Acclaimed artist & co-founder of multidisciplinary art collective Rainbow Serpent, Marques Redd is helping create the future of art by reviving ancient – & often erased – traditions. By uplifting Black LGBTQ creativity & culture through exploration of emerging technologies, innovative healing protocols, African cosmologies & multimedia art, he is sparking important dialogue & reconsideration of the Western artistic canon.

The Heinz Endowments is happy to welcome Sameera Fazili and Patrick Gallagher to our Board of Directors. Ms. Fazili is an economic policy expert who was Deputy Assistant to the President & Deputy Director of the White House’s National Economic Council in the Biden administration. Dr. Gallagher was University of Pittsburgh chancellor from 2014-23, where he is currently a professor in the university’s department of physics & astronomy.

Heinz Award for the Environment honoree Colette Pichon Battle joins Endowments President/host Chris DeCardy for a deep dive into the inequities of climate change in this episode of “We Can Be.” A lawyer and leader at environmental advocacy organization Taproot Earth, Colette shares how increasingly severe weather is affecting generational land ownership from Louisiana’s bayous to Appalachia and welcomes a special guest questioner: environmental legend and Love Canal clean-up hero Lois Gibbs. 

The Endowments is happy to welcome Diane Hughley as executive assistant to the president. Ms. Hughley’s extensive foundation and nonprofit experience includes positions at Jewish Healthcare Foundation, Pressley Ridge, Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, and Arabella Advisors in Washington D.C. She brings to the Endowments team her deep and long-held commitment to serving individuals and communities.

The $10 million Pittsburgh Cultural Treasures Initiative (PCTI), launched by the Endowments and the Ford and POISE foundations, is wrapping up its grantmaking with a collection of grants to 50 Black arts organizations, artist collectives and individual artists. The awards totaling $505,000 mark the first time individual artists have been direct recipients of PCTI funding.

The Heinz Endowments has announced $9.3 million in grants to 35 organizations whose work focuses on confronting climate change, reducing adverse environment-related health effects and improving equitable access to healthy food in the region. The grants advance nearly 30 years of environment and health advocacy by the Endowments and are informed by recent research supported by the foundation that identifies areas of critical need in the region’s climate, air and water quality, and food security sectors.