Library Staff

Kyle B. Roberts

Executive Director
ext. 220
kroberts@14beacon.org
 

Kyle B Roberts was appointed the Executive Director of the Congregational Library & Archives in 2022. He received his B.A. in American Studies from Williams College and his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to coming to the CLA, he was Associate Director of Library & Museum Programming at the American Philosophical Society and Associate Professor of Public History and New Media and Director of the Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities at Loyola University Chicago.

A scholar of Atlantic World religion, print, and library history, he is the author of Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 (Chicago, 2016) and the co-editor, with Stephen Schloesser, of Crossings and Dwellings: Restored Jesuits, Women Religious, American Experience 1814-2014 (Brill, 2017) and, with Mark Towsey, of Before the Public Library: Reading, Community, and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850.

Dr. Roberts is an accomplished public historian and digital humanist who is the Director of the Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project and co-Director of the Maryland Loyalism Project. He has held positions at Queen Mary, University of London – where he co-created Dissenting Academies Online: Virtual Library System, an innovative reconstruction of the holdings and borrowings of the leading English dissenting academies; Georgetown University, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Harvard Museum of Natural History. In addition to being the consultant for numerous digital and public history projects, he sits on the Executive Committee of the American Catholic Historical Association and the Urban History Association.
 

Zachary Bodnar

Archivist
ext. 225
zbodnar@14beacon.org
 

Zachary Bodnar graduated with a B.A. in History and Psychology from Vassar College in 2015 and with a Masters of Library and Information Science from Simmons University, with a concentration in archives, in 2018. Prior to his work at the CLA, Zachary worked in the Bellamy-Ferriday House and Garden archive, the Vassar College Special Collections, the Harvard Law School Library, and the Harvard Botany Libraries.

Zachary joined the CLA as a part-time Archives Assistant in 2017, helping to prepare materials for digitization through the New England’s Hidden Histories program, before later becoming a full-time Processing Archivist. In 2018, he took on the title of Archivist. His professional interests include metadata collection and management, digital archiving, audio/visual preservation, and archives management. Zachary is most proud of managing the tools that make the CLA’s archival materials, physical and digital, available and accessible to the CLA’s wide community and hopes CLA’s work can help the organization reach ever more people.
 

Heather Kurtz

Director of Developmemt
ext. 225
hkurtz@14beacon.org
 

Heather Kurtz joined the Congregational Library & Archives in July 2023. She previously served as the Director of Foundation and Corporate Relations at the College of the Holy Cross. During her tenure at Holy Cross, she secured some the largest charitable foundation gifts in the College’s history totaling over $8 million to the Become More comprehensive campaign. Most recently, she secured a $20 million commitment from a single foundation to provide financial aid for underrepresented students. Funding secured through her office supported community service projects, academic scholarships, arts programming, social welfare, and mission-driven initiatives with a focus on social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion. Prior, while serving in the same role at Emerson College, she built strategic corporate partnerships to support financial aid, internships and experiential learning with partners including: EVgo, ViaCom (now Paramount Global) and Giorgio Armani. Additionally, she secured significant foundation support to fund programming, audience evaluation and capital investment in Boston’s Theater District, including the creation of the Media Art Gallery. As Executive Director of CultureLEAP, she created new partnerships within the Worcester Public Schools to support innovative programs from 20 science, history, and art focused cultural institutions throughout the Central Massachusetts region. In honor of the program’s impact during her tenure, CultureLEAP was recognized by the Massachusetts State Legislature for excellent service to the community and awarded a Creative Schools grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Heather received her Bachelor of Arts from Hamilton College and her Master of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies with a focus on non-profit management from Harvard University.
 

Lauren Lemley

Communications Manager
ext. 215
laurenlemley@14beacon.org
 

Lauren Lemley joined the CLA in 2022 after more than a decade of work in higher education. She holds a BS and an MA in Communication from Abilene Christian University and a PhD in Rhetoric and Public Affairs from Texas A&M University. Lauren’s first connection with the CLA was as a researcher and educator, accessing archival manuscripts for writing projects and course development. Her academic work on topics such as the rhetoric of puritan sermons, the role of justice and ethics in public memory narratives, and the rhetoric of witch hunting in seventeenth-century transatlantic puritan communities has been selected for presentation in a number of venues, including the Rhetoric Society of America, the National Communication Association, and the Society of Early Americanists. As Communications Manager, Lauren is responsible for sharing information about the collections and programs of the CLA through social media, the website, email, and print publications.
 

Billy McCarthy IV

Archivist
ext. 228
wmccarthy@14beacon.org
 

Billy McCarthy graduated with a B.A. in History from Bridgewater State College and completed his Masters of Library and Information Science at Simmons University with a concentration in Archival Management. Billy started working at CLA through a graduate internship where he processed a collection about the Congregational Training School for Women. He stayed on a part-time basis processing collections and staffing the reference desk until he was hired full-time in 2018.

His work includes processing some of the oldest and more complex collections housed in the archives, including the Park Street Church records and the Old South Church records. Billy also works alongside CLA’s patrons to help with their reference requests and staffs the reference desk during in-person visits. In 2019, Billy also started working as the collection manager for the archives, working with CLA’s offsite vendor to protect and maintain the organization’s archival records. Some of his professional interests include increasing access, collection management, processing of complex materials, and facilitating research.
 

Tricia Peone

Project Director, New England's Hidden Histories
ext. 222
tpeone@14beacon.org
 

Tricia Peone received her B. S. and M. A. in history from SUNY Brockport, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of New Hampshire with a specialization in the early modern Atlantic world and history of science. Prior to joining the CLA, she was a research scholar at Historic New England for the Recovering New England’s Voices project. Dr. Peone previously worked as a lecturer at Northeastern and the University of New Hampshire, teaching classes on the Salem witch trials, early New England, and public history.  She was also the public programs director at New Hampshire Humanities and worked for several years as a historical consultant conducting research for projects related to cultural resources and historic preservation. Dr. Peone’s scholarship focuses on early modern magic and witchcraft and her work on these subjects has appeared in journals, books, blogs, and on radio and television.