Elected Members

President: Elizabeth Nelson

Elizabeth Nelson and her husband, Nick Alberti have lived on Capitol Hill since 1985. She joined the Board in 2005 serving three terms as an At-Large member before becoming Community Relations Chair in 2010, webmaster in 2014 and President in 2016.  Elizabeth is a prolific knitter with an interest in arts education. She volunteers at Maury ES and organizes exhibits for the Hill Center’s Young Artists Gallery. She also serves as Treasurer of Trees for Capitol Hill, Chair of the North Lincoln Park Neighborhood Assn. and a member of the ANC 6A Transportation and Public Space Committee. She’s committed to preserving Capitol Hill’s charm and neighborhood feel and to maintaining public space as a community asset.

Past President: Lisa Dale Jones

Lisa Dale Jones and her husband Gary have lived on Capitol Hill since January 2010 when they moved to DC from Boston – where they also lived in a one hundred-year- old home. Lisa is interested in history and historic preservation. She was co- editor of the CHRS newsletter from January 2011 until taking on the role of President in June 2014. While President, she planned CHRS’s 60th Anniversary celebration in January, 2015 and worked on the team that produced the inaugural Dick Wolf Memorial Lecture in March, 2015. Lisa has a background in journalism and for ten years was a radio producer for The Christian Science Monitor, winning the prestigious Gabriel Award. She is a public speaking and communications specialist, helping others confidently share their message in public.

First Vice-President: Janet Quigley

Janet Quigley has served on the CHRS Board since 2009, including two terms as President from 2012 to 2014 and subsequently in an At-Large position where she assists with the annual Capitol Hill House and Garden Tour.  Dedicated to preserving the residential nature of Capitol Hill, she previously served as an Advisory Neighborhood (ANC) Commissioner, Stanton Park Neighborhood Association (SPNA) Land Use Committee member, and Capitol Hill Coalition for Sensible Development Chair.  She was active in the effort to redevelop a vacant portion of the MedLink Hospital property (now BridgePoint) into an architecturally compatible apartment building in scale with the Stanton Park neighborhood.  After a civil service career with the Navy, bringing Armed Forces Radio and Television to ships at sea, she retired in 2016 to pursue interests in history and travel.  She has lived on Capitol Hill since 1995.

Second Vice-President: Tina May

Tina May moved to Capitol Hill in 1982 for an affordably-priced rental house with college friends and has lived here ever since. Soon thereafter, she and her husband Peter bought their first house in need of restoration. Working with little more than a subscription to the Old House Journal and a lot of patience, they completed that house, and then a second, and are now working on their third (the “gut job”). They have been members of CHRS since at least 2002—back in the days when a membership included a subscription to the OHJ. She joined the board in 2017 as an At-Large position. The Mays raised three sons in the middle of these renovations who not only survived the occasional lack of plumbing and more than a few splinters, but they actually became (sometimes) willing renovation workers before leaving to become engineers. Tina has been active in many local issues, especially neighborhood public schools and the Boy Scouts. She cares deeply about public institutions and the public realm. Tina works in the music business doing concert production.

Treasurer: Susan Oursler

Susan Oursler moved to Capitol Hill from Indiana in 1979. Over the past 30 years she and her husband, Richard Kasting, have owned and lovingly restored the 1912 home that they share with their two daughters. Susan has been an active volunteer for various Capitol Hill organizations including the North Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association and the Peabody, St. Peter, Maury and Capitol Hill Day schools. Susan retired from the Senate in 2014, where she served as the Chief Clerk of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As chief of the nonpartisan staff, Susan worked closely with the Senate Historian to preserve Senate and Committee records and to publish previously classified documents created in the 1960s and 1970s. She also provided input to the staff of the Architect of the Capitol on renovations of buildings in the Capitol complex and on landscaping of the Capitol grounds.

Secretary: Jim Thackaberry

Jim Thackaberry is a registered architect. He moved to Washington in 1974 to work for Harry Weese Associates, the Metro architect.  He has been both in private practice and government employment having concluded his career five years ago, after working many years as a project manager and staff architect for the District Department of Housing and Community Development. Upon arriving in the city, he settled on Capitol Hill and immediately loved living here.  He then bought the townhouse that he’s been slowly renovating and restoring. He joined the Restoration Society shortly after moving here and currently serves on the Preservation Design Review Committee, as he has for several years,  and greatly enjoys reviewing and commenting upon the many proposed projects in the Historic District.

At-Large Member: Patrick Lally

Patrick Lally is a native Washingtonian and has lived in the Stanton Park neighborhood with his wife and children for 34 years. Pat restored an 1891 townhouse in the new Swampoodle addition to the Capitol Hill Historic District (CHHD) and lives there with hhis wife and Children. He is currently serving in the office of Governor Larry Hogan after completing an appointment as Special Assistant in government affairs and communications at the National Transportation Safety Board. Prior to that, he ran the Congressional Affairs Division at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and directed Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Federal Affairs Office in Washington. An ardent preservationist, Lally has served on the boards of CHRS, the DC Preservation League, and Congressional Cemetery, and was a trustee of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City. Most recently, he worked on the successful campaign to expand the CHHD into his neighborhood.

At-Large Member: Michelle Carroll

Michelle Carroll began her love affair with DC when she came here from New York for college and eventually made it her home. She owns and operates her business, Pilliod Meeting Planning. She brings her grace and expertise in overcoming the complexities of the meeting planning process to her work with CHRS. Twice she has chaired the House Tour, including one year when she planned her daughter’s wedding to take place the same weekend! Due to her planning and organizational skills, it is second nature for her to undertake contract negotiations, deal with organizational structures and budgetary constraints, and adjust to last-minute changes. She is also a partner in N&M House Detectives, a house history company. She and her husband Dennis have lived on the Hill for 20 years.

At-Large Member: Beth Hague

Beth Hague grew up in a historic house in Maine.  Her lifelong appreciation of historic buildings, preservation, and community all contributed to her falling in love with Capitol Hill instantly when she arrived in Washington, DC in 1998.  Drawing on expertise from CHRS and the city, Beth led the 2016-2017 effort to establish the Emerald Street Historic District, where she has lived since 2002.  She has served on the CHRS Zoning Committee since 2017 and with the House Tour for the last couple of years.  Beth works at the State Department on China-related issues during the week.  In addition to doing things with CHRS, in her free time Beth enjoys singing with the Capitol Hill Chorale, attending Chiarina concerts on Capitol Hill, and hiking with her husband Libo and son Nathaniel.

At-Large Member: Joanna Kendig

Joanna Kendig fell in love in Capitol Hill while shopping for a house in 2008.  While organizing neighborhood tours for the 2012 National AIA Convention she benefited from CHRS support and learned of benefits of CHRS advocacy on Capitol Hill. Growing up post war Europe where much of historic fabric endured horrific destruction she saw both cities preserved and cities reconstructed.  In her architectural career she worked for many years in an office that successfully mixed new architecture and historic preservation projects.  Joanna is a firm believer in balancing preserving the past while supporting the new. She has served on the CHRS Historic Preservation Committee since 2014.

At-Large Member: Angie Schmidt

Angie Schmidt moved to Washington in 1990 and bought the circa 1881 house on The Hill she shares with her family in 2002. She edited and published non-profit newsletters, magazines and scholarly journals before taking a break from her career to focus on her family. During that time, she volunteered in neighborhood schools (SWS, Peabody and Watkins) and was a Girl Scout Troop Leader for 8 years as well as the local area GS Registrar. Through her children, she has been involved with neighborhood institutions such a MoTH, Sport on The Hill, Capitol Hill Little League, St. Mark’s Dance Studio and the NE Neighborhood Library. She started volunteering with CHRS in 2016, serving as an editor for the CHRS News. Angie has always loved cities (her degree at GWU in American Studies focused on the urban environment) and thinks that The Hill encapsulates all the best parts of what Washington has to offer, both in the very old and historic, and the new and improved.

At-Large Member: Maygene Daniels

Maygene Daniels and her husband Steve have lived on Capitol Hill for more than 45 years and raised their children here. She began her career as an archivist at the National Archives, where she advocated for preservation of historic DC Building Permits, which remain a key resource for house history on Capitol Hill. After leaving the National Archives, she founded the archives at the National Gallery of Art, where she worked for more than 30 years. In her decades of archival work, she explored subjects relating to the history, urban development and architecture of the city of Washington, the Mall and Capitol Hill. She selected images and wrote text for the historic signs in the Hill center, and is currently co-orgnizer of the Ruth Ann Overbeck capitol Hill History Lecture Series.

 Chairs of the following committees also serve on the Board:

Budget & Administration (Susan Oursler), City Planning (Monte Edwards), Communications (Nina Tristani), Community Development (Chuck Burger), Community Relations (Elizabeth Nelson), Environment (Joanna Kendig), Historic Preservation (Beth Purcell), House Tour (Michelle Carroll), Membership (Susan Burgerman), Public Safety (Undine Nash), Zoning (Gary Peterson)