SIA 2026 Elections – Candidate Bios
Below are biographies and photos for this year’s SIA election. Voting will be conducted primarily online. In advance of the election, SIA members will receive information about how to cast their ballots digitally.
CANDIDATE FOR VICE PRESIDENT (2-year term, you will vote for 1)
David A. Vago
Dave Vago has been Vice President of the SIA since 2024, following an earlier board term from 2011 to 2014. His recent activities include collaborating with John Mayer to coordinate adoption of SIA’s first strategic plan since the early 2000s. Dave has been active with industrial heritage stewardship endeavors for more than 25 years. He is a 2005 graduate of the Industrial Archeology master’s program at Michigan Tech, and has worked in nonprofit leadership, strategic planning, fundraising, preservation policy development, project management, place-based economic growth, history research, and museum programming and design. Dave’s work has helped a range of organizations in mining, railroad, milling, manufacturing, labor, and military history across the United States. He currently supervises the interpretive, curatorial, and preservation compliance programs at Thomas Edison National Historical Park. As President, Dave looks forward to further strengthening the SIA through opportunities in programming, fundraising, and membership and capacity growth.
CANDIDATES FOR VICE PRESIDENT (2-year term, you will vote for 1)
Mary Habstritt
Mary Habstritt has been Museum Director at Lilac Preservation Project since 2009, overseeing interpretation and restoration of a 93-year-old steam-powered former Coast Guard Cutter. She previously worked as a freelance historical consultant researching, interpreting and advocating for industrial and maritime sites and promoting the study of industrial heritage in New York and New Jersey. Mary is the 2025 recipient of the SIA’s General Tools Award for Contributions to Industrial Archeology. She became President of SIA’s Roebling Chapter for the second time in 2024 and she was President of the SIA from 2008 to 2010. Mary is running for Vice President, an office she has never held, to be an integral part of implementing the SIA’s recently developed strategic plan.
Jacob Kaplan
A member of the SIA since 2006, I was first elected to the board in 2020. As a Chicago native, I grew up with a particular interest in the industrial history of the Chicago region. Because of this passion, I co-founded Forgotten Chicago in 2007, a group that spent years researching and offering tours of overlooked aspects of Chicago including its rich industrial history.
I am particularly proud of my work as conference committee chair for the successful 2019 SIA conference in Chicago. As a current SIA board member and in my role as SIA Events Committee Co-Chair, I am working hard to help plan future conferences and fall tours.
If elected Vice President, I will work closely with incoming President Vago and the entire board and staff to continue implementing our strategic plan and will help find ways to attract new members and incorporate fresh ideas so the SIA grows and prospers into the future.Blank Space
Tony Meadow
Tony joined the SIA in 1997 to help start a California chapter, later becoming chapter president, serving for ten years. After retiring four years ago, he began working with the SIA board to support the idea of Special Interest Groups, and then to create the Iron and Steel Heritage Forum, the SIA’s first SIG. He has been organizing monthly talks on iron and steel since July 2024. Tony participated in the strategic planning process and is on more than one committee to implement our plans. He strongly believes that we need more activities focused on member interests such as bridges and infrastructure. He agrees with the strategic plan that our society should be the leader of the industrial heritage community in North America because there is no other organization that can do this. Toward that end he is finding ways for our society to establish relationships with industrial heritage museums.
CANDIDATES FOR BOARD OF DIRECTORS (3-year term, you will vote for 3)
Sean Gohman
Sean Gohman is the Executive Director of the Keweenaw National Historical Park Advisory Commission. The seven-member commission serve at the request of the Secretary of the Interior and is mandated to operate in support of the varied activities of Keweenaw National Historical Park, while acting as a conduit between the park and its neighboring communities.
Gohman has a PhD in Industrial Heritage and Archeology at Michigan Technological University. Gohman has been researching Michigan’s Keweenaw for 18 years, focusing primarily on the earliest phases of activity during the mid-eighteenth century. Gohman’s other research interests include landscape perspectives of extraction, historical mapping, the appreciation of waste linked to industrial practice, as well as the historic connection between industry and sport. Gohman has completed several archaeological and heritage management projects related to the Keweenaw and still occasionally teaches Copper Country History at Michigan Technological University.
Meg Kindelin
Meg Kindelin, AIA is the President of JLK Architects in Chicago. Her work includes preservation and restoration of libraries, education buildings, theaters, and religious buildings, and also industrial buildings and infrastructure such as bascule bridges, steel & concrete fixed bridges, canals, aqueducts, locks, train and transit stations, gasworks, and power stations. She has a BS in Cultural Anthropology, an MA in Architectural History and Theory, and a Master of Architecture, Design. Several conference presentations this year focus on preservation standards for working historic structures using Chicago Bascule Bridges as case studies.
Meg founded the Chicago “Big Shoulders” Chapter of SIA in 2024/2025 and is becoming involved with the Bridges and Infrastructure Group. She is excited to grow into a position with SIA and help add new members and develop connections with other organizations.
Connie Thatcher
Connie Thatcher joined the SIA and the Roebling Chapter in 2010 and makes attending each Annual Conference a personal priority. She has a strong interest in our country’s industrial heritage and deep appreciation for the industrial processes that shaped and improved our lives. Connie retired from an internationally-focused banking career some years ago. She works part-time at The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York as a genealogy researcher and archival assistant and volunteers at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in the library and archives. In prior roles at the Garden, she was a docent and served as head of the Auxiliary. Connie currently serves on the boards of her apartment building and of an organization that encourages tree planting in the neighborhood. She previously served on the boards of local chapters of two national women’s organizations, of a women’s shelter, and of a not-for-profit which seeks to reduce poverty through community-led initiatives. Connie welcomes the opportunity to share her business and not-for-profit experience with the SIA board.
Lesa Thornton
Lesa Thornton developed an interest in industrial heritage during a hard hat engineering tour of the Hoover Dam at the age of 13. While completing her degree in industrial engineering with a system safety specialty from Texas A&M University, she discovered the IA Journal. After working as a forensic safety professional, obtaining additional education, and completing a midlife career change to emergency medicine clinical pharmacy, Lesa continued to maintain an interest in IA and read the journal. She attended her first SIA conference in Houston in 2017 and has regularly attended conferences and fall tours ever since.
Lesa has performed duties similar to those of this board while serving on, and recently chairing, the University of Houston College of Pharmacy Dean’s Advisory Council.
Lesa aspires to join the SIA board to actively work to preserve strategic sites and to tell the diverse stories of the men and women who built these sites and developed the skills that created America’s rich industrial heritage.
NOMINATIONS COMMITTEE (3-year term, you will vote for 1)
Bode Morin
Bode Morin is a 30+ year member of SIA. He sat on the SIA board, coordinated eight conferences and fall tours both as a rank and file member and as conference and tours coordinator, and inaugurated the Southern Chapter. He is a past US national representative to TICCIH and currently sits on the TICCIH board serving as North American Secretary. Bode has been a HAER historian, curator, and project manager for significant historic sites in Birmingham, Alabama, and Detroit. After finishing a PhD in Industrial Heritage from MTU, he has been director of Eckley Miners’ Village and the Anthracite Heritage Museum for the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in the hard coal region of the country.
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Tim Tumberg
Tim Tumberg is an archaeologist with the US Army Corps of Engineers. He presented a paper in Sacramento in 1996 and has attended all but three conferences since (not quite Pat Malone, but…). His most vivid conference memories include Robert Vogel teaching him how to eat lobster on the dinner cruise in Maine and seeing Ed Rutsch plant a kiss on his wife in front of a full banquet hall. Tim was on organizing committees for the 2013 St. Paul and 2024 Minneapolis conferences and guided the incredibly popular 2024 St. Paul tour. Tim has served on the Newcomers Committee, Membership Committee, Norton/Vogel Prize Committee, and Chaired the General Tools Committee in 2024-2025. He was on the SIA Board 2022-2025 and is currently the Great Northern Chapter President. Tim’s experience helps him understand organizational needs and he would be honored to help identify future SIA leaders.
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