The Guild is governed by a Board of Trustees whose members have a variety of specialties in Pacific Northwest history. Trustees serve staggered three-year terms and select a President, Secretary, and Treasurer who serve two-year terms.
Board of Trustees, 2023-24
President: Jim Rupp is a Seattle lawyer and former General Counsel of Fluke Corporation. A Seattle native, he is the author of Art in Seattle’s Public Spaces, from Sodo to South Lake Union (UW Press, 2019) and Art in Seattle’s Public Places, an Illustrated Guide (UW Press, 1992). He is now completing the manuscript for a book covering art in public spaces in Seattle’s neighborhoods. Jim is the author of a number of monographs and articles on local history and is researching a book on the development of Seattle in the early 1900s. Before joining the Guild board, Jim served as a trustee of MOHAI and of the Friends of the UW Libraries.
Vice President and Membership: David B. Williams is an author, naturalist, and tour guide whose award-winning book Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography explores the unprecedented engineering projects that shaped Seattle during the early part of the twentieth century. He is also the author of Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City, Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology, and co-author of Waterway: The Story of Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal. Williams is also a Curatorial Associate at the Burke Museum. His next book, Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound, will be published in Spring 2021.
Communications: Gwen Whiting (she/her) is the Lead Curator at the Washington State Historical Society. She received her B.A. in Humanities from Washington State University and holds a Master of Arts in Military History from Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. The exhibitions that Gwen has curated for the Historical Society include Hope in Hard Times: Washington during the Great Depression, COOPER, and Unlocking McNeil’s Past: The Prison, The Place, The People. Prior to her tenure as Lead Curator, Whiting worked as a museum educator for over a decade, receiving numerous honors for her work in facilitated field trip programming and the online student publication COLUMBIAKids.
Treasurer: Candace Lein-Hayes received a MA in History from Western Washington University. She worked in the Archives/Records Management field for 30 years, first at the Washington State Archives, and then for 26 years, at the National Archives and Records Administration in Seattle. She is a Seattle native and enjoys exploring her West Seattle neighborhood with her yellow Lab, Katy.
Website: Antonia Kelleher is a public historian focused on nonprofit work, local and oral histories. She has written several articles for HistoryLink and the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee. She has worked in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s digital archives department, where she digitized the Senator William Proxmire collection and the 1964 Freedom Summer Project. Antonia received her MA in History from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she specialized in public history and her BA in History from American University.
Past President: Lisa Oberg is the Associate Director and History of Science and Medicine Curator for Special Collections in the University of Washington Libraries. An avid genealogist, Lisa is interested in the intersection of history and family history and is particularly interested in helping researchers understand the social context of the period when their ancestors lived. Lisa has taught online courses aimed at library staff serving genealogists through the University of Wisconsin’s School of Library and Information Studies and the University of Washington’s Information School. Lisa regularly gives genealogy-related lectures at the UW, Seattle Genealogical Society and around the Puget Sound region.
Trevor James Bond – Based in Pullman, Washington, Bond is an Associate Dean in the Libraries and the Director of WSU’s David G. Pollart Center for Arts and Humanities. He is the author of Coming Home to Nez Perce Country: The Niimiipuu Campaign to Repatriate Their Exploited Heritage. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2021 (finalist for the 2022 Washington State Book award). In 2018, he received the Charles Gates Memorial Award from the Washington State Historical Society for his article “Documenting Missionaries and Indians: The Archive of Myron Eells.”
Trustee: Megan Churchwell has been the Curator of Bremerton’s Puget Sound Navy Museum since 2014. Her background includes a Bachelor’s degree in American History from Willamette University, as well as a Master of Arts in Museum Studies from the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the intersection between the U.S. Navy and civilian life in the Pacific Northwest. Exhibits she has curated have featured the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the naval heritage of tattoos, and historical connections between the U.S. Navy and baseball.
Trustee: Trish Hackett Nicola is a certified genealogist, public historian, and family historian. Before her interest turned to history and genealogy, Trish worked as a certified public accountant and then as a librarian. Her genealogical research focused on Washington State, 19th and 20th century U. S. records, and assisting 3rd generation-Irish in obtaining their Irish citizenship. Since retiring, she has been researching her Irish and German roots.
In 2001, Trish began volunteering at the National Archives at Seattle where she works with the Chinese Exclusion Act files. She lectures and publishes articles on the records. Trish especially likes working with historic, original documents. Her blog featuring individual Chinese Exclusion Act case files can be found atChineseExclusionFiles.com.
Anthony Long – As the Executive Associate & Board Relations Manager at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), Long assists the Executive Director in special projects, serves as the Museum liaison to the Board of Trustees, and provides operational support for the staff. He holds a B.A. in History and an M.A. in public history from Norwich University. He is a contributor for HistoryLink and writes biographies of Pacific Northwest Sports icons for its website. Long is also a member of the board of directors of the 9th and 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers Museum in Tacoma.
Lorraine McConaghy is a Seattle-based public historian who served on the Guild board many years ago. Her professional career has been devoted to work in historical museum settings. She has published with Sasquatch Press, Washington State University Press, and University of Washington Press, and is particularly interested in applied use of oral history interviews in theatrical programming. McConaghy has been honored by the Washington State Historical Society, Oral History Association, Association for State and Local History, and received the Guild’s Pacific Northwest History Award in 2006.
The Guild is governed by a Board of Trustees elected by Guild members for staggered three-year terms. Vacancies may be filled by the Board and are to be ratified by the membership of the Guild, upon 30 days notice, at its next regularly scheduled meeting.