DeForrest, Singer, Diab, van Baarle, Dragga, Hembree, Rosenthal

Jasmin DeForrest has been named managing director of The Heinz Endowments’ Creativity Strategic Area. Previously, she was senior director for Arts and Culture at the Detroit-based Gilbert Family Foundation and has more than 20 years of experience in grantmaking, nonprofit leadership, sponsorship management, entrepreneurship and event production. The Detroit native was community sponsorships director for the Rocket Community Fund and special events director at The Parade Company, which presents America’s Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit. DeForrest has a B.S. in marketing management from Wayne State University and participated in Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders Program.

Daniel Singer has been appointed the Robert Page Music Director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, a chorus of more than 100 singers who perform with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and in their own concerts. Since 2012, Singer has been a member of the conducting staff of The Cleveland Orchestra, where he served as assistant director of Choruses and director of the Youth Chorus. He also was Chorus director for the Contemporary Youth Orchestra in Cleveland. Singer holds a summa cum laude degree in music education from Northwestern University and a Master of Arts in conducting from Michigan State University. He is active as a baritone soloist and guest conductor and has led honor choirs and school ensembles in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and North Carolina.

Mona Diab is the new director of the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, which does research into the large language models powering the recent wave of generative AI systems. Diab has a B.S. in Computer Science from The American University in Cairo, a B.S. in Tourist Guidance, Egyptology & Archaeology from Helwan University, a Master of Science in Computer Science from George Washington University, and a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics from the University of Maryland. She was the Lead Responsible AI Research Scientist at Meta, the Principal Applied Scientist for Amazon Web Services, and a professor in George Washington University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, where she founded the CARE4Lang Lab. She is a globally renowned expert on Arabic natural language processing, multilingual processing and computational social sciences.

Frederique van Baarle has assumed the role of president and CEO for the Americas region of LANXESS Corporation, headquartered in Pittsburgh. A member of the Board of Management and Labor director of LANXESS AG, the Netherlands native recently relocated from global headquarters in Cologne, Germany. Her appointment marks the first time a board member has been based outside of Germany. Van Baarle has held various leadership roles with the company since joining in 2011 and has more than 20 years of global chemical industry experience. She led the company’s High Performance Materials business unit and served in various management positions at Royal DSM before joining LANXESS.

Nicholas Dragga is the new executive director of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, the sixth person to serve in that role since its founding in 1969. He joins PBT from Ballet Lubbock, where he served as executive director since 2011 and focused on program design, development and the branding of the organization. During his tenure, Ballet Lubbock’s budget more than quintupled to $2.5 million, net assets grew from $700,000 to over $12 million, and the organization moved into its new $10 million facility as part of the $154 million Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences. Dragga has a degree in music performance and composition from Texas Tech University and an M.S. in arts administration from Drexel University. He has served as a grant evaluator for the National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, Houston Arts Alliance and is a Texans for the Arts Certified State Arts Advocate.

Michelle Hembree and Douglas Rosenthal are the newest members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Hembree has been appointed as second horn, and most recently served as acting assistant principal/utility horn of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Prior to that, she was acting principal horn of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and principal horn of the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. She has a degree in horn performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and a B.S. in industrial management from the University of Cincinnati Lindner College of Business. Rosenthal is associate principal trombone and was assistant principal trombone in the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra for the past 11 years. The orchestra performs for the Washington National Opera, ballet, musical theater, chamber music and presentations at the Kennedy Center. Rosenthal has performed as a guest with numerous symphonies and is a specialist in the bass trumpet, a prominent instrument of Richard Wagner’s four-opera epic Ring cycle. He has a music degree from Northwestern University and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and a fellow of the New World Symphony.