Hello, everybody and welcome.

Thanks for joining us again here tonight at Potomac Station Coffee House.

We have a great show coming your way.

I'm Valerie, that's David.

And this is our Gen X Pittsburgh podcast.

Our special guest is Mary Murrin.

She is a president and CEO of Rivers of Steel.

I'm glad I can just say, Mary from here on out I know.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm so excite to have her on the show tonight.

She has quite the resume.

She does.

And she's still building that resume.

And this is like my favorite spot in the city.

And I'm not lying about it.

My wife and I love the Carrrie Blast Furnaces.

Yeah.

That's so cool.

Yeah it is.

Yeah.

So I can't wait to talk more about this.

I know, I know but do you know what today is?

Today is June 30th.

If for whatever this gets on to Spotify and YouTube everywhere else.

Right.

But you know what today is?

No.

Today is the anniversary of the soundtrack of Singles being released.

No way.

It is.

It is.

Wow, that makes me feel old.

That's like the quintessential 90s Gen X movie.

Yes it is.

Here we are with our Gen X podcast.

I love it and I thought I would bring that up.

Okay, well thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

See, I keep track of these things.

I know you do.

This is what I do.

Yes, this is what I do.

And unfortunately, my AARP ap tells me about some of the Gen X things as well.

Right.

Which is sad.

Well, I will tell you that when I put into Google today, I put in cool Gen things happening in Pittsburgh.

Our podcast came up as the first thing, so that's pretty cool.

All right.

We are back in her at the first podcast with Mary Murrin, president and CEO of Rivers of Steel.

Welcome.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming.

Very excited to have you here.

So I think in the dictionary under Boss Babe is your name.

I swear to God you have quite the resume and you are still taking this, I love it.

Thank you for what you're doing.

This is amazing.

Amazing.

You're welcome.

My one of my sons calls me the She EO.

That works.

I love that.

I love that.

So we always start off by asking our guest to tell us about their growing up and where they grew up, how they grew up.

But I want you to go back a little bit further than that, because I was reading.

You have a very interesting way that your family came to the States You have a very cool background.

Can you start with that?

Yes.

So my great great great great grandfather, Hugh Murrin, was from Donegal, Ireland, and came to the United States in the 1760s, in the late 60s and fought for the colony of new Jersey in the Revolutionary War, and then bought about 1600 acres from Robert Morris, who I did not know until recently, owned most of the lan over the Appalachian Mountains when they were trying to send people west.

So for generations they were, you know, subsistence, what was it called?

Right.

Subsistence farmers, maybe little distilling things like that.

And in the 1890s, they struck oil.

Wow.

Enoug to move to the city of Butler.

They were a little bit north of Butler, but it was a great story because my grandfather then read law at Grove City and then he had seven children.

Four of them became lawyers, some of them came teachers, and it was an opportunity to be educated.

And they'd obviously always been smart.

But you worked the lan and you did what you had to do.

You built a church an you had a community, community.

But so I was taught that education was was something to be proud of and to know that not everybody has that opportunity.

Right, right.

And then on my mother's side, she was first generation.

Her dad was a coal miner from New Kensington.

He had come from Ital and never finished grade school because he was very busy working in the mine as a 12 year old.

Wow.

Yeah.

And he ended up at Alcoa.

And a little, little cute story about my parents.

They met at Harvard College from Butler.

Yeah.

And New Kensington I love that story.

Right.

So they just happened to be there and got introduced.

So.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So again education.

Yes.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So tell us about your growing up.

What was life like for you?

So I was raised in Point Breeze, born in Butler but moved to Pittsburgh the East End, when I was four.

I had three sisters and I was raised Catholic.

We went to a sort of a there is such a thin as a progressive Catholic group.

It was because there's only on kind of Catholic, good or bad.

We went to the orator in the East End of Pittsburgh.

And so my parents were were both raised Catholic, but they weren' big Catholic school advocates.

So, but huge public school advocates.

So went to school in Squirrel Hill for a little bit.

And then they decided it wasn't diverse enough.

So we went I went to Park Place School, which was on Braddock Avenue, is now an environmental charter school, but it was organically in the 60s 70s, Homewood, East End, you know, blue collar, then the, you know, fancier people on one side.

But it wasn't just racially diverse, but it was also socioeconomically diverse.

And it was a great experience.

And I went to Allderdice High School and I was the editor of the Allderdice Forward, which is of all the things in my career.

That's one of the things I'm most proud of.

Wow.

I like to tell the story that it came down to me and my classmate named Aaron Zitner, and I got selected, and I realized now, Mr.

Wells our counselor, head of the class, decided I would be very, very good at logistics because back in the day you had to go down to type craft printing in Oakland and lay it all out, right?

Yeah, it had nothing.

I didn't get picked because of journalism.

Aaron Zitner did was was.

But he was the writer.

He's now a tremendous writer for The Wall Street Journal.

So I joke with him a lot about how he got passed over because I was really good at logistics.

Right.

Because you did print checks.

Yeah, right.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

You you went to Brown and then you interned at Alcoa.

At Alcoa?

How cool is that?

It was so cool.

And the person that selected me for the internship was a graduate of Brown, who had been a reporter in Nashville or Memphis, Tennessee, and was in PR for Alcoa.

And he offered me an internship.

Wow.

Which was paid.

Yeah, which was amazing back then in 1984.

And I got to live in an apartment on the north side, walk right b what is now Nova Place, right?

Yeah.

And I'd walk across the bridge every day to go to work at the old Alcoa building.

It was great.

It was just amazing.

Were you one of the few women were there are a lot of women there?

When you were there.

There were women in communications.

Yeah.

And there were a ton of secretaries.

Yeah.

So there was that.

Right.

So did you go to schoo for communications, journalism?

English?

English.

Okay.

There was a straight up liberal arts club, and it was a tough time in the 80s, so I always thought it'd probably be a lawyer, like ran in my family.

But I'd take a year or two and figure out what I was going to do, and I never left.

I've been in communications my whole career, but yeah, I think it was writing was was I was curious.

My friends still to this day, call me.

Okay.

You're going to have to pause here and go, Who's Superman's?

Oh.

Lois Lane.

I'm thinking Clark Kent.

No, no, they'll say Lois Lane because they'll.

I'll ask a million questions, and sometimes they'll say, Mary, could you just stop and let me tell you my story?

Yes, yes, but I was very curious.

And I learned early on I went from west, from Alcoa to Westinghouse, and through 20 years wit technology startups out of CMU and then Chevron and now where I am now.

But I realized that if you asked questions out of genuine, authentic curiosity, people would tell, would just get engaged and tell you stories.

At Westinghouse, the guy's back in the day with the pocket protectors.

Yeah, all engineers would.

I'd ask a question to be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that answer, and then as another one and then answer it.

And by the time I got to my fifth question, they're writing on the board and sitting down with me.

And so I was a translator.

I was able to take highly technical information and make it accessibl to English majors like myself.

Yeah.

So my mother worked at Westinghouse right after secretarial school, and she has this story about during the Cold War, it was her first job, but during the Cold War, there was Secretary Pool.

This was back in the day when they had, you know, a room full of secretarie all typing, and each secretary would only get a piece of a lett so that in case they were captured by the Soviet Union, no one would know the entire letter.

Yeah, right.

I mean, it's just the kinds of things that don't happen anymore.

Well, here's something else that doesn't happen anymore.

So I'm at Westinghouse ou in Waltz Mill on Interstate 70, and I've been married for a year or two, and I'm pregnant, and I'm in this low slung building that looks out onto a field with a a nuclear reactor in the back that has been deactivated, whatever you call decommissioned.

And I'm getting a little nervous because I'm pregnant.

So I go to this enginee who's just come in from Idaho, you know, from a plant in Idaho.

And I said to him, you know, I'm pregnant.

Should I be nervous that I'm sitting across from this nuclear reactor?

He goes, oh, sweetie, you got to worry about everybody smoking cigarettes in the office.

So that was that was more dangerous than right?

Right.

Well, I'm glad to hear that.

Your friends, though, gave you a little bit of a hard time, because to this day, every time my wife and I go to a dinner party, she says to me, look, nobody wants to be questioned like you're a reporter.

Keep quiet.

I can't help it.

I understand.

David likes to chat.

Yes.

Well, I like to ask questions.

It's different when youre talking about yourself, which I'm doing now.

Thank you very much.

But I suppose I just want to hear what makes people tick and what makes what got them where they were in life, whether it's a rough time or a good time.

Just like what makes people move and think.

Right, right.

So you were at Westinghouse and then you you went to where after that?

Well so I was an at home mom.

Okay.

For about five years And then.

Was this in Houston?

No, I was in Pittsburgh.

In Pittsburgh.

I was in Pittsburgh until 2018.

Okay.

Lived in Regent Square, Mount Lebanon, for a bit.

Moved back into the city.

Always.

Always in the city.

Yeah.

Raised my kids there, but I was an at home mom.

And then it was time for me to go back to.

I was ready to go back to work and went back as a contractor to Westinghouse.

And then they divested of everything.

And I read an articl in the Wall Street Journal about something called a startup ou of Carnegie Mellon University.

Yeah.

And you got to wear tennis shoes.

And you got to pick your kid up at the doctor, and you didn't have to work downtown.

You could work in some cool place in Shadyside.

So I literally wrote a letter.

I typed up a letter.

I had a computer.

So.

But before the internet.

So I mailed it and I got a job at the startup, and it was called Wise Wire.

It was originally called Empirical Media, but it was a search engine company that was bought ultimately by Lycos doing.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And then they wanted to move me to Boston when they got acquired.

And I basically said, no I'm not going to move five times and so changed companies five times.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that was my that was my 20 years in startups.

Wow.

How did Rivers of Steel, did you how did you come across this position with them?

So I was with Chevron in Houston.

I'd been there seven years.

I was supposed to be there three.

And Chevron sold all our assets to EQT.

Yes.

And so I was supposed to be there thre and come back for my boss's job.

I was never coming back here with Chevron.

Right?

I liked Houston for a while.

I was doing my thing.

I really missed it here.

I really, really missed it here, and I. I like saying that I was always here by default.

I went away to college, me a guy, came back, got married.

I always loved it here, but I was here by default.

Being awa was the best thing I ever did.

I loved being away and that was great.

But when I came back I was intentionally coming back to this place I love.

So that was my experience.

I'm correct, aren't I?

That Chevron started here in Pittsburgh and it almost bought US Steel if I remember.

I think I'm right about that.

So Chevron was created in in 1984.

It was fairly new.

And it was shortly after the merger of Gulf, Standard Oil, and a couple other, and Standard was out of I think Ohio.

Was it Ohio?

It was Rockefeller.

I'm going to say sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Somebody out there know?

But they created Gulf.

Yes.

Or Chevron, out of Gulf.

So it's pretty cool.

I mean, so I read do you kno the economist Chris Bream?

Yes.

We had him on our show a few weeks ago.

Yeah.

And when I was reading that book, it was really fascinating to me that Pittsburgh didn't start.

I mean, it was a steel city, but it was really an energy city first.

So all of these companies in my head I always associated with Texas, actually had their starts her in, you know, in Pennsylvania.

But then as coal became les of the dominant energy source, they moved obviously west.

Yes.

Yeah And some of those logistics too.

So I know it was a bad wor back in the day I had to take.

I'm all be on.

I'll be up front and say I'm centrist, left leaning Democrat.

I had to take people out for coffee and beer to tell them that I had not lost my mind.

Joining or joining th evil Empire.

Im sure you did.

But part of it wa my was the story of my family.

That right?

You know, energy and hard work and get you into a position where you can have a better life.

But anyway, I what I learned was fracking, which was big here.

We learned.

So Chevron learned so much about how to do it because it's hard to do here.

Right?

You've got this kind of land.

You've got, you know, ten people that own mineral rights and you've got to spend months getting enough acres to to build it.

So Chevron learned a lot here and then went to Texas because it's easier.

Sure.

It's flat.

Yeah.

The land is owned by two people.

You can get, you know, 35, you know, pump Jackson there with with with two owners.

So it's just easier.

It's more and the politics are more friendly to it.

So it had a lot to do with geology and politics is why they left.

Yeah.

Not that you can't do it here.

It's just harder.

Right.

Right.

And so take m from Chevron to Rivers of Steel.

So yes, get back to your question.

So I was looking to move back.

I went to D.C.. I worked out of the D.C.

office for a bit.

My mother was her health wa declining, wanted to be closer.

So I worked out of Chevron's office.

But I started to put out some feeler that I wanted to find something either in DC or Pittsburgh and two of my friends within five hours texted and said, there's this job posted.

It is so you and I looked at i and I thought, yes, that is so me and I will never get it.

Number one, I have never worked for a nonprofit, right?

I've been on boards and I'd led a board, but I'd never worked for one.

And the other one was I was a Gen Xer, right?

Theyre not gonna hire me.

Right.

So but they did.

And I went through a very rigorous process.

We have a great board, you know, 2 or 3 series and, and I'm so thrilled to have gotten it's the best job of my life, even there for a little over a year.

Little over a year.

And I like to say that.

So the River of Steel has four assets.

One is Carrie Furnaces, one is the Bost Building, which is a Victorian hotel, the Pump House, and then a Forge in Rices Landing.

But I my office is in an 1891 hotel slash restaurant slash casino slash brothel.

Wow.

Building.

That is gorgeous.

And so I like to say I went from this glass tower, which was the Enron tower, which is Chevron's office in Houston, to Bailey's Building and loan out of its wonderful life.

Yeah I love it.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Well so Rivers of Steel was started by four people right in like the 80s?

Oggy Carlino, my predecessor, who's a remarkable man, started it with legislators.

John Heinz was part of it.

Bill Coyne, Mike Doyl had some saying it, but it was the mills were being torn down and somebody asked the question of, do we really want to tear them all down?

Yeah.

And so he was there from the beginning and it became a heritage site.

And over tim they acquired a few more assets.

But he was there from th beginning and he was a lobbyist on the Hill.

So his whole focus and he did i very well was getting funding, getting designation as national and state historically remarked.

So he said he set the organization up for remarkable things.

It was there had to have been a lot of foresight, because there were thes huge mills that were taking up a huge amount of real estate.

No one was quite sure what was goin to happen to them, but they knew they wanted to get rid of them.

And for somebody to say, slow down, let's figure out what parts of this we want to save so that we'll have it for history is remarkable.

It is.

And it's more complicated than you would think.

David, I didn't know this until I joined, but in my first year, I took every tour of Carrie Furnaces that I could fit in.

And I learned so much from the guides, but also from people asking questions.

Yeah, and I always assumed it was the developers, Park Corporation, that came in and said, we're going to we're going to scrap this stuff, make a ton of money, sell it.

It's time for a, you know, a shopping center.

It's time for this, that, the other thing, but one woman who was in from California said to me, her grandparent were from Rankin, and she said her grandfather wante the Carrie Furnaces torn down.

He said it was too painful to look out his window and see the skeleton of this structure that had been a family sustaining entity and gave the people the dignity of work for three generations.

And now you're looking at it.

He wanted it torn down, which was interesting to me.

I didn't I wouldn't have thought that people in the community, she said he changed his mind around 2000 and got a little more sentimental about it, but I thought that was interesting.

Yeah I think it's really interesting because for so long, the region tried to hold on to this idea that the mill were going to come back, right.

When I worked at KQV in the early 2000s.

No, this was the late 90s, as the debate over the the new arena.

I mean, the new stadiums are going on, right?

People were coming in, not just people from Rankin and Braddock.

I mean, legislators, senators are coming in and arguing.

Pittsburgh doesn't need stadiums.

We need to bring the steel mills back.

Right.

And it's like they were step behind.

It was never coming back.

And it took a long time.

It seems like anyways for the cit to figure out what we have here.

This isn't just broken steel, you know, this isn't just deserted.

This is something that need to be memorialized in some way.

And probably that helped the city grieve through some of the process that it had to.

Thats a very good way to put it to grieve through.

And if you've been raised here, I never thought of manufacturing and industry as technology, but something else I heard on a tour is somebody said, you do know that Pittsburgh was the Silicon Valley of the United States at the turn of the 19th century.

I never thought of it that way.

Right.

I thought of it as grit and yeah, making something that was high tech.

Sure.

That's right.

So part of the extending it, I think, is recognizing that this really unique spirit of innovation and hard work got us where we were and is continuing to get us where we're going.

And it's just in our it's in our blood.

Right.

I also think it's interesting when I wrote The Beehive book, I interviewed Tim Kaulen.

Yes.

And you know.

Yeah, that's right.

The deer head.

Right.

But he told stories about when they were deconstructing the JNL Mill.

He would just walk in and take hunks of steel because nobody had thought about.

It's probably not a great idea to just have people wander in and take steel from.

Right.

Because this kind of mass disassembling of industry had never really happened.

I mean, on this, on this scope.

Right.

Pittsburgh was all at once, and it it was a long time and it was all at once.

Right.

It was.

Yeah.

When I left for school, for college, there was still all the mill coming down the way to downtown.

And when I came back, there was the sulfur smell was gone, the rotten egg smell.

And they were just sitting there and just like that.

Yeah.

It was crazy.

Did you ever imagine that the abandoned mill would turn into a destination?

No.

But it's.

People are, walk in.

You know, I mentioned I have three sons in their 30s, but they walk in and they walked in the first time, like, wow, that wow factor.

And myself, I had passed them my entire life, but I had never actuall walked up to the door of a mill.

And there.

It's a wow factor.

That really is fascinating.

When you mentioned Tim Kaulen, the other thing that's really been interesting to me is this organic connectio between manufacturing and art, which we would have never thought, but it's so organically changed into metal arts.

And yeah, scrappin to build the beautiful deer head that they did at the Carrie Furnaces.

It's very organic and just happened.

And that's beautiful too.

Yeah.

And it's sort of as a story of Pittsburgh to art museums and the art cultures that came out of the robber barons for all they were good and bad, created art.

And it's it's ironic that it came from their industry.

It certainly is.

I think it's amazing that, you know you needed to have this collapse for Pittsburgh to become what it is, right?

Because it was artists like Ti who would take hunks of steel, or it was all that went into these deserted warehouses and had exhibitions, art exhibitions, or art all night.

Right?

And but not for thes deserted spots that no one knew what to do with.

This wouldn't have happened.

And because of that, Lawrenceville becomes something, right?

Because of that, the Southside finds a secon or third or fourth life, right?

That would never have happened but for the collapse of the steel.

That's right.

And Etna and right.

But back to Rivers of Stee the Mon Valley was left behind.

And it's time fo those community spirits to be.

Yeah.

To be taking hold in the Mon Valley.

So that was important to me too.

But so two friends told me about it.

And it's far broader and far more fascinating than I could have ever imagined.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Why did a nonprofit speak to you after all of thi other experience that you have?

That's a great question.

It was really about purpose.

And I'll be honest when I was working for Chevron, I was very committed to the purpose.

I ran social investment for them here.

We had $20 million.

We were investing in the community, and we focused on workforce development because we were bringing up we are our supply chain was bringing up people from Oklahoma and Texas.

And we were saying, well how about if we hire, you know, that kid out of high school that lives in, you know, an old coal town that's been underemploye or unemployed for generations?

How about if he makes $100,000 a year?

Pipe fitting.

So I was passionate about that.

But back to Rivers of Steel.

I think it was my family history and an appreciation for that hard, hard work ethic.

My pride in being from her and the excitement of the people so many of our staff and volunteers and part time people, we have about 25 full time and 40 part time, and then lots of volunteers are people that came on as volunteers or broke in and built something and just fell in love with the place and the history, and then stayed.

So the people that I work wit are just so inspired every day.

Oh I bet.

Yeah.

So is there.

You have the four properties, and I'd love to hear more about them because I was aware of the Carrie Blast Furnace.

I don't know about the other three.

Yeah, but if you you were talking about the, you know, the Mon towns, right?

McKeesport, Wilmerding, all these places have some form of industry that sort of collapsed.

And now there's maybe a building, two buildings that are left.

Is there any thought about saving those?

I know that in Wilmerding, for instance, George Westinghouse has a castle there, and the castle was his home, I'm assuming.

But it it there's been a lot of talk about what to do with that.

So I mean, I would assume it takes not for profits at this point.

Yes.

Or community organizations, chambers of commerce.

There is a lot of discussion, collaboration.

County executive in Amarillo announced Mon Valley Forward.

There's a lot of legislators that are behind that.

Obviously, the Nippon partnership with US Steel is hopeful.

I actually think, too, that having our new Mike McCarthy, our new Steeler coach from them on Valley might be a boost.

Sure.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, but I think there has to be a little more of a a lens on it.

For some reason.

It just never got that lens.

I mean, New Kensington and Allegheny, so much is going on up there with breweries and arts.

Yeah, the Allegheny does the the Ohio does but it just not has not made it.

And maybe it's because th feeling that it's dirty right.

Yeah.

And it's gritty and it's hard to get to the water and all of that.

But all thing to say about Pittsburgh though.

Yeah.

Right.

Right, right.

I interview people.

Many years ago I interviewed people for a story about why they moved t Pittsburgh, and this was in the mid 2000s.

So I mean, I'm talking abou if 2026 is late 2000, this is, you know, 2006, 2007, and there were young families moving here where the they didn't even know that Pittsburgh had been a center for steel.

Right.

And that imprint that you're talking about, that drive on the parkway, that smell of sulfur, it doesn't exist.

And so they had no idea.

And we've done such a great jo with the brownfields and with, you know, all of the warehouses and all of the property in Pittsburgh proper that it does.

It's there's no semblance that it was this gritty, really dirty town.

But like you said, McKeesport and Duquesne and and Edgar Thompson.

Sure.

Yes That's still going on up there.

And you can see it.

Yeah.

But people don't spend a lot of time doing fun things over there But they pass through it.

Right.

So, you know, I'm sitting here and I'm thinking to myself, we're making you an expert on on steel, right?

But that's probably not what you do on a daily basis.

Right.

I would love to hear what you do.

Do on a daily basis.

What I do on a daily basis is tell the stories or work with the people that tell the stories.

So the good news is, when you take over something from somebody that's been there 35 years and has a different skill set than I do, in some ways it's easy because there's low, lower hanging fruit that you can make some big change, not because it was neglected it just wasn't a focus before.

So at Chevron, after I was in social investment, I did communication for chief digital officer.

I worked for digital technology companies at CMU, and I thought, you know, we need to get some system in here and move things along.

So a lot of what I'm doing is making some digital transformations, hiring people that are focused on revenue generation projects like our tours and.

Metal arts classes and education.

We we sort of because we're a heritage site heritage areas are not designed to make money for the organization.

It's for the region because most don't have a property.

Well, we have 425 year old properties and it takes some cash.

Sure.

To keep those things standing.

So I'm focusing on how can w take the stories, inspire people and get a sustainable growt opportunity to take care of them while bringing people in to do fun things.

So hire a great marketing person, a new head of tourism that are just not Gen Xers and they are just full of life and thrilled to be doing what we're doing.

So I'm still in that stage where I'm looking at what can be, what can I hav added efficiency, what can be?

We can be more nimble at that.

A business lens I'm bringing in business.

And not that my predecessor didn't have one, but I'm I'm more focused on that, probably because of where I came from.

Right?

Right.

People, place, purpose.

There you go.

That's right Yeah.

You're very big on that.

I am, yeah, that is right.

That's right.

I am.

My first experienc with the Carrie Blast Furnace wa I'm sure it was a renta or it continues to be a rental.

But the Irish festival.

Yes.

And then I think that' coming up in a couple of weeks.

I know it is.

I believe it or not, every time I'm there, I say to myself, I say to my family, we're coming back every year to whatever this thing is that we're at at the festival.

So amazing.

You know, after the Irish festival, we've been going to the the Festival of Combustion ever that is so amazing and such a, I can't call it a secret because there's hundreds of people that are there when we're there, but it's amazing.

Yeah.

All ages people bring their kids to show them blacksmithing.

And we have a band and food trucks, and it's really.

How did you come up with that idea?

I wasn't mine, yeah, it's been around for somebody way, way more in tune.

I did that but it's been around a few years and it's the one we do.

So the Irish Festival is a rental, right?

Burgs Beers of the Burg is a rental.

Quantum Theater is about to do The Tempest there.

Thats a rental.

We've had some funky things like ninja stuff and motorcycle stuff.

Yeah, that's right, I forgot about that.

Those are rentals.

The Festival o Combustion is our is our thing.

Yeah.

And is there anything else that you do?

I was thrilled to see that there either was or going to be an exhibition called Babushkas and Hard Hats.

Yes.

Yeah.

So it's not it's not an exhibition.

It's a tour.

And we do them once a month and it's beautiful.

You start at the Carrie Furnaces and you learn about the making steel and the labor.

A lot of what we talk about is immigration.

Yeah.

How it started with the UK folks.

And then it went to Eastern European and then women during the war.

It was African American Great Migratio workers by the time it closed.

But the the history o the immigration is fascinating.

And then what they do is they take you on a tour of the churches and the roads, and they say, you know how if it's a steeple, its a crysta if it's got these globes, its Eastern Orthodox versus Roman, and you learn about the architecture and the pierogis and oh my God, where people lived up on the hill and you see the little cold, the coal houses and the row houses.

So you learn about the culture and the and the and the work.

It's really fast and it's very popular.

Yeah, yeah.

If you could take a Gen Xer on one of your tours, which one, which one would it be?

Can I say two?

Yeah, o course.

One would be Babushkas and Hardhats and the other is the Battle of Homestead.

Okay.

Yeah.

So the Battle of Homestead is why three of our or two of our locations are historic landmarks.

The Bost building was where where offices is where the Amalgamated Iron and Steel Union was hunkered down, waiting for the trains to pull up with the strike breakers when the barges pulled up.

And then the pump house, which is the red circular building at the waterfront, is where the first shots were fired.

The first person died in the Battle of Homestead, s when they came up in the barges.

So the Battle of Homestead, you start at Carrie Furnaces and learn about what was being made there, and you learned that workers were working 12 hour shifts, seven days a week.

So you're in a very very dangerous, dangerous place and you've worked 12 hours.

Imagine how horrifying that would be.

It's already dangerous enough.

So they talk about the labor.

You know, the strikes were very much around, just needing some kind o moderation in how they worked.

I mean, certainly it was about money and things like that too, but it was primarily like, we need we need some structure here.

So then after the Carey Furnaces, you go over to the pump hous and they describe what happened, that the strikebreaker came into Bellevue on the train, and then Frick and Carnegie.

Frick was actually here.

Carnegie was back in his mansion in Scotland, Scotland, and they put them on the barges.

And a lot of these workers didn't really know they though they were going to work.

Yeah.

And I know they were going to, to, to be shot by a strike.

Wow.

So then you learn about that and then our fabulous tour guide, Barney says, okay now everybody get in your cars.

We're going to go up to Clayton, Henry, Clay Frick's house and notic how you go uphill the whole way.

Right.

And so next thing you know, you're sitting in Henry Clay Frick office looking out at these beautiful trees and Frick Park, and you get this tremendous contrast of ho the people on the ground lived and how the people on the hill lived.

It's really fascinating.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, and that's so many o these Pittsburgh neighborhoods.

Redlining was such a real thing, you know, immigrants, minorities on the bottom and had you go up and up.

And because it's Pittsburgh, like you said, it's all hills, right.

Further and further up.

Yeah.

Away from the dirt.

Away from the smog.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the other very cool thing about Frick, I'll give a shout out to Amanda Gillen my counterpart at the Frick.

I grew up in the neighborhood near the Frick.

I'm old enough to remember when we were playin in the Bowling Green and this, you know, piece of heav equipment came in and started, you know, breaking up the ground.

And that was the museum They were building the museum.

Helen Clay Frick, she would come.

You knew she was ther when her limo was in the portico under the.

Yeah.

But anyway.

But for years the Frick tours were didn't tell the whole truth.

They would you would go into Henry Clay Frick's room and they'd say, this is where he convalesced.

Okay, now let's move on to the highest level.

I always thought he had the flu, he had some virus.

That's where he was when he had been shot.

Right.

So now they have a little towel beside the bed was, you know, so blood on it And they're telling the truth.

It's called Gilded, not Golden.

Oh, that's really neat.

So we're working with the Frick.

I think there's much more opportunity to share our stories and bring in people that are interested in both sides of that story.

That's really interesting.

Yeah.

What is the Gen X Pittsburgh podcast?

Let me take you back.

Remember when coffee was King and pizza bagels ruled on the corner of 14th and Carson at The Beehive?

Or how about that tim he stumbled upon Art all night?

How cool was that?

Or when your evening started instead of ended at 10 p.m.?

Yeah, we miss those days too.

So we're bringing them back.

One Gen X story at a time.

Join David Rullo and I, Valerie Christofel, as we sit down with the movers and shakers, the artists and the voices who helped shape Pittsburgh back in the early 90s.

Subscribe to the Gen X Pittsburgh podcast.

Welcome back to the Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast.

We are here with Mary Murrin, president and CEO of Rivers of Steel.

Again, this is so interesting.

I'm learning so much.

I can't wait to take a tour.

I love your enthusiasm.

Mary, I remember when I was leaving one of my jobs, the my manager said to me, your resume looks like a lot of bad telephone connections.

And he meant that as an insult.

I didn't take it that way.

I was thrilled to b making the changes I was making.

But your career has been so interesting, and the way it sort of worked throughout the city as well has been interesting.

Can you talk about that just a little bit?

Yes.

Like most of us, we probably didn't plan where we landed.

But my career certainly followed the trajectory of the economy in Pittsburgh.

And part of that is right place, righ time, wrong place, wrong time.

But the ability her to always find that next thing has been a gift.

And then I also learned the resilience of what are you going to do, sit around and feel sorry for having a brush yourself off and go again.

So I started again.

I got actually worked for Alcoa in an internship and got a offer in Indiana, but I was getting married an so I wasn't going to leave town.

Then I went to Westinghouse.

They divested.

I went to five startups, some some closed.

One was bought by Nokia.

I had a great experience traveling internationally, but then they wanted me moved to Boston.

So I had to come up with the next thing.

And then honestly, by the time I had 20 or so years in startups, I had three sons.

One was in college, the other were eventually going to be, I'm divorced.

I, I'm thinking, you know what?

I never made that for quite made that million.

Now you say 3 million at that startup.

I said probably get a job with a really nice matching 401 K or something.

So I started to think maybe I need to go back to more structure.

I was also getting older and I thought, you know, you're not going to be able to change job every 2 or 3 years as you age.

And Chevron was new to town.

I had worked for Carnegie Learning, which is a software education company, and I did a lot of work in rural communities, finding grants for Wi-Fi and computers because we're an online.

So I knew a lot of people in those communities and Chevron like that.

Oh, you can go into these rural communities.

So that too was a stepping stone, which you would never you would never plan.

Right?

But I think if somebody asked me for advice, if my, you know, young people or one of my kids asked, I'd say, just keep keep your mind open and always be looking at how you connect those dots between organizations and what you like to do what you do well, who you know, Pittsburgh's a big who you know thing.

Right.

Sure.

But it really it really worked out.

There was some scary times, but but it's worked out.

And landing where I have in my third ac couldn't have gotten any better.

Sure.

Any better?

Yeah.

And I know that your professional career is one part of what you do, bu so is your volunteerism, right?

And could you talk just a little bit about some of the boards you're on, some of your passions.

Those.

Yes.

So I my first great board experience was with Quantum Theater.

25 years ago, there was an organization out of Duquesne University called Boards by Design.

And it was like a match where you tell them what you like and they go out and find what and then connect.

Well, and having gone to Alderdice, I knew great choreographers and directors and musicians and writers so many creative people there.

I wasn't ever going to create that kind of art and art as well, bu I loved being surrounded by it.

Theater and music were big for me, so I joined with a business lens and was there until I moved to Houston in 2018.

Ended up I was the head of the board there for years, still on the emeritus board, an amazing organization I was on the Carnegie Library Board for, but when I came back to Pittsburgh, I ha had some interaction with Paul, who's the head of Fred Rogers Productions.

He was in Houston when I was with Chevron, looking at some projects we could do at the Children's Museum there.

So when I came back, he asked me if I'd be interested in joining the board, and I it was so meaningful to me.

My mother was a PBS junkie and there's a great story about when I was probably 8 or 9, I had two younger, not younger, like 4 or 6 year younger sister and an older one.

Our TV was always on WQED, and when I was like 7 or 8, I went down to my friend's hous and I came back and I had just watched The Brady Bunch, and That Girl and I came up and I went, I went, we had a black and white TV.

I went up and said, mom did you know you can turn this?

So I think that's why I got asked to be on the Fred Rogers board, because I was I could recite every, every episode he ever did.

Boy, did I have a crush on Marla Oh, Marla.

Thomas.

Marla Thomas.

That's right.

Yeah.

She was fabulous.

She sure was.

Yeah.

She and Donald.

That's right.

Donald.

That's right.

Pittsburgh has reinvented itself several times.

What do you think's next?

What do I think is next?

I think there's going to be a meaningful resurgence of work force development opportunities.

People that want to work with their hands want to create something that want to build something.

Granted, it's not going to be the hundreds of thousands of jobs.

When I joined Westinghouse in 1985 86, Pennsylvania had 123,000 employees, right?

With Westinghouse alone, 123.

Chevron today is 40,000.

It's a global corporation.

Anyway, that's that's kind of crazy numbers.

So it may not ever be we're not going to get back to that industry.

But there are a lot of reall meaningful, important jobs that I watch our trainees and ou workforce development program.

They're really inspired a lot of women in it.

I think the next generation of people don't want to sit behind the desk every day.

I know so many that say, oh, I just I'm going to do this until Im 40 and make a ton of money, and then I'm going to go do something I really want to do.

Well, I think we need to shift that and say what?

You can make good money and d what you really want to do now.

So I think there's going to be a shift towards opportunities to to build things including clean energy systems.

Modular, localized energy is going to happen.

That's going to take some some construction.

Farming and green spaces is making a comeback.

And I'm not that ever went away.

But I think there's there's going to be really creative interesting ways to work that are new.

Yeah.

Are new.

Maybe they're very old.

Correct myself.

Maybe they're very old.

We're going to go back to to waking up and getting dirty every day.

Right.

Right.

What is something that Pittsburgh has gotten right over the past 30 years?

30 years?

That's a good question.

I'm going to sound a little sentimental here, but I really did think when I went to Houston that everybody's cit was friendly and kind and nice.

And it's not always here, let's be honest.

But I think there is this culture of stopping when you're walking down the street and saying hi and, you know, smiling at somebody or asking if you can help them.

That's that is unusual.

Maybe we've always gotten that right, but I think with not always gotten it right, but I think it's always been a part of who we are.

But I think with social media and The Pitt, television, I think we're getting some visibility for that.

And again, I think sometimes we take that for granted.

When I was with Chevron, we had just opened the offices here and we al a lot of us ended up in Houston.

And more than a doze people said to me over the years because they knew I was from here originally.

That stopped me in the hall.

And they'd say, yeah, when we were when my family and I were transferred from Kazakhstan to Moon, we're going to Moon someplace called Moon in Pennsylvania.

We didn't know where we were going.

These are people that had lived in Texas, Louisiana, Kazakhstan, Angola, you know, London.

And so many people sai we would go back to Pittsburgh in a second.

Sure.

Yeah.

A lot of people move away and come back.

Yeah.

Something we do.

And the other thing that I think we do really, really well is have a very diverse arts, theater, community experiences.

People that I worked with that have lived i major cities all over the world said there is more going o in Pittsburgh in a given weekend than anywhere else I've ever lived.

So I think maybe the friendliness is part of that.

But I think encouraging people to create opportunities and experiences around small groups that may get bigger, may not but there's always a way to find something to do.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think what's great about Rivers of Steel is that you're you're connecting the past in the future.

Right?

You have the heritage of thing like the Carrie Blast Furnace, but you also have the workforce development.

That's it's leaning into that future.

So it's amazing.

Now, even though we've talked about all these things, we're not done yet.

We have one more thing for you to do with you here.

Our rapid fire rewind.

I'm ready.

Ready?

Iron City or Rolling Rock?

Rolling Rock.

What's your favorite Gen X band?

E Street band.

Springsteen.

Three Rivers or Heinz Field?

Heinz Field.

Do you have a favorite Gen X movie?

Oh.

Working Girl.

Okay.

Turner's or Schneider's?

Oh, Turner's.

We were a Turner's family.

Isnt it funny you only have to say those two words and everybody gets i?

Anybody else out of Pittsburg has no idea what we're talking.

Yeah, we took a field trip there in school.

You went out to Penn Hills to the.

I saw a cow get milked.

Okay.

I love it.

Now, given what you've told us about your experience watching television growing up, I don't know if you'll hav an answer to this question, but do you have a favorite Saturday morning cartoon?

Oh, the Jetsons.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

I love The Jetsons.

Donzis and Chaunceys or Metropol and Rosebud?

Decade.

I'm sorry.

I did go to what was it?

Chaunceys.

We went to Chaunceys.

That was down in the Station Square, right?

Yeah, but the floor and the.

Yeah.

That's right.

Yes, yes, yes.

But I was more of a Decades.

Yeah.

What was your first concert?

My first concert was America.

Oh, okay.

At the Civic Arena.

We went every year to.

Wow.

You're the first person to answer America.

Yeah, yeah.

Southside Beehive or Oakland Beehive?

Southside.

Atari or Nintendo?

I'm too old for that nonsense.

I never really mastered that.

I play Wordle.

Okay.

Kennywood or Sandcastle?

Oh, Kennywood.

Kennywood.

Kennywood.

Primantis or Pamela's?

Primantis.

Awesome.

Awesome.

It was so good getting to know you and what you're doing for Pittsburgh.

We really appreciate it.

And I thin we're going to be taking a tour.

We're gonna do something very soon, because that sounds like a lot of fun.

I love your curiosity and would love to have you.

That's great.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate you.

Mary Murrin CEO and president of Rivers of Steel.

Thank you so much.

The Gen x Pittsburgh Podcast hosts are David Rullo and Valerie Christofel.

Executive producer, David Rullo.

Producer and graphic designer, Kim Rullo.

Producer, Valerie Christofel.

Video production and editor, Brent Isaac.

Music by NeoStem.