J. Brett Harvey, Martha Hartle Munsch Elected To Board of Trustees

J. Brett Harvey

Martha Hartle Munsch

At its June 26 annual meeting, the University of Pittsburgh Board of Trustees elected the following two candidates for membership on the board: J. Brett Harvey, president and CEO of CONSOL Energy Inc. and chair and CEO of CNX Gas Corporation, and alumnus Martha Hartle Munsch (A&S ‘70), a partner in the law firm Reed Smith.

As previously announced following the Nominating Committee’s meeting on June 11 and published in the June 22 Pitt Chronicle, Pitt alumnus Stephen R. Tritch (ENGR ‘71, KGSB ‘77), chair of the Westinghouse Electric Company and a Pitt trustee, was advanced as a candidate to serve as chair of the Board of Trustees, succeeding retired Chief Justice of Pennsylvania Ralph J. Cappy (A&S ‘65, LAW ‘68), who had served as board chair from 2003 until his death in May; Tritch was elected chair at the June 26 board meeting.

At the same board meeting, Suzanne W. Broadhurst, director of corporate giving for Eat ‘n Park Hospitality Group, and Robert M. Hernandez (A&S ‘66), chair of RTI International Metals Inc. and retired vice chair and CFO of USX Corporation, were re-elected as the board’s two vice chairs.

Re-elected to the board as trustees were Broadhurst; Charles R. Bunch, chair and CEO of PPG Industries; George A. Davidson Jr., (ENGR ‘61) retired chair of Dominion Resources Inc.; William S. Dietrich II (A&S ‘80G, ‘84G), managing director of The Dietrich Charitable Trusts; Lee B. Foster II, chair of the board of L.B. Foster Company; Bobbie Gaunt (ED ‘72), retired vice president, Ford Motor Company, and retired CEO, Ford of Canada; F. James McCarl III, president of the McCarl Group; Susan P. McGalla, past president and past chief merchandising officer of American Eagle Outfitters Inc.; Thomas H. O’Brien, retired chair of PNC Financial Services Group; Bryant J Salter (A&S ‘71), president and CEO of Business Diplomacy Consulting LLC; and Charles M. Steiner (BUS ‘63), of the Steiner Family Office.

These actions by the board were taken following the recommendations of its Nominating Committee, which had met earlier in the day. (See accompanying stories on trustees elected from regional campuses, a new Commonwealth Trustee, and trustees retiring from the board.)

Biographical information on Harvey and Munsch follows.

Prior to being named president and CEO of CONSOL Energy in 1998,

J. Brett Harvey was president and CEO of PacifiCorp Energy Inc., a subsidiary of PacifiCorp, one of the nation’s largest electric utility companies. In addition, he has served as vice president of the PacifiCorp Fuels Department and president and CEO of Interwest Mining Company.

Representing the fourth generation in a long lineage of coal miners, Harvey began his business career in 1979 with Kaiser Steel Company after earning a Bachelor of Science in Mining Engineering degree at the University of Utah. At Kaiser, he was a longwall supervisor at the company’s Sunnyside Mine in Utah; he advanced to mining superintendent in 1980 and became general manager of the mine in 1982. Two years later, he was elected vice president and general manager of Kaiser Coal of New Mexico.

By 1988, Harvey was vice president-fuels and mining at Utah Power & Light Company, which he had joined in 1986 as a director of technical sales; he then quickly rose through the ranks at PacifiCorp from serving as vice president-mining in 1990 to heading PacifiCorp Energy in 1995.

Harvey serves on the boards of Allegheny Technologies Incorporated and the Barrick Gold Corporation.

In addition, Harvey is a member of the coal industry advisory board of the International Energy Agency, board chair of the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association, and a member of the Leadership Council of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and The Conservation Fund, among other positions. He also is a member of the Executive Committee of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America, and a director and past chair of the Greater Pittsburgh Council of the Boy Scouts. He serves on the board of the Duquesne Club and is a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Chairman’s Council. The University of Utah bestowed its Distinguished Alumnus Award upon Harvey in 2008, the same year that Duquesne University gave him an honorary doctorate.

An alumnus of the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree Phi Beta Kappa in the School of Arts and Sciences in 1970, Martha Hartle Munsch was a prominent leader in her undergraduate days, serving as sports editor of The Pitt News and of the University’s yearbook, The Owl. She joined Reed Smith in 1973, the year she graduated from Yale Law School and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. In 1973, Munsch was one of only three women attorneys in the firm, and, after two years at Reed Smith, she joined the Pitt School of Law faculty for 2.5 years as an assistant professor teaching in the areas of civil procedure and legal process, employment discrimination, and employment standards; at that time she was the first and only woman on the full-time faculty of the law school. Munsch returned to Reed Smith in 1978 as a member of the Labor and Employment Law Group; she became a partner at Reed Smith in 1983, the first woman elected to partnership in Reed Smith’s Pittsburgh office.

In her law practice, Munsch concentrates on employment law matters of all kinds, with a particular emphasis on representation of higher education and other nonprofit clients as well as a diverse group of traditional business clients. She is a litigator and trial lawyer, having litigated hundreds of cases at both the trial and appellate levels in federal and state courts and administrative agencies.

A generous donor to Pitt’s current $2 billion capital campaign, Munsch has established the Martha Hartle Munsch Endowed Women’s Basketball Scholarship and named the Martha Hartle Munsch Head Women’s Basketball Coach’s Office in the Petersen Events Center.

Munsch previously served as a Pitt trustee from 1991 to 2002. During her tenure, she chaired the Academic Affairs/Libraries Committee and served on the Executive, Affirmative Action, Athletics, and Student Affairs committees. She was a member of the University Trust Board of Trustees, a member of the Chancellor Search Committee, a member of various ad hoc committees of the board, and a director of the Pittsburgh Applied Research Center. She continues to serve the University as a community representative to the Affirmative Action and Athletics committees of the Board of Trustees and as a member of the Boards of Visitors for Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences and School of Law.