B.S. Mathematics and Statistics – Syracuse University (1958); MBA in Operations Analysis and Computer Programming – University of California at Los Angeles (1959); B.A. Chemistry — Marietta College (1960); Doctorate in Medicine – Columbia University (1964); M.S. Physiology and Biophysics – University of Kentucky (1966); M.A. Literature – University of Houston (1987)

Hawaii

Dr. Kenneth Andrus ’70

B.S. Biology/Pre-Med, Marietta College; M.D., The Ohio State University College of Medicine Residency, U.S. Naval Hospital, Portsmouth, Virginia

Illinois

Angelique Evans ’09

B.A. International Leadership Studies, Linguistics, EFL, Chinese — Marietta College; Chinese Language Certification — The China Foreign Affairs University; Chinese Studies/Chinese Language Certification — Tsinghua University; Master of Arts in Diplomacy, Diplomacy-Conflict Resolution/Dispute Management — Norwich University; Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language — Coventry House (Canada); Ph.D. Education Policy, Organization and Leadership — University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

New Jersey

Krista Tkacz ’09

B.A. Journalism — Marietta College; A.S. Registered Nursing — Harcum College; B.S. Registered Nursing — Ohio University; R.N. with Critical Care Certification; M.S. Nursing/Nurse Practitioner — Monmouth University; Board-certified Adult–Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner (APRN)

North Dakota

Rachel Baughman Bachmeier ’12

B.A. Secondary Education – Marietta College; B.A. History – Marietta College; M.A. Educational Leadership and Administration – University of South Dakota

Collage graphic for Rachel Baughman Bachmeier

Ohio

Ashley Thomas ’14

M.Ed., Cleveland State University B.A. Sport Management, Marietta College

Scott and Rachel Worthington Burnham ’12

Scott: B.S. Petroleum Engineering - Rachel: B.A. Public Accounting

Collage graphic for Scott and Rachel Worthington Burnham

Oregon

Diana Rohlman ’07

Ph.D. Environmental and Molecular Toxicology, Oregon State University; B.S. Biology/Theatre minor, Marietta College

Pennsylvania

Megs Schreck Yunn ’06

BA Communication & Media Studies, Marietta College; Certificate McDonough Leadership, Marietta College; MBA, Point Park University

Texas

Don and Leslie Straub Ritter ’81

Don: B.S. Petroleum Engineering, Marietta College; E.M.B.A., Southern Methodist University — Leslie: B.S. Industrial Engineering Management, Marietta College; M.B.A., University of Pittsburgh

Collage graphic for Don and Leslie Straub Ritter

Sarah Mayo ’15

B.S. Petroleum Engineering, Marietta College

West Virginia

Leah Seaman ’21

Studio Art and Communication major Rome, Italy (Education Abroad)

Wisconsin

Dr. Joseph Webb ’07

B.A. Communication — Marietta College; M.A. Education-Professional Development — University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire; Ph.D. Workforce Education and Development — Penn State University

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Story Musgrave ’60

Orlando, Florida

About

NASA — Scientist-Astronaut; Denver General Hospital — Trauma Surgeon (part-time); Kentucky Medical Center — Professor of Physiology and Biophysics (part-time); U.S. Marine Corps — Aviation Electrician, Instrument Technician, Aircraft Crew Chief; U.S. Air Force — Post-doctoral fellow

Angela Vande wakes up most mornings well before dawn with the same invigorated outlook: “It’s a good day if you get to learn something, and there’s always something for us to learn.”

Graduating from Marietta in 1995 and going directly to work for Crestar Energy, Angela started working in her home state of West Virginia and then moved with her job to Tulsa, Oklahoma. A colleague asked if she could do a favor for the company. Rather than ask what the favor entailed, she said “Yes” and ended up in Alberta, Canada, for the next 27 years.

Her petroleum industry job started in facilities, and after working for about a year and a half in that area, she moved on to completions.

“When you say, ‘Yes, I’ll figure out a way,’ you get a lot of exposure, so within less than 10 years, I had actually been promoted to the point where I was looking after the longest wells in North America,” she says. “They were the longest, some of the first horizontals, they were critically sour, they were in environmentally sensitive areas, and I ran the whole completion operation.”

That’s when her first patent was developed. When looking after the longest wells in North America, there are a number of challenges. Three or four wells into the completion process, the geologist she was working with said the end of the horizontal — known as the “toe” — was the part he wanted because it was the best part of the reservoir.

“This was about 2005, and the technology at the time could not reach the longest toes in North America,” she says. “The geologist said it was the best part of the well, so why leave that behind? So, I collaborated with the service company and figured out how to get to the toe, and with that, we developed what is now a multi-billion-dollar tool that’s used on every single horizontal well, every single well and drilling.”

The technology developed was a vibrator that broke down the coefficient of static friction, reducing the friction numbers by about 25 percent. She presented it as a “world first” and published a paper to present at an industry conference. Though the tool could reach the toe, the well didn’t produce any better, which was a surprise to Angela.

“So, at that time, I conceptualized a multi-stage kind of completion — and multi-stage wasn’t invented yet. I conceptualized that and the way I did it was I basically allowed the well to blindly pick its best spots. I pumped fluid down and the fluid went into the well’s best spot, and then I put in a diverter. A diverter can be damaging and have residue, and the diverter I used was a surfactant-based visco-elastic diverter, so that means it viscosifies and then it breaks back to surfactant to a water phase.”

She thought it was an innovative idea, so she measured the distance (from surface to toe) by running a five-mile-long piece of fiberoptic. Not only was it successful, but she was also getting two to five more intervals per well than she had ever gotten before. She patented and published the process. Multi-stage was invented and became predominant a couple of years after her breakthrough.

“When you get successes like that — first the billion-dollar tool and then the longest wells in North America with successful completions and better production, and that production is even holding out and it’s been almost 20 years. The wells I did this on are still better production and better reserves than wells I did not do this on. Those are some of the highlights of my career.”

Now working as a consultant with her own company, Angela has taken the successes she earned working in the industry and the information she contributed to help her clients.

“But I’m the engineer that designed it and I have improved on the original — so I actually can do it now without fiberoptic and without intervention, meaning I don’t have to take off the wellhead, meaning I just come through the valves. It’s super safe, much less costly, much less risky, and still very effective. I design and do that on my own jobs. And I found the treatment fluid that viscoelastic diverter through the guy that was supplying it to (her former employer), and I bought it directly from him to save my clients’ money.”

In addition to running her own consulting company, Angela is affiliated with the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection and the Energy Committee. She was the advisor to the Vice Chair of the Energy Committee for four terms and is now advising the Chair of that committee. She has done this for free, so there is no perceived bias.

“When I’m back with the government, I often stop into Marietta and say, ‘Hi.’ I’ve been in Dave Freeman’s class back when multi-stage was still getting going and I showed the students the difference between a multi-stage cement and a multi-stage open hole, and the significant differences in a few pictures. You can hear the words, but when you see a picture from a location and say, ‘This is a packer’ and you can see how long it is and what it looks like, I found that it’s more valuable to the students.”

Angela says she always looks to be a part of the good, always looking for ways to use her skills to help others.

“I had a contract for water management at a hospital. It was an engineering contract. They needed somebody that was reliable, and they found my consulting firm and I showed up and I did what I said I do and that was a unique contract for petroleum engineers. And I currently still carry a forensic engineering contract. So again, I’m oil and gas, but they trained to be a little bit on accident investigation in automobiles and fraud and I’ve been doing forensic engineering for them as a part-time contract, so it’s here and there. So, I think trying to be part of the good and seeing the good in people and also wanting to do a good job and produce value.

“I want to live two lifetimes in my one span of life that I have, and I want to make it positive. I want to make people around me happy to come to work and happy about what they’ve done — that way, they’ll be kinder to their families and their friends.”

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Entrepreneurship — when coupled with a commitment to maintaining a personal mission — can change the world for the better.

Coming from an all-boys prep school in New England, Bart Gullong ’70 developed a powerful sense of who he is at Marietta College through the experiences and relationships he made at Marietta College. Allowing those principles to center his professional life has allowed him to stand firm against people and policies challenging what he believes is the right thing to do.

Bart is the co-founder and former Chairman of the Board of the Z-Medica Corp company. The product, QuikClot, revolutionized how people suffering from life-threatening blood loss due to injury were treated. The product was developed by Frank Hursey, Z-Medica’s co-founder and engineer. The two men met in 1998 when Frank put out an ad in the Hartford Courant newspaper that he was looking for a partner to help sell oxygen and nitrogen air separation systems for Frank’s company, On-Site Gas Systems. Bart said he would work to sell the product for free — taking a 25 percent commission on the profits.

“I remember saying, ‘In a year, you’ll come to me and beg to change the deal because I’ll be making so much more money than you, and he did,” Bart says.

Early on, Frank told Bart about a product he developed and patented in 1989 that clotted blood. But because the primary business of selling the filtration systems was going well, the clotting agent stayed in the back of Bart’s mind. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. military requested that the Z-Medica Corp. develop portable oxygen systems, which could be dropped from planes to support surgical centers on the battlefield.

Bart was working with Marine Corps Master Chief Tom Eagles, the most highly decorated Navy Corpsman in the Vietnam War and head of the Marines’ medical system, who told Bart that he was dealing with an upcoming blood clotting trial, “and he thought it would be a fool’s errand because we’ve tried for years and years to find something that works, but nothing works,” Bart recalls his late personal hero saying. “I said, ‘Well, Tommy, I’ve got something for you. We have a blood clotting product.’ ”

The zeolite agent that Hursey developed years earlier was tested numerous times by the FDA — including the full transection of the femoral artery of a pig. Unlike every other agent being tested, QuikClot was attributed to zero deaths. This life-saving product worked and was soon FDA-approved.

The Navy and the Air Force were quick to implement its use, but the U.S. Army resisted — and at one point outlawed its use — so it could use a different product that came with substantial risk to patients. Knowing that QuikClot would save the lives of many servicemembers, Bart and Z-Medica took a stand.

“The whole battle ended up on the floor of Congress,” Bart says. “We knew we had something that was absolutely 100-percent effective, and it was life changing. It altered the battlefield forever. When we started out, the number of soldiers’ injuries that led to death on the battlefield — soldiers killed in action — was 21 percent. It had been 21 percent since the Crimean War until our product came around, dropping it most recently to 11 percent.”

Hundreds of soldiers and even more civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq were saved, and countless more deaths prevented outside of the battlefield. Bart says the company took a similar approach to the plot in the movie, The Blues Brothers, because they were on a mission from God to get QuikClot into the hands of those who needed it most.

“Special Forces were the first to have our product, and then the British Marines,” Bart says. “But when you go down range — when the soldiers, sailors, marines go down range — they find a way to get what they need, and we saw that our guys were trading bottles of Scotch with the British for QuikClot, and then a group of mothers and wives got together to do fundraisers to buy QuikClot themselves to send it to their family members who were serving.”

Eventually, QuikClot gauze became the first-line protocol for life-threatening blood-loss injuries on the battlefield. The book, In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries-Old Medical Mystery and Took on the U.S. Army, by Charles Barber, details how Bart and Frank’s company overcame the roadblock set by an Army official to save the lives of servicemembers. Movie rights for the book, published in May 2023, were sold to the same production company that produced King Richard (2021) and a screenplay has been commissioned.

“It was just a continuation of my commitment, which was made during late nights in ‘The Pit’ and in the dorms, that we would make a difference and that we would not accept things the way they were,” Bart says. “As (President John) Kennedy said, we would look at things as they weren’t and ask, ‘Why not?’ ”

Looking back, Bart knows that his personal mission has played a role in every endeavor he has pursued. When he graduated from Marietta with a degree in English and a teaching certificate, he thought he would pursue a career in education. While attending graduate school to be an educational counselor, he interned at a Connecticut high school. A former high school and college rower, Bart decided to start a boys’ rowing team. Because none of the boys were interested in being coxswains, two girls filled those roles. He was called into the school’s office and told he had to cancel the team because girls were not allowed to play on boys’ teams. Through one of the rower’s connections, the Hartford Courant featured a front-page article with a banner headline, “Sex Discrimination at Simsbury High School.”

“The story went, what would be called today, ‘viral.’ ” he says. “It went out on all services. I actually got the story from a friend in Honolulu who saw it in the Honolulu Times. It went everywhere.”

Consequently, the community formed a parents’ organization and the high school backed down from the original demand; and it garnered tremendous support for the team.

As a result of all the support the team received, they won the state championship — a miracle for a first-year program.

“And I got invited to testify before the committee that wrote Title IX, so it was a huge thing and really started my career off,” Bart says. “I could have taken the easy route and just found a couple of boys to fill the boat. I could have backed off, but this was an opportunity to make a difference. Like my classmates at Marietta, I had a burning desire to make a difference.”

Because of his success, Bart was invited to be the new head rowing coach at Connecticut College for four years, eventually winning the nationals and competing in the World Championships. He was also the coach at Southampton College. One of his rowers was Anita DeFrantz, who became the Vice President of the International Olympic Committee and was known as the most influential woman in women’s sports.

After his coaching career, Bart began developing as an entrepreneur — from selling and delivering yachts to starting a video game company with a colleague from Southampton.

“This is why my friends call me Forrest Gump,” Bart says. “I seem to be in the right place at the right time. So, we transition from operating video games to building controllers for games and designing physical aspects for video games.”

During a flight to Texas, he was bumped up to first class and was seated next to the Director of Human Flight for NASA.

“He said, ‘We are having a terrible time creating a process by which the pilot can communicate with the computer because the Space Shuttle is impossible to fly — it’s impossible for a human to operate because it’s essentially a rock. So, we have to create some computer program that will communicate from the pilot to the control services, and right now, video games are the most advanced way for a human to communicate with a computer.’”

Bart was hired on the spot as a consultant and was in that role for about six months. He helped design the Space Shuttle’s fly-by-wire system, which is the way that nearly every commercial airplane is flown today.

“I know the kids who are still in college will never read this, but if there were a message that I could get to them, it would be ‘don’t let go of the principles of good, of morality, of making money in a moral way, of not surrendering what you believe in the name of money or expediency — that this works or it can work, but it’s not easy. And for my classmates: I’m so appreciative of my classmates. My best friend is still one of my roommates, and my other best friend is another one of my roommates. They have survived in my life for 55 years. … Everybody follows their own path, but let your paths come back together every now and then.”

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Story Musgrave ’60

Orlando, Florida

About

A dairy farm kid from Western Massachusetts, Story Musgrave had a talent for operating and fixing mechanical things. But farm life for a child can be a dangerous environment, and for Musgrave, it was life-changing.

“I was running combines at the age of 7 or 8, tying the knots for balers that didn’t tie (knots on bales). It was so dirty and dusty that I couldn’t see my hands, and if I put them in the wrong place, they’re gone forever,” Musgrave recalls during a recent visit to Marietta College. “I had several accidents. One of them was so bad I had to have neurosurgery to stop the bleeding.”

The young boy had fractured his skull after being run over by a piece of farm equipment. Despite the danger, farm work must go on.

“I came out of that with seizures,” he says. “So, I’m having grand mal seizures while I’m operating farm equipment, which is not a good story. But I’m here. I can’t complain.”

Starting with his farm kid upbringing, Musgrave spent his life building the skills and knowledge it took to become a true pioneer. He is the only NASA astronaut to fly on all five Space Shuttles, the second astronaut to fly on six space missions, and is the most highly educated astronaut in history. Those accomplishments didn’t come easy. He had to force those outcomes.

Musgrave didn’t graduate high school — an injury led to him forgoing his senior exams and enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he put his mechanical skills to work, soon earning the title of Crew Chief — the youngest in USMC history. He signed off on all the maintenance for the airplanes as airworthy to go to war. After serving three years active duty in the Marines, he continued on active reserve for three more years, driving tanks.

After his active duty, Musgrave enrolled at Syracuse University, where he studied mathematics and statistics on the G.I. Bill.

“I got into math and statistics to control all the factors in any situation,” he says. “I was a survivor at that point. I had to survive everything: the farm; the Marines. I got in these situations that I had to survive in, so I understood that, in any situation, you’ve got to identify all the factors that affect the outcome — the good factors that will help you and the bad factors that are going to hurt you getting to the outcome.”

After Syracuse, he and his mother moved from New York to California so Musgrave could attend UCLA to study computer programming and analysis. That’s where he first became interested in neurophysiology and decided his next stop would be medical school — but first, he had to complete undergraduate pre-med requirements. He and his mother started their drive back to Syracuse.

“I crossed the Ohio River going east and I run into this place,” he says, adding that the age and beauty of Marietta, as well as the presence of Marietta College and the pre-med offerings, were what led to him staying for his B.A. in Chemistry, which took him a year to complete. He then attended medical school at Columbia University, during which time he married and had four children. In addition to raising a family and completing medical school, he began developing another skill: parachuting.

“I would take my family parachuting with me,” he says. “They didn’t go parachuting but they saw Story Musgrave at work and they knew how it was going to turn out every time. (The kids knew) ‘He don’t mess around. He likes doing it but he’s going to force the outcome.’ ”

During his surgical training at the University of Kentucky, he saw a posting on a bulletin board that NASA was considering flying a scientist-astronaut. His mind was set on becoming a NASA scientist-astronaut. He left his clinicals to complete a two-year post-doc fellowship that resulted in a master’s degree in Biological Physics and also did research on parachuting.

“After the Marines, I did take up flying as a hobby,” he says. “I did a lot of flying, but (after learning about the NASA opportunity) I really focused and got my airline transport rating to get ready for the selection process because the competition was rough.”

The Marine, mechanic, pilot, parachutist, computer programmer, chemist, physiologist, mathematician, statistician, surgeon — and college wrestler — threw his name in the mix of candidates for the new NASA program.

“They had 6,000 applicants and six of us got to space out of 6,000 — so the odds were kind of tough. … When I joined NASA, they said, ‘I hope we don’t bore you.’ They had looked at what I had done.”

Musgrave was selected in 1967 to work on the design and development of the Skylab program, as well as all of the Space Shuttle extravehicular and spacesuit equipment. He was on Space Shuttle Challenger’s first flight and did the first spacewalk in 1983. He was the first astronaut out the door, testing the new spacesuit and the new construction and repair devices and procedures with fellow astronaut Don Peterson. In addition to being on the Challenger in 1983 and 1985, Musgrave also was on the Space Shuttle Discovery (1989), Atlantis (1991), Endeavour (1993) and the Columbia (1996) missions.

“I became the lead spacewalker for 25 years with NASA,” he says. “I knew how to fix stuff. I was with the Hubble Telescope for 18 years before I had to fix it. They told me to identify every problem you could get into and what you’d do in a spacewalk to fix it. Of course, I’d get (the scientist-astronaut) job. No one had the mechanical skills and mechanical background that I had. I also had the physician and ergonomic skills of having to work with a biological body — the ergonomics. So, I was made for that job.”

Because he had always worked hard in a variety of areas, his workload didn’t really increase. He even created time to continue his medical work by flying one of the NASA airplanes from Texas to Colorado to work with the former chairman of surgery at Kentucky, who also led Musgrave’s first internship class. The surgeon left Kentucky to lead surgery at the University of Colorado and soon called Musgrave to join his team.

“He said, ‘Story, if you could join me two or three days a month up here, me and you can start a trauma department.’ I said, ‘Of course.’ ”

He was a trauma surgeon part-time for 28 years until frostbite damaged most of the fingers on his right hand while in a thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The chamber simulated super-cold and super-hot space conditions, and helped prepare him for the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission that he completed in 1993.

Musgrave was the only person in history to stay with the Astronaut Corps for 30 years. In total, he flew on six spaceflights, spent 53 days, nine hours and 55 minutes in space, spent 26 hours and 19 minutes in space outside of the spacecraft, accumulated more than 18,000 hours flying on NASA, military and civilian aircraft, completed 1,000 parachute jumps, and completed six undergraduate and advanced degrees.

Today, in addition to training and consulting, Musgrave is enjoying watching his youngest daughter — 16-year-old Story — learn to fly.

“I have kids in their 60s, 50s, and a 35-year-old who’s flying B-1s with the Air Force, and then there’s little Story, who’s 16,” he says. The two built their current plane with other children helping. Young Story’s flight instructor knows who her father is, and Musgrave is happy to augment some of her school lessons.

Looking back, Musgrave says his NASA work in space did make him a bit nervous.

“I don’t like risk,” he says. “The Shuttle was more risk than I wanted, but it was the way to get to space at the time, so I kept doing it. I don’t risk. I don’t want to go there. I like to control risk and I like to be ready, but of course, if I put myself in a bad machine, it’s over.”

In 1987 — while still actively working as an astronaut and a surgeon — Musgrave obtained a master’s degree in literature from the University of Houston. Though he would have liked to have tapped into that creative side, the breadth of his professional experience has been rewarding and remarkable.

“I could have been an artist and a writer, and so I missed that part,” he says. “It’s hard to do everything, but this (life) turned out pretty well.”

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Diana Rohlman ’07 has spent her career researching environmental pollution and working with local communities to help them understand the impact their environment has on their health.

The field of toxicology combines elements of two things she loves — biology, which was her major at Marietta, and theatre, which was her minor. But when Rohlman began her undergraduate career, she had no idea what she wanted to do after she graduated.

Today, Rohlman is an Assistant Professor and Senior Researcher for Oregon State University, where she teaches a class on public health toxicology. She points to her experience at Marietta — particularly the diversity of classes that were offered and her work with her adviser, Dr. David Brown — with inspiring her to pursue a career in the toxicology field.

Rohlman enrolled in her first toxicology course at Marietta not because she was interested in the field but because she needed credits and because she liked Brown, who was teaching the class. By the time she completed her second toxicology course, she knew she wanted to continue to study toxicology at the graduate level.

Rohlman likens the discipline of toxicology to a rescue dog — because it’s got a little bit of everything in it. She was intrigued by the way the field combines biology and chemistry to explore what’s in the environment and whether the environment is going to harm people’s health.

“I just really loved this concept of using all of these scientific fields to address all of these relevant questions.”

After graduating from Marietta, Rohlman earned her Ph.D. in Environmental and Molecular Toxicology from Oregon State University in 2013, where she researched how exposure to certain chemicals affects the immune system. Then, she completed her post-doctoral work with Oregon State’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

Rohlman’s first public health research project centered on concerns about air quality as a result of unconventional natural gas drilling, conventionally called fracking. The project brought her back to rural Ohio and gave her and her former Marietta adviser, Brown, the chance to conduct research together as colleagues.

“For most students, their senior capstone project is the last thing that I work on with them, but with Diana I got another chance to work on a research project with her,” Brown said. “A couple years ago I had the opportunity to work with her on a project that was looking at environmental exposure to organic compounds. It was an interesting project, and I really enjoyed getting to reconnect and see how she was doing in her career.”

Rohlman now works in academia, though she does still get to go out in the field occasionally. She recently completed a project examining industrial air pollution in a small community, and is now researching how wildfire smoke affects human health.

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To many elementary students in and around the Pittsburgh area, Megs Schreck Yunn ’06 is the closest thing to a hero they will ever meet.

“I remember walking into a school one day, and I could hear the students saying out loud, ‘That’s the birthday lady. She’s our hero.’ It made me smile, but I feel like we’ve created a lane in Pittsburgh that allows kindness for kindness, goodness for goodness.”

Megs is the founder and executive director of Beverly’s Birthdays, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide a birthday party for children experiencing homelessness and families in need. Beverly’s Birthdays has grown by leaps in bounds since it was founded in 2012 following a chance encounter between Megs and a then 11-year-old Beverly, who said she’d never had a birthday party or her own slice of birthday cake.

The North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania-based non-profit organization now has 21 employees with an annual budget of $2.5 million, and recently moved into a new 10,000-square-foot building. Over the past 11 years, the organization has also added free community baby showers and a fashion truck that allows partygoers an opportunity to pick out a dress.

Megs is responsible for overseeing all programming logistics, fundraising and marketing.

“The growth and the way we have changed over the past 11 years has been really organic. I believe we have been successful because we lean in and listen to the families and children. We added baby showers because we learned there was a need. I have four children, and my baby showers were when my family and friends gifted me with things I needed to start a family and continue growing my family. It is an important step that is missing for many new moms. Now we are helping them get started with some important necessities.”

In June 2022, Megs recognized another local need and founded The Greater Pittsburgh Infant Formal Bank. “I didn’t realize that food banks don’t source baby formula. It’s not on their list. That is the only food for a child under 1 if the mother isn’t breastfeeding. We have had over 1,200 referrals since we opened.”

Megs and her team also added a mobile fashion truck

In 2022, Beverly’s Birthdays reached some lofty goals:

9,732 Birthday Cheer Bins
139 Group Birthday Parties
2,800 Boutique Shoppers
2,111 Itty Bitty Diaper Bags
3,850 Party Guests
3,132 Birthdays-in-a-Bag
32 Free Community Baby Showers

Megs has been recognized in Pittsburgh Magazine’s “40 under 40” for people positively impacting the region, and her efforts have also been noticed nationally. She was featured on Good Morning America in 2019 as a Hometown Hero, and in 2017 as an Inspiring American on NBC’s Nightly News with Lester Holt.

“Life without cause is life without effect. When I think about what it means to be a pioneer, it is someone who is able to pave the way toward a better world. We created a space that is glittery, cheerful and all about celebration — and that translates into a better world. There is no way this is where I thought I’d be in my life or my career, but I wouldn’t change a thing because there’s always another family who has needs and we are making a difference.”

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