OHMAR is a voluntary, tax-exempt non-profit, which is governed by an elected Board of Officers and at-large members. The current Board of Officers as of 2023 comprises:

Anna F. Kaplan
President

Anna F. Kaplan is an independent historian and oral historian whose work focuses on issues of race, memory, and historical narratives. She serves as the President of Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region and Co-Chair of the Oral History Association’s Diversity Committee. She has worked on oral history projects with the Archives of American Art and the National Park Service, exhibits and walking tours with multiple Smithsonian Institution museums, and helped establish the DC Oral History Collaborative supporting local community projects throughout Washington, DC. Her current projects include a book manuscript about the memory of the University of Mississippi’s desegregation and a research project on Black women’s labors in establishing oral history programs or centers in the US. She also teaches courses on US history and oral history at American University and UDC. Recently, Anna published the article “Cultivating Supports while Venturing into Interviewing During COVID-19” in the Oral History Review and organized the virtual panel “In Our Own Words: Deaf Perspectives in Oral History and Public History” sponsored by the National Council on Public History, the Drs. John S. & Betty J. Schuchman Deaf Documentary Center at Gallaudet University, the Public History Program at American University, and the Oral History Association. She is also the recipient of the 2020-2021 Study the South research fellowship from the University of Mississippi and a participant of the 2021 NEH Summer Institute “The New Deal Era’s Federal Writers’ Project: History, Politics, and Legacy.”

Owen Rogers
Vice President and Communications Director

Owen Rogers is a Public Historian and Liaison Specialist at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. His work with the Veterans History Project builds national Library connections through community oral history project outreach, programs, and the development of inclusive training materials.

Rogers is the Vice President and Communications Director for the Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region organization with prior service as an At-Large Board Member from 2017 – 2021. He also serves on the National Council of Public History Government Historians Committee and his project experience includes CT Humanities’ Connecticut History Online, the Central Connecticut State University Veterans History Project, the Yale University-New Haven Preservation Trust’s New Haven Oral History Project, and the D.C. Public Library People’s Archive. He received a Master of Arts degree in Public History from Central Connecticut State University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of Connecticut. Rogers is a 2020 graduate of the Library’s Leadership Development Program, a 12-month competency based training program for employees from diverse backgrounds that culminated in a supervisory detail at the Congressional Research Service’s Knowledge Services Group.

Catherine Mayfield
Secretary

Catherine Mayfield is Associate Director of Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Maryland, College Park, and was previously the France-Merrick Director of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library at the Maryland Center for History and Culture. A Certified Archivist, Catherine’s work has centered around growing access to collections, including oral history. Catherine gained a particular passion for oral history while managing the oral history collections of the Mill Valley Public Library in Northern California. Her work has included the creation of guidelines for oral history processing and interviewing, and increasing accessibility to oral history collections in person and online. Catherine enjoys working with narrators and interviewers, preserving stories that may otherwise be neglected and marginalized, and using the power of lived experience to engage communities with history. Catherine is active in the local historical and cultural community, and is a member of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, the Society of American Archivists, and the Oral History Association (OHA). Catherine served as the Local Arrangements Co-Chair for OHA’s 2020 Annual Meeting and is OHA’s Membership Committee chair.

David J. Caruso
Treasurer

David J. Caruso served as an At-Large Board Member, Vice President, and President of OHMAR; he is currently the organization’s Treasurer. David is the director of the Science History Institute’s Center for Oral History, working on numerous oral-history-based projects, including those that focus on the role that presidential science advisors play in science and technology policy in the United States (NSF-funded), on immigration and science and engineering (NHPRC-funded), on the relationship between science and disability, on the ways in which LGBTQ scientists and engineers navigate professional structures, and on minorities in science and engineering. Caruso also conducts the center’s biannual Oral History Training Institute, a week-long workshop designed to introduce historians to the oral history methodology and is the co-editor of the Oral History Association’s journal, the Oral History Review. David received his doctoral degree in science and technology studies from Cornell University, where he worked on the history of American military medicine before, during, and after World War I and on the creation, dissemination, and use of automated external defibrillators in the mid- to late 20th century, and he received his undergraduate degree in history of science, medicine, and technology from Johns Hopkins University.

Jillian Decker Fyfe
Development Director

Jillian Decker Fyfe, CFRE, currently serves as the Director of Development for OHMAR. Jillian is the Director of Development and Communications for the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit, NJ. Jillian’s research interests include asset framing, authentic storytelling, material culture, art-in-healing, and arts education. Jillian’s research has been presented at various international conferences, taking her to Greece, England, Spain, and, most recently, Argentina.

Lucas Wilson
At-Large Board Member

Lucas is the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Calgary. He holds graduate degrees from McMaster University, Vanderbilt University, and Florida Atlantic University. His academic work has appeared or will appear in Modern Language Studies, Canadian Jewish Studies, Flannery O’Connor Review, Journal of Jewish Identities, and Studies in Jewish American Literature and in edited collections published by The MLA, SUNY Press, The University of Alabama Press, and DIO Press. He is currently working on a book about the children of Holocaust survivors (under contract with Rutgers University Press); an edited collection about the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors (under contract with Lexington Books); and an edited collection of stories of conversion therapy survivors (Jessica Kinsley Publishers). His public-facing work has appeared in The Advocate, Queerty, LGBTQ Nation, and Religion Dispatches, among other venues.

John Horan
At-Large Board Member

John Horan is the Oral Historian for the State Archives of North Carolina based in Raleigh, North Carolina. He received a master’s degree in History with a Museum Studies Specialization from Cleveland State University (CSU). At CSU, he began understanding the craft of oral history through the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities where he spearheaded and consulted on several Cleveland Regional Oral History Projects. He is also a PhD candidate in the field of Public History from Arizona State University (ASU). While completing his coursework at ASU, John Horan honed his abilities as an oral historian through his work as the Legislative Oral Historian for the State Library, Archives, and Public Records of Arizona. In 2019, he created a commemorative oral history project for the Sixtieth Anniversary of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

Carol Fowler
At-Large Board Member

Carol Fowler is currently the Assistant Curator at the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey. Her oral history career began when she worked as an Associate Producer of a college television show titled Triumphant Spirit Series: America’s WWII Generation Speaks. She then began conducting veteran interviews with History Mentor Paul Zigo and his project, The Center for WWII Studies and Conflict Resolution, and was hired to help establish an oral history program at the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey in 2001. Over the years since, Carol has conducted over 600 interviews with veterans from World War II to the present, has been commended by the Library of Congress.

Meave Warnock Sheehan
At-Large Board Member

Meave Warnock Sheehan first learned about the field of oral history while completing an M.A. in Liberal Studies (2014).  She graduated from the Oral History Master of Arts program at Columbia University, better known as OHMA, in 2023.  During her time at OHMA, Meave curated an audio exhibit on longshoremen/ dockworkers in the New York City area and completed a thesis about auto workers at a “Big Three” auto plant that closed during the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Meave has had jobs in local journalism, education, and government.  In addition to her board member position with OHMAR, Meave recently joined the Museum of Makers + Innovators (MOMI), which seeks to bring a new kind of museum experience to children and visitors of all ages.  Additionally, in 2023, Meave was selected to serve on the awards committee for the Lane Award, given by the Society for American Archivists annually to an archivist who works in the field of religious studies.

She plans to continue exploring extant audio collections in future projects.  Meave’s research interests include local history, labor history, radio history, and podcasting.

Sarah Schneider
At-Large Board Member

Sarah Schneider is a public and oral historian who serves as a Program Associate in the Center for Oral History at the Science History Institute. She led a project that made 70 oral history interviews with scientists who immigrated to the United States in the 20th century easier to access online. She has a background studying migration in the context of the Holocaust; her Master’s thesis and digital project focused on the migrations of Jewish refugee children fleeing Nazism via France. Sarah holds a BA in American Studies from Brandeis University and an MA in History (Public History track) from the University of Central Florida. In addition to serving as an At-Large Member of the OHMAR Board, she is on the Conference Committee for the 2024 Oral History Association (OHA) annual meeting.