BOARD OF DIRECTORS
CHARLES PEVETO
PRESIDENT
Architectural Historian
Charles has been an architectural historian at the Texas Historical Commission for many years and has devoted his professional career and private life to the historic preservation of Austin’s historic resources, including historic parks, historic bridges andthe arts. He serves on several Austin boards and committees, including Preservation Austin, Old Austin Neighborhood Association, Friends of Wooldridge Square, the Westgate Tower HOA Board of Directors, and MidTexMod. Charles is an active advocate in preserving Austin’s RICH and DIVERSE histories that give Austin that “Sense of Place”. He served for several years as Chair of the popular Angelina Eberly Luncheon, leading it to new records, before assuming the leadership role for reactivating the Katherine Drake Hart annual award and overseeing the AHCA Annual Business Meeting
ROXANNE EVANS
PRESIDENT-ELECT
Journalist and Public Relations Expert
Roxanne has more than 25 years of experience in journalism and public relations. A graduate of Drake University. Evans began her journalism career at the Des Moines Register and Tribune and spent 10 years at the Austin American-Statesman, where she made history herself when she became the first African American editorial writer and member of the Editorial Board. She also served as a deputy press secretary for Texas Governor Ann Richards. Her other positions include Chief Communications Officer for D.C. Public Schools, and work in the communications departments of the Austin Independent School District and the City of Austin. Roxanne Evans conducts black history research and is former co-editor-in-chief for the Texas Black History Preservation Project, which later became part of the portfolio of the Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture on the campus of Prairie View A&M University. She is a charter member of the National Museum of African American Culture and History at the Smithsonian and a member of the Travis County African American Heritage Council.
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Amy Wong Mok
VICE-PRESIDENT
CEO, Asian American Cultural Center
Amy is the Founder & CEO of the Asian American Cultural Center. Born in Hong Kong, Amy came to the United States in 1975. She is a psychotherapist by formal education and has worked at the South Cove Community Health Center in Boston Chinatown before moving to Austin, Texas in 1983 with her husband, Dr. Aloysius K. Mok who is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. Amy has been deeply involved in community service both locally and nationally. She has served on numerous boards and commissions and championed social causes in regard to education, cultural diversity and women’s health issues. Amy currently serves on the Austin Arts Commission, the Board of the Austin PBS and the Board of the ADL. She is a member of the Austin Area Research Organization. Because of her work in promoting cultural understanding, her love for diversity, her passion for social justice and her active efforts to facilitate positive social changes, Amy has been honored with her being selected as one of the American Trustees.
MARILYN POOLE
SECRETARY
Legal Expert
Marilyn is an Austin lawyer born from generations of Old East Austin leadership. She is the niece of the late Dr. James Hill, the first African American to become a Vice President of Academic Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also the niece of Dr. Oscar and Irene Hill Thompson. A former professor at Huston Tillotson University, Oscar was the first African American to earn an advanced degree from UT. Irene was a librarian at the original historic Anderson High School. Marilyn holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in behavioral psychology from Austin College in Sherman, Texas and a juris doctorate from the University of Texas School of Law.
Gerald Guerra
Treasurer
Finance Expert
Gerald is a native Austinite, born and raised in east Austin. He graduated from Huston-Tillotson University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and built a career in the financial sector of the hospitality industry, primarily as a financial services officer and comptroller for major hotels. Gerald recently transitioned to a new position as Property Controller for Cadrex Corporation.
KENT COLLINS
IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT
Real Estate & Development Expert
Kent is the founder and owner of Centro Development, LLC, an Austin-based real estate development company specializing in mixed-use and residential urban infill properties. At the forefront of developing vertically mixed-use properties in Texas, New Mexico and Georgia for more than 20 years, Kent received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Texas and a master’s in business administration from the University of California at Los Angeles. He is the past chair of the UT School of Architecture Advisory Council and the Downtown Austin Alliance and a member of the City of Austin Comprehensive Plan Task Force. Kent and his wife Reenie are the parents of three adult children – CeCe, Winston and Tye.
Candace Volz
Executive Committee At Large
Decorative Arts Historian
Candace is a long-time Austin resident whose family has lived in the Central Texas area for more than 175 years. She has a deep personal and professional interest in history and, with her husband John, is part of an architectural practice that undertakes restoration projects throughout Texas. Candace has a bachelor’s degree in interior design from the University of Texas and anmaster’s degree in museum studies from The George Washington University. As a decorative arts historian, she prepares historic furnishing plans for museums and historic sites throughout the U.S.
Benjamin Foster
Executive Committee At Large
Film Producer & Director
Ben is a University of Texas graduate who returned to Austin in 2018 after nearly a decade in Los Angeles working as a director, producer, and editor of documentaries and films. His current TV project, Songwriters Across Texas, has immersed Ben in the current Austin music scene as he plans a larger documentary about our city’s music history.
Barbara
Spears-Corbett
Board Member
Education Expert
Barbara is a native Austinite and graduate of L. C. Anderson High School and University of Texas. She built a career in the service of education in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools system. After retiring, Barbara returned to Austin and joined the campaign to stop the planned demolition of the original L.C. Anderson High School in east Austin. Currently, she works with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc, Douglas Club of Austin, Original L. C. Anderson Alumni Association, and several committees with the Austin Independent School District.
Jeffrey Dochen
Board Member
Real Estate & Development Expert
Jeffrey Dochen has been a top real estate broker in Austin for more than 40 years. With a rich family history in Central Texas, he attended Pease and Eanes Elementary schools, O’Henry Middle School and Westlake High. After graduating from Texas State University, he worked in banking before turning his talents to real estate investment and development. A founder of Sky Realty, Jeffrey now helps people buy and sell their homes through his company, Shelton Properties, started by his parents Joyce and Emmett Shelton in 1962. Jeffrey’s grandfather, Sam Dochen, immigrated to Austin from the Ukraine in 1908 and helped found the city’s first synagogue. Great-grandfather Thomas Jefferson Johnson settled in Driftwood around 1860 and founded the Johnson Institute. Great-grandfather Shelton moved to Texas in 1880. Father Emmett Shelton was a local lawyer and historian and the original developer of West Lake Hills, Texas.
Joe Pacheco
Board Member
Finance Expert
An Eastside Austin native, Joe grew up working in his father’s San Jacinto Cafe, a legendary hangout for local politicos just south of historic Scholz’s Beer Garden. He received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Texas at Austin.In 1984, while pursuing an MBA at Texas State University, Joe accepted an offer from the State Bar of Texas and became its first Director of Computer Services. He created the original computer system for the State Bar to serve an attorney membership of 64,000. For 30 years, Joe trail blazed a career in Information technology in both the public and private sectors, including seven public organizations within the State of Texas and the City of Austin. Joe has served on the Travis County Appraisal Review Board and as an officer of the Knights of Columbus Council of St. Vincent de Paul Church in Austin. Now retired, he enjoys travels with his wife of 50 years, Mary, and takes pride in the successes of their accomplished children and grandchildren.
Karen Sonleitner
Board Member
Journalist & Former County Commissioner
Karen spent more than 4 decades of her working life in high profile positions of public trust in Austin.
Her dad’s job with Shell took their family from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Cleveland, Westport CT — and then to Houston. She moved to Austin in 1973 to attend the University of Texas. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and graduated with honors in 1977. Karen became an award-winning broadcast journalist with KVUE-TV, covering city, county and state government for 18 years.
Karen left broadcasting in 1994 to run for public office, becoming part of the first Travis County Commissioners Court with women in the majority. During her three terms as Precinct Two Commissioner, she was a tireless advocate for the creation of four Metropolitan Parks and efforts to complete the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve. She co-sponsored the proposal that merged Austin Emergency Medical Services System into Austin/Travis County EMS. Karen served 12 years on the Downtown Austin Alliance Board of Directors and CAMPO, the regional board for transportation planning. After leaving the Court, she spent 10 years as a Senior Planner in the Travis County Auditor’s Office.
She is retired from full-time work but continues to volunteer on the Travis County Leadership Advisory Board for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension and with St. David’s Episcopal Church’s Café Divine. She's a Lifetime Member of the UT Ex-Students’ Association. Karen has lived in the Crestview neighborhood in Central Austin since 1982. She remains uninterested in any and all offers to sell her mid-century home.
Kathie Tovo
Board Member
Former City Council Member
Kathie served on the Austin City Council from 2011 to 2023. She was elected to the last at-large Council on June 18, 2011, and was re-elected and began serving on the first geographically elected City Council in January 2015. From 2015-2018, she served as Mayor Pro Tem. Prior to taking office, Tovo taught writing and interdisciplinary studies at the college level and worked at Humanities Texas, the state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. She holds both a master’s degree and a doctorate.
Lincoln Edwards
Board Member
Finance Expert
An experienced investment professional, Lincoln is the founder of Houndstooth Capital Management, LLC. He led Houndstooth through the acquisition and divestiture of over $500 million in residential and commercial real estate properties in and around Central Texas, as well as Houndstooth’s relative value volatility arbitrage fund. Prior to founding Houndstooth in 2013, Lincoln headed the acquisitions department for World Class Capital Group, an Austin-based private equity firm where he helped lead the fund to acquire over $100 million in assets.
Lori Duran
Board Member
Educator & Writer
With an educational background in history, Lori investigates and writes about stories of past events and people. This has been her life-long passion. She also serves as the chair of the Communications Committee, posting on social media for the organization. She previously served on the Oral History Committee and as Volunteer Coordinator. Lori is a part-time instructor for the University of Texas Informal Class program, specializing in history classes for intellectually disabled students. She is a dedicated alumna after getting her master’s degree from the University of Texas in 1986. In her spare time, she writes free-lance magazine articles and illustrated books about local history, including “Austin’s Travis Heights Neighborhood,” and “The University of Texas at Austin: The First One Hundred Years.”
Mark McCormick
Board Member
Communications Expert
Mark was raised in Western Illinois and earned a BA in Communications from the University of Iowa in 1991. He spent two decades on the West Coast producing television commercials, before changing direction in 2013 to help his wife (and hometown sweetheart), Heather, build her family office practice. In 2017, wisdom prevailed, and they relocated to the Capital of Texas where they established a qualified opportunity zone real estate investment practice focusing on residential developments.
With a family tree bearing Tennessee steam train drivers; Midwest farmers and doctors; an ancestor buried at Andersonville; and the commander of a medical company with Patton’s Third Army, Mark is an amateur historian who reads obsessively (if slowly) on a broad range of historical topics. Other interests include fitness, cooking, and the outdoors.
Mark is an active member of Tarrytown United Methodist Church and a lifetime member and Past Master of Santa Monica-Palisades Masonic Lodge in Santa Monica, CA. He lives in the Parker Lane neighborhood of Austin with Heather, two cats and his Labrador, Audrey.
Mike Tolleson
Board Member
Entertainment Lawyer
Mike is a past chair of the State Bar of Texas Entertainment and Sports Law Section and for 30 years was Director of the Entertainment Law Institute, an annual conference sponsored by the State Bar of Texas. He has been involved in much of the development of the music and film industries in Texas since 1970 and works closely with many clients and organizations throughout the entertainment industry as a consultant and entertainment attorney through his firm, Mike Tolleson & Associates. The firm specializes in the areas of music, film, computer games, book publishing, literary works, trademarks and copyright law.
Rosemary Morrow
Board Member
Educator
Rosemary is a sixth generation Texan born in Cuero, DeWitt County. She is a long-time social studies educator who taught at Porter Junior High and Austin High in Austin ISD before serving as the school district’s Social Studies Supervisor. She worked at the Texas Education Agency as Social Studies Director before teaching in the UTeach-Liberal Arts Program at The University of Texas. She is currently a social studies consultant. Rosemary holds bachelor and doctorate degrees from UT and a master’s degree from Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State University. She serves on the Travis County Historical Commission and on the board of Jourdan-Bachman Pioneer Farms.
Ruthann Rushing
Board Member
Oral History Committee
Active in AHCA since 2015, Native Austinite Ruthann actively works to identify important Austinites still living and capture their stories to add to the Austin History Center archives. She grew up in South Austin in a home with surrounding grounds that included horse pastures that later became part of Interstate Highway 35. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in interior design and married fellow UT student Roy Rushing. After working in design, Ruthann became a stay at home mom. Fascinated with history and following family tradition, she began community philanthropic activity as a volunteer and led the revitalization of AHCA's Oral History program, taking it to new heights before joining the Executive Committee.
Sue Meller
Board Member
Businesswoman
Sue was the long time Managing Director (40 years) of the Headliners Club in Downtown Austin. She left Headliners in 2021 and now works on numerous projects relating to nutrition and business. She was also the Managing Director of the Headliners Foundation, whose mission is to promote excellence in journalism.
Sue did not grow up in Texas but is the product of Lexington, MA where the Revolutionary War began in 1775. Growing up on the East Coast presented numerous opportunities to study and experience history. Sue received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas and an MBA from St. Edward's University (Distinguished Alumni).
Sue has served on numerous boards, including United Way, The Austin Project, Festival Institute at Round Top, Lance Armstrong Foundation, American Institute for Learning, Center for Public Policy and Political Studies, UT School of Human Ecology and the Austin Council on Foreign Affairs. Sue counts Sue McBee as one of her most important mentors and remembers many conversations about the early days of the Austin History Center.
Alicia Perez-Hodge
Board Member
City Administrator
Alicia came to Austin in 1990 from Boston, Massachusetts where she worked for the Commomwealth of Massachusettes as a Senior Municipal Management Officer. During that time she worked for Governor Micheal Dukakis as advance staff during the Presidential Campaign of 1988. Relocating to Massachusetts from Corpus Christi, Texas was both a mind expanding experience and culture shock for her. After the campaign, she was appointed as Chief Administrative Officer for the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts where she was responsible for the administration of a municipal and school budget of approximately $100 million dollars.
J. Fotini Margos
Board Member
Paralegal & Writer
Fotini is a fifth-generation Austinite. Her Dad grew up in the Deep Eddy area of Austin, where he and Fotini’s mother also raised their three girls. Fotini majored in Studio Art at the University of Texas at Austin and then attended the Southern Methodist University Paralegal School in Dallas, where she worked for the law firm of Gardere & Wynne as a real estate paralegal for 17 years. She then worked 18 years as a Legal Operations Advisor and contract negotiator in the Legal Department at Dell Technologies. In 1995, she was appointed by the State Bar of Texas, Board of Legal Specialization, to a Commission working with attorneys and other paralegals to develop the Real Estate specialty exam for paralegals in Texas. Fotini attended Mathews Elementary, O. Henry Jr. High and the old Austin High. She also worked after school as a page at Howson Branch Library. She is a traditionally published author, who writes suspense and commercial general fiction. Her first novel was published by a division of Harper Collins, and she has just finished her next novel, writing under the pen name J. F. Margos.
Carol Adams-Means
Honorary Board Member
Educator & Writer
Carol spent a lifetime as an educator ranging from primary school to higher education. She has spent considerable time teaching at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and has educated thousands of students who have successful careers in the fields of education, communication and technology. She has written on topics addressing social equity and social migration. A native Texan, her family has lived in the territory since 1834 when it was controlled by Mexico, two years before it became the Republic of Texas, and 11 years before it became a state.
Geoff Wool
Board Member
Communications Expert
Geoff spent his first 10 professional years in Austin working in the newsroom of KVUE-TV, where he gained an appreciation for the city, its people, and its history. Since 1991, Geoff has served as a communications specialist in state government - first with the Texas General Land Office, then with the Department of Family and Protective Services and now with the Health and Human Services Commission. Geoff has served on the AHCA board since 2012. He and his wife Veray have been married since 1981 and have three grown children.
Bryan hardeman
Board Member
Businessman
The Hardeman family has deep ties to Austin and Texas history. In the 1840's, Bryan's ancestor, Thomas Hardeman build this first permanent stone structure north of the Colorado River in Austin.
Recruited to the AHCA board by former mayor, Lee Cooke, Bryan Hardeman facilitated a $1 Million gift to the organization's endowment from The Hardeman Family Foundation. The donation ensures that generations will be able to have access to the history of Austin, Central Texas, and the State of Texas itself. "There is just so much about Austin I love, and our history is worth preserving," Hardeman says.
