Meet the Candidates for the 2025-2027 Board of Directors
At the Allegheny City Central Association General Membership Meeting on Monday, May 12, 2025, members will vote for individuals to fill open positions on the ACCA Board of Directors. Those elected will serve for two years, through May 2027, and join the other board members whose terms expire in 2026.
Take some time to learn more about each of the candidates.
Sheila D. Collins
Sheila Collins has been a Northsider since birth, which is 71 years ago. She is a true “for the people” person.
Sheila retired as a Community Activist, having been one of the 18 people who worked with Jackson/Clark Partners in 2014 to create the original One Northside that would act as a canvasser of all 18 Northside neighborhoods. She was a Patient Advisory Council member at East Liberty Family Healthcare Center for over four years, until its dissolution around 2022. Prior to that, Sheila retired as a Medical Transcriptionist, working at Allegheny General and Shadyside Hospitals. She also did at-home transcription with Edix Corporation of St. Petersburg, Florida. Sheila has been a mobile notary public for over 20 years, Judge of Elections in Pittsburgh for 30+ years, and an active member of Bidwell Presbyterian Church.
Sheila is vested in making low-income residents feel included and important in all that Mexican Wars Streets has to offer, including her beloved West Park Court, where she serves as a member of the West Park Court Board of Directors. Sheila would like to continue being a member of ACCA and being more active in all decisions being made.
Maggie Conner
Maggie Connor has been a War Streets resident for 18 years. She has served for many years, in many positions, for both the ACCA and the Mexican War Streets Society. Currently, Maggie is serving as a board member for ACCA and acts as its representative to the Northside Leadership Conference, where she just completed her term as treasurer.
When not volunteering her time, Maggie is a Principal and Senior Urban Designer with Stantec – a global Design and Engineering firm, where she co-leads a design studio focusing on community development, neighborhood and district planning, and placemaking. She has a passion for urban design, public process, and community planning, and looks forward to serving her community by advocating for transparent, inclusive, and equitable design processes, conversations, and positive change for all.
Max Joffe
Max Joffe moved to Pittsburgh and the Mexican War Streets in 2021 to take a faculty position at the University of Pittsburgh. Max is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and leads a preclinical neuroscience lab aimed at identifying new treatments for addiction. Max’s wife, Kendra, also works at Pitt and is helping to start a new initiative on data science.
Max and Kendra have two young children. Their older son is in his second year of PreK at the Pittsburgh Public School’s Children’s Museum Early Childhood Program. They hope their daughter will start there next fall.
Max’s main interests in working with ACCA are in safety, schools, and development. Max is currently serving as an ACCA Board Member and is Chairman of the ACCA Safety Committee.
Jim Lawrence
Jim Lawrence has lived in the neighborhood since 2001. He has a BS in engineering and worked in telecommunications for 24 years, with a corporate background in product development, market analysis, and strategic planning.
Jim and his wife restored their 3-story Victorian from a 2-unit building to the original single-family floor plan. Jim went on to acquire and rehabilitate a number of blighted properties in the neighborhood. This led to involvement with the CNNC Development Committee around 2009. He has continued that involvement up to the present with the ACCA. During his tenure he managed the CNNC Property Reserve and helped the organization direct the rehabilitation of half a dozen vacant houses and a similar number of in-fill development projects, in keeping with the CNNC/ACCA Community Plan that was developed in the early 20-teens.
Jim is a past board member of CNNC as well as the MWSS where he served as Treasurer and authored the initial nomination document for the expansion of the City’s Mexican War Streets Historic District to match the national MWS historic district designation. Jim also has professional experience in land surveying, particularly property boundary mapping and title analysis, including exposure to civil engineering and land development.
Dick Thompson
Dick Thompson retired from Allegheny Health Network in 2022 where he led the system’s Construction, Real Estate and Facility Maintenance programs for the last seven years.
Dick went to high school in Upper St. Clair before attending the United States Military Academy. He received a bachelor’s degree in engineering and served as an engineer officer in the U.S. Army for 29 years, retiring in 2007 as a Colonel. Following military retirement, he worked at City of Hope, a cancer specialty hospital and research facility in southern California, before returning to Pittsburgh in 2014.
Dick has been a member of the ACCA Board of Directors since 2022, where he has also served as Treasurer. Dick and his wife Cindy have lived on Arch Street since 2016.
Steven Williams
Steven Williams has lived and owned on Buena Vista Street for over forty years. In the early years he was an on-the-road Management Consultant, utilizing his graduate degree in Public and International Administration from the University of Pittsburgh, to develop Medicare DRG reimbursement schemes still in place today. He also developed unique marketing techniques employed by large urban newspapers to enhance revenue and subscriptions. During that time, he acquired skills working with an architect and contractor to develop a couple of buildings on Buena Vista Street that he still owns and rents.
These experiences have opened Steven’s eyes to how important it is to have a firm vision for the future. He has tangible examples of this on the even side of Buena Vista with the renovation of the public space from the corner – 1200 to 1228. The intention was to develop a sense of community pride in the consistency of the exterior sidewalk, trees, porches, and planters. The most significant part of the project was working with the Lutheran Church to rehabilitate the sidewalk and parking lot. Steven hopes that through his membership on the ACCA board, that sense of vision can be spread and take hold throughout the Northside.
Steven has been developing far-reaching ideas for the future enhancement of the Northside and the City. He believes that serving on the ACCA Board would be an ideal way to help turn this vision into a concrete plan and reality.
Please Note: Additional nominees may be added as they become available.
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