Trustees & Advisory Board
Trustees
John Delikanakis
John Delikanakis is a commercial litigation partner in the Las Vegas and Reno offices of Snell & Wilmer LLP. His love of the Hudson Valley began as an undergraduate at Vassar College where he studied history and was a founding member of the Vassar Crew. Since then, John has gathered extensive volunteer experience, including service as Chairman of the Board of the Southern Nevada Economic Development Authority, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Southern Nevada, and service as a member of the Executive Committee of the Salvation Army of Southern Nevada. John’s other charitable activities are focused on assisting students from traditionally underrepresented communities towards a career in the law.
John is a seasoned collector of 17th and 18th century American, English, and Dutch portraiture, and avid student of history. For the last seventeen years he and his spouse have split their time between Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Hudson Valley.
Alexandra Anderson
CCHS Vice President Alexandra C. Anderson is an art critic, writer, and editor. She worked for many magazines, including The New York Review of Books, Vogue, and Esquire. Recently Ally was President Emeritus of AICA/USA, has served on the Board of Governors of Colby College and as a trustee for the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is currently is an academic member of the MOMA’s Contemporary Arts Council and of its Library Trustee Committee, and lives in Kinderhook NY, where she serves as an alternate for the Village Zoning Board of Appeal and belongs to Elks Lodge #2530.
Eric Blair-Joannou
Passionate about and active in historic preservation, Eric is a commercial and industrial landlord who also serves as a trustee of a number of museums and cultural institutions in New York State, including Historic Hudson Valley in Westchester County, which stewards van Cortlandt Manor, Washington Irving’s Sunnyside, and Kykuit – the Rockefeller Estate, among others; and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, where, on the Capital Projects Committee, he helped raise over $32 million in public funding for the Museum’s transformational renovation.
Sharon Rae
Sharon lives in Kinderhook with her beloved corgi Rosie. She is excited to share her event planning and execution experience with CCHS. Before retiring to Columbia County in 2019, she spent 40 years in New York and London at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, The First Boston Corporation, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs leading Corporate Event and Client Entertainment teams.
John Carroll
John Carroll, resides in Malden Bridge, New York, served for many years on the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Mental and Physical Disabilities and he has written and lectured extensively on the legal rights of people with disabilities. John has been a member of the Board of Camphill Ghent since 2013 and served most recently as its president, and has also served as a volunteer firefighter, EMT, treasurer and vice-president of the Tri-Village Fire Company, as president of the Rider’s Mills and CCHS, the Old Chatham Hunt Club, and as vice-president of the Shaker Museum and Library in Old Chatham, NY and has served on the boards of various not-for-profit and civic organizations in Columbia County, New York.
Melissa Davis
Melissa Davis has over twenty years of experience in PR. She has worked as a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, covering New York Fashion Week, identifying and interpreting trends, and generating story ideas. Melissa has been featured in many media outlets and has written and self-published the award-winning, This is Oakland: A Guide to the City’s Most Interesting Places. Melissa founded Ruby Press in 2001 and her husband Sam Davis joined Ruby Press as her partner in 2003. Melissa is based in a charming village in upstate New York and continues to work with clients across the globe.
Henry Livingston III
Henry is a decendent of the Livingston Family of Clermont State Historic Site in New York. Seven generations of Livingstons resided at Clermont before donating the estate, including the remaining mansion and grounds, to the state of New York. Henry is currently a principle at Livingston Associates and serves on the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary. He has been a significant supporter of CCHS for over 15 years.
Mary Rynerson
Mary Rynerson (nee Tonry) grew up in New York City, studied acting at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, and took turns at both acting and directing before moving to the West Coast. After several years as a hospital staffer, Mary responded to the need for patient language assistance and founded Pacific Interpreters. The company, which earned the title “gold standard for healthcare interpreting,” expanded nationally, not only setting benchmarks for quality and service but giving critical support to the industry in its formative years. Mary recently retired to Kinderhook, where she and her family spent many happy summers growing up, and settled in the historic Tory House (1758) at the south end of town on Route 9.
Diane Smook
Diane Smook is an award-winning photographer based in Kinderhook. She graduated from Tufts University and worked for many years in New York City as a producer in film and video for RCA VideoDiscs and various independent production companies. She served as a trustee of the Art Creation Foundation for Children based in Jacmel, Haiti, where she held photography workshops for the groups’ teenagers. Her publications include the books Shaping a President: Sculpting for the Roosevelt Memorial and Love and War: The World War II Letters of Arthur Smook.
Nora Tuttle
Nora is retired teacher and nurse, and is a former officer of the Friends of Lindenwald Old Chatham Hunt Club. She has a masters degree in Health Education from Russell Sage College.
Alex Van Alen
Alex is a young restauranteur and the founder of Kinderhook’s own Dyad, a favorite for locals and visitors alike. Alex is the Financial Strategy Advisory to Urynx, and also a designer of table-top games. He recently published two games, Nightfall and Dead By Lead, is currently working on a game based on the Legend of Sleepy Hallow. Alex is an eleventh generation descendant of the Van Alen family whose original dutch house from 1737 is one CCHS’s historic properties.
André Hoek
André worked in the Netherlands and upstate New York as an architect, specializing in contemporary and historical dutch architecture, and taught at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, Netherlands.
André served on the CCHS Board of Trustees from 2019-2021. He dedicated himself to helping us preserve our Dutch history and heritage. He was loved by all and will be greatly missed.
Advisors
Van Calhoun
Van is retired from careers of architectural design and construction, business development and project management, and national wholesale mortgage banking, first inception automated underwriting and risk assessment.
He is interested in history and how it impacts and evolves into the future, and advocates the protection of our natural resources, air, oceans, rivers, farmland, forests and species diversity as our most important task as humans on this earth.
Lisa Fludd-Smith
Lisa is co-Founder and Deputy Executive Director of the African American Archive of Columbia County. She is a lay historian and researcher whose focus is on slavery and freedom in Columbia County, NY, from the 17th to 19th centuries. Using a combination of genealogical study, historical data, and social and cultural observation, she works to build a more informed vision of the Black experience in the Hudson Valley. Lisa is, herself, descended from a family that has lived in Columbia County, where her ancestors were originally enslaved, since at least the mid-1700s, and she is currently writing a book about that history.Nicholas Haylett
Nicholas is an artist and a transplant Brit living in New York City and Kinderhook NY. He has supported CCHS over the last 12 years.
Ted Hilscher
Ted was a professor of Humanities at Columbia Greene County College for 28 years, and was awarded professor emeritus status by College Board of Trustees in 2021. He previously served as the school’s legal counsel for 13 years. Hilscher retired from the school at the start of the Spring 2021 semester.
During his tenure at Columbia-Greene, he served as co-division chair of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Department, helped create a commemorative video to mark the college’s 40th anniversary, and assisted the college library in creating its first digital collection, significantly increasing its accessibility to a larger, virtual community.
Tim Husband
Dr. Timothy Husband is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is significant contributor to the institution’s Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, having dedicated over four decades to unearthing the riches of the medieval world.
His dedication to sharing his knowledge extends to lectures and educational programs, ensuring the legacy of medieval art continues to inspire future generations
Peter Jung
Peter came to the Hudson Valley 43 years ago from Minnesota. He deals in traditional American art in Hudson, and has served on the Board at Olana State Historic site, the Hudson Opera House, and the Hudson Planning Board.
John Knott
John Knott is the current president and design director of Quadrille. Under his leadership, Quadrille has grown into a renowned fabric manufacturer, recognized for its high-quality textiles, diverse designs, and commitment to craftsmanship.
John has renovated properties in Hudson, Kinderhook and throughout the area, and is a wealth of knowledge on the history of Columbia County and is a long-time supporter of CCHS.
Bob Peduzzi
Bob Peduzzi is a past president of CCHS and served on the board as a trustee for 11 years. He is a 1958 graduate of Ichabod Crane Central
School, 1963 graduate of the University of Tennessee, and 1966 graduate of Columbia Law School. He practiced law in New York City for many
years before retiring to live in Kinderhook. With the arrival of his youngest grandson, the Peduzzi family has now lived in Columbia County for the
past five generations.
David Pickett
After a career in aerospace across the country, David Pickett has ended up right back where he started in New York. He has three degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and over the years he has served on the board of the Renton Civic Theatre, helped save historic NYC electric locomotives, been a scout leader and served on a variety of committees. His current interests focus on maintaining his historic home, solving IT and database issues for historical societies as well as serving with the Valatie Fire Department and Climate Smart committee.
Brenda Shufelt
Brenda is the History Room Coordinator of the Hudson Area Library. After a career as a teacher, librarian, and grant writer in a public school in Harlem, Brenda moved back to her roots in Columbia County and began working at the library as program director. She is from Columbia County and now lives in Claverack. Brenda believes our county’s history in many ways is a microcosm of the history of our country with interesting people, events, lots of twists and turns and lessons to learn from.
Trustees
John Delikanakis is a commercial litigation partner in the Las Vegas and Reno offices of Snell & Wilmer LLP. He has extensive volunteer experience, including Chairman of the Board for the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance and Chair of the Board of Directors for the Big Brothers and Sisters of Southern Nevada.
John is a seasoned collector of 18th and 19th century American portraiture, and avid student of history. For the last seventeen years he has split his time between Las Vegas and the Hudson Valley.
Passionate about and active in historic preservation, Eric is a commercial and industrial landlord who also serves as a trustee of a number of museums and cultural institutions in New York State, including Historic Hudson Valley in Westchester County, which stewards van Cortlandt Manor, Washington Irving’s Sunnyside, and Kykuit – the Rockefeller Estate, among others; and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, where, on the Capital Projects Committee, he helped raise over $32 million in public funding for the Museum’s transformational renovation.
Sharon lives in Kinderhook with her beloved corgi Rosie. She is excited to share her event planning and execution experience with CCHS. Before retiring to Columbia County in 2019, she spent 40 years in New York and London at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, The First Boston Corporation, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs leading Corporate Event and Client Entertainment teams.
John Carroll, resides in Malden Bridge, New York, served for many years on the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Mental and Physical Disabilities and he has written and lectured extensively on the legal rights of people with disabilities.
John has been a member of the Board of Camphill Ghent since 2013 and served most recently as its president, and has also served as a volunteer firefighter, EMT, treasurer and vice-president of the Tri-Village Fire Company, as president of the Rider’s Mills and CCHS, the Old Chatham Hunt Club, and as vice-president of the Shaker Museum and Library in Old Chatham, NY and has served on the boards of various not-for-profit and civic organizations in Columbia County, New York.
Melissa Davis has over twenty years of experience in PR. She has worked as a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, covering New York Fashion Week, identifying and interpreting trends, and generating story ideas. Melissa has been featured in many media outlets and has written and self-published the award-winning, This is Oakland: A Guide to the City’s Most Interesting Places.Melissa Davis has over twenty years of experience in PR. She has worked as a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, covering New York Fashion Week, identifying and interpreting trends, and generating story ideas. Melissa has been featured in many media outlets and has written and self-published the award-winning, This is Oakland: A Guide to the City’s Most Interesting Places.
Melissa founded Ruby Press in 2001 and her husband Sam Davis joined Ruby Press as her partner in 2003.
Melissa is based in a charming village in upstate New York and continues to work with clients across the globe.Melissa founded Ruby Press in 2001 and her husband Sam Davis joined Ruby Press as her partner in 2003.
Melissa is based in a charming village in upstate New York and continues to work with clients across the globe.
Mary Rynerson (nee Tonry) grew up in New York City, studied acting at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, and took turns at both acting and directing before moving to the West Coast. After several years as a hospital staffer, Mary responded to the need for patient language assistance and founded Pacific Interpreters. The company, which earned the title “gold standard for healthcare interpreting,” expanded nationally, not only setting benchmarks for quality and service but giving critical support to the industry in its formative years. Mary recently retired to Kinderhook, where she and her family spent many happy summers growing up, and settled in the historic Tory House (1758) at the south end of town on Route 9.
Nora is retired teacher and nurse, and is a former officer of the Friends of Lindenwald Old Chatham Hunt Club. She has a masters degree in Health Education from Russell Sage College.
Alex is a young restauranteur and the founder of Kinderhook’s own Dyad, a favorite for locals and visitors alike.
Alex is the Financial Strategy Advisory to Urynx, and also a designer of table-top games. He recently published two games, Nightfall and Dead By Lead, is currently working on a game based on the Legend of Sleepy Hallow.
Alex is an eleventh generation descendant of the Van Alen family whose original dutch house from 1737 is one CCHS’s historic properties.
André worked in the Netherlands and upstate New York as an architect, specializing in contemporary and historical dutch architect, and taught at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, Netherlands
André served on the CCHS Board of Trustees from 2019-2021. He dedicated himself to preserving our Dutch history and heritage. He was loved by all and will be missed.
Advisors
Van is retired from careers of architectural design and construction, business development and project management, and national wholesale mortgage banking, first inception automated underwriting and risk assessment.
He is interested in History and how it impacts and evolves into the future, and advocates the protection of our natural resources, air, oceans, rivers, farmland, forests and species diversity as our most important task as humans on this earth.
Lisa is co-Founder and Deputy Executive Director of the African American Archive of Columbia County. She is a lay historian and researcher whose focus is on slavery and freedom in Columbia County, NY, from the 17th to 19th centuries. Using a combination of genealogical study, historical data, and social and cultural observation, she works to build a more informed vision of the Black experience in the Hudson Valley. Lisa is, herself, descended from a family that has lived in Columbia County, where her ancestors were originally enslaved, since at least the mid-1700s, and she is currently writing a book about that history.
Nicholas is an artist and spends his time in Kinderhook NY and New York City. He worked in a law firm and aspiring actor and recording.
Dr. Timothy Husband is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is significant contributor to the institution’s Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, having dedicated over four decades to unearthing the riches of the medieval world.
His dedication to sharing his knowledge extends to lectures and educational programs, ensuring the legacy of medieval art continues to inspire future generations
Peter came to the Hudson Valley 43 years ago from Minnesota. He deals in traditional American art in Hudon, and has served on the Board at Olana State Historic site, the Hudson Opera House, and the Hudson Planning Board.
John Knott is the current president and design director of Quadrille. Under his leadership, Quadrille has grown into a renowned fabric manufacturer, recognized for its high-quality textiles, diverse designs, and commitment to craftsmanship.
John has renovated properties in Hudson, Kinderhook and throughout the area, and is a wealth of knowledge on the history of Columbia County and is a long-time supporter of CCHS.
Bob Peduzzi a past president of CCHS and served on the board as a trustee for 11 years. He is a 1958 graduate of Ichabod Crane Central School, a 1963 graduate of the University Of Tennessee, and a 1966 graduate of Columbia Law School. He currently lives in Kinderhook with is wife, photographer Diane Smook. With the arrival of his last grandson the Peduzzi family has now lived in Columbia County for the past 5 generations.
After a career in aerospace across the country, David Pickett has ended up right back where he started in New York. He has three degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and over the years he has served on the board of the Renton Civic Theatre, helped save historic NYC electric locomotives, been a scout leader and served on a variety of committees. His current interests focus on maintaining his historic home, solving IT and database issues for historical societies as well as serving with the Valatie Fire Department and Climate Smart committee.
Brenda is the History Room Coordinator of the Hudson Area Library. After a career as a teacher, librarian, and grant writer in a public school in Harlem, Brenda moved back to her roots in Columbia County and began working at the library as program director. She is from Columbia County and now lives in Claverack. Brenda believes our county’s history in many ways is a microcosm of the history of our country with interesting people, events, lots of twists and turns and lessons to learn from.
DEI Statement
Columbia County Historical Society is committed to fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment that celebrates the rich tapestry of our community’s history. We recognize that our shared past is shaped by individuals from various backgrounds, perspectives and experiences, and we are dedicated to reflecting that diversity in all aspects of our organization.
We acknowledge that achieving true diversity, equity, and inclusion is an ongoing process that requires continuous learning, self-reflection, and adaptation to ensure that our practices evolve with the changing needs of our community.
We are committed to promoting diversity and inclusion in our leaders, members, staff, and patrons, in our programming, both in content and curatorial participation, and in the stories we tell about our communities, Columbia County, New York and beyond.
We welcome board submissions! Please email lisa@cchsny.org.
Join CCHS
Our strength lies in the recognition of the diversity of our community, both past and present, and the commitment to deliver our mission in rich and pertinent ways to those diverse and contemporary audiences. Join us and discover how history can help us better understand ourselves, our past and current events in the world at large.