Kathy is a lifelong resident of Mt. Lebanon, having raised three girls there with her husband Curt. She attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania and graduated with a BS in math education. After working in her family’s business as an insurance and a real estate broker, she spent 21 years owning and operating a consignment store. She is currently employed part time as business manager for the Center for Theater Arts, an organization dear to her heart.

For 35 years, Kathy has been a dedicated volunteer of Three Rivers Adaptive Sports, teaching physically and mentally challenged individuals and their families to enjoy sports such as snow skiing, water skiing, biking and kayaking. She served on their board of directors for many years. She has also been involved in the leadership of Bower Hill Church serving on the board of Deacons, as a Session member and many other committees.

In the summer she can be found teaching any of her 7 grandchildren to waterski and during the winter she enjoys snow skiing with them. She values family time above all else.

After graduating from The College of Wooster and working for a couple of years, Mary chose to stay home to raise four children. Through the years she has been fortunate to volunteer in various positions.  At her church, she was Moderator of the Board of Deacons for over a decade, maintained the Memorial Garden, was co-chair of fundraising for the Haiti Water Project, and has been quite busy with the Building & Grounds committee.  She has been a volunteer at Family Hospice since 2007, presently helping with bereavement calls.

Tennis, gardening, trying new recipes, and walking in the woods with her husband and lab all round out her days.

Thekla grew up in California and graduated from UCLA with a degree in Art. After moving to Santa Fe, NM, where she met and married her minister husband, they lived in DC, South Carolina, and Virginia, before landing in Pittsburgh in 1999. Thekla loves non-profits that build community, and has enjoyed working and volunteering at several, including the Baldwin Borough Public Library, the Resource Center of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, Off The Floor Pittsburgh and Community Bible Study. One of her favorite things about Giving2Grow is learning about new non-profits that help feed hungry kids in our area.

Thekla lives in Highland Park and loves being in walking distance to two of her grandchildren.

Coleen was born in Donora, Pa. and moved to Mt. Lebanon after she married in 1970.

After graduating from California University of PA with a Bachelor’s Degre in Psychology, she worked as a caseworker for the PA Dept. of Public Welfare. While there she became a Shop Steward for the union.

After taking off 10 years to have her children, she worked as an Administrator at the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office.

Later in life, Coleen received a Master’s Degree in Nonprofit Management from Carlow University. After graduation she became the Executive Director of a nonprofit that worked with people with disabilities; she has a special interest in that area because both her mother and daughter had disabilities. While in this position she also attended the Leadership Pittsburgh XXI program.

When she left this job she decided to follow another passion–architecture, design and organization. She started a company that provided home staging services.

Throughout her years of employment Coleen has had a strong interest in government, and served as a Mt. Lebanon commissioner for 4 years. She has also served on the Board of Directors of NAMI-National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

Coleen enjoys time with her daughter and 3 grandchildren, friends, her dog, travel and her book club.

A longtime Mt. Lebanon resident, Margaret Hooton is known in Pittsburgh as an early childhood music teacher. For over four decades she has shared her love of music making with students at St. Paul’s Nursery School and many other preschools in the area. A teaching artist with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, she taught undergraduate and graduate level courses at Duquesne University’s School of Education on integrating the arts in the early childhood classroom. She and her husband Mike have four adult children and seven grandchildren. She enjoys gardening, hiking, mahjong and cooking. She is a founding member of Giving2Grow.

Andrea Fitting, the daughter of holocaust survivors, was born in Budapest, Hungary and was brought to the US by her parents as a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. She grew up in Philadelphia and moved to Pittsburgh to attend Pitt in 1971.

Andrea earned B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Anthropology and Archaeology from the University of Pittsburgh and has served as adjunct faculty at several western PA institutions. A former Fulbright scholar, Andrea left academia behind to follow her entrepreneurial muse.

She founded and operated Fitting Group, an award-winning branding and marketing agency with a smart, no-nonsense approach. Fitting Group was acquired in 2013. During that 30-year span of time, Andrea served on numerous non-profit boards and committees, as well as on the board of publicly-traded Parkvale Bank from 1998 to 2013 and the Bennett Supply Company, a closely-held private corporation from 2011 to 2014.

Since selling the agency, Andrea continued her work as a Consulting Strategist in Branding and Marketing for a select group of clients until 2024, when she officially retired.

Currently, Andrea splits her time between applying her marketing and business acumen to the board of Temple Emanuel and Giving2Grow, focusing on her 2 daughters and 3 (plus one on the way) grandchildren and honing her pickleball skills with friends.

Andrea considers one of her greatest achievements to be empowering her daughters and their families to live on the same lovely street in Mt Lebanon as she and her husband do. It’s not exactly a family compound, but close!

Much Gratitude to Our Founder, First President, and Former Board Member
Jennifer lived in Pittsburgh since she graduated from Allegheny College in 1974. She received a master’s degree in Special Education at Duquesne as a ‘mature’ student. She raised three children in Mt. Lebanon and never once worried that they would to go to bed hungry. She recently moved to Little Compton, RI to be closer to the ocean and her two grandchildren!
Current non-profit favorites include: Water Engineers for the Americas, Earthworks,  Women Donors Network,  Crossroads of Rhode Island, Catapult of Pittsburgh Housing Fund and of course: Giving2Grow!

Jennifer enjoys keeping in touch with her three children, Julia, Sam and Peter, cycling with friends, bookclub and game nights, and meddling in social justice, environmental issues, and socially responsible investing.