Welcoming New Team Members

The Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House is pleased to welcome several new members to the Board and staff team in 2021. Read below to learn what led each of them to get involved in extending Harriet Beecher Stowe's legacy in Cincinnati and beyond.

New to the Board:

Kelly Blewett is an assistant professor of English at Indiana University East, where she also directs the writing program. She thinks more Cincinnatians should read Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book she did not encounter until graduate school, even though she grew up in Cincinnati. As part of the board at Stowe House, Kelly looks forward to making connections with other community organizations and helping to shape programming that will further the mission of the Stowe House and contribute to Cincinnati's book culture.

Prince Edward Johnson, II is a Cincinnati native from Evanston and a doctoral candidate at Miami University's Education and Leadership Program. He has done community organizing working through education abroad and locally. He hopes to center discussions on restorative justice and anti racism through Cincinnati's historical traditions of abolitionism in the city. 

​Cheli Reutter is associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, with specializations in the 19th century, race in American literature and in the medical humanities. She got involved so that she could expose students to Stowe's legacy, and so she could engage with community members in these literary and historical issues of Stowe's times and ours. More than 100 years since Stowe's death, the same broad topics and themes she and her family addressed, like race and gender equity, continue to call for our attention here in Cincinnati.  Cheli wants to highlight the Stowe House's public history projects, the Semicolon Book Club, lecture series and individual events, and hopes to support additional outreach, for example to the UC community and other college communities.​

New to the staff team:

Mary Casey-Sturk (Administrative and Development Associate) has been in the non-profit sector since 2002, much of that time working in a museum environment, and as a fundraiser since 2008. She says, "My passions are museums, social justice, and writing-in fact I have been writing professionally since 2007. When I first became involved with the Harriet Beecher Stowe House it was because I was drawn to her story, to the stories of those who lived within the walls, and to the challenges we still face.  What I most admire about Harriet is that she wrote for a living, to put food on the table and support her family, it’s that part of her story that most fascinates me, and I hope I can share this with many others."

​Michele Bricking (Scripps-Howard Communications Intern) is a senior at Northern Kentucky University studying marketing and history. She says, "Last semester, I took a class on the Underground Railroad which instilled in me a deep interest for Black History and activism.  I was fortunate to find out about the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in November when searching for internships. I was hired on to the team as a marketing intern and am enjoying learning more about Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionists, women's rights activists, and much more."