Members of the SCA Board of Directors are an eclectic group of individuals with a passion for the 20th-century American roadscape. SCA board members come from all walks of life, with backgrounds in architecture, education, marketing, preservation, technology, and more. As an entirely volunteer run organization, board members volunteer their time and talents to help advance the SCA’s mission. Board members plan the SCA’s tours and conferences, contribute to and publish the SCA’s digital and print publications, support and advocate for the preservation of threatened resources, and more.

Interested in volunteering your time to support the SCA? Email President Michael Hirsch at president@sca-roadside.org to indicate your interest.

Michael Hirsch
President
Michael is an experienced urban planner and design architect with significant experience in the resort and tourism market. His work has included architecture and planning projects, including Red Sky Ranch Member + Guest Clubhouses (Eagle County, CO); Ritz-Carlton Residences, Vail; and a new base ski village for Breckenridge Mountain Resort, in Colorado. Serving as a preservation planning consultant to the New York City Department of City Planning, he completed work on design guidelines and signage recommendations for the Coney Island Redevelopment Master Plan, Brooklyn, NY. Prior international planning experience includes the Master Plan for the Lulu Island Resort, Abu Dhabi, U.A. E. Prior architectural experience includes the Doubletree Hotel, Tarrytown, NY (2005); and the Parker Meridien Hotel / Spa / Conference Center, Palm Springs, CA (2004). He is currently consulting on architecture, planning, and historic preservation projects in New York City. Michael received his B.Arch degree from Pratt Institute (1986), and a M.S. in City and Regional Planning, with a preservation planning certification, also from Pratt Institute (2006). Michael has served on the advisory board of The Doo Wop Preservation League, in Wildwood, NJ since 2003. The organization’s educational mission is to foster awareness of the popular culture and imagery of the 1950's and 1960's, and to promote the preservation of the largest collection of Doo Wop (mid-century modern) resort architecture found in the United States. In this role he wrote the “How to Doo Wop” handbook of design guidelines for the Wildwood Hotel/Motel District. He was also involved in the research of the Chateau Bleu Motel for its nomination to the New Jersey State Register of Historic Places, now on the National Register. Mr. Hirsch has received A.I.A. and A.P.A. awards for his urban planning/community design work.
Brian Gallaugher
Vice-President

Brian hails from the Great White North, land of Eskimo (now Inuit) Pies, the Quints, and donut culture. He always takes the Blue Highways, given a chance. And he will take any legit roadside motor court over the "they-all-look-the-same" chains any day. Brian is recently retired from a 25-year career as a city planner in Toronto, 3 years of which was spent in the City's Heritage Preservation Department. There he helped save classic motel signs and fast-disappearing mid-century streetscapes. An avid participant in SCA conventions and events, Brian harbours aspirations to organize the first international SCA conference in Niagara Falls, New York and Ontario. He also has delusions about writing an SCA-themed book on "apron art" (see p.5 in the latest Road Notes). Brian believes celebrating, documenting, and preserving the roadside architecture and culture of the 20th century is an important and worthwhile endeavour and that the SCA is the obvious organization to do it. But it needs more exposure and more members. Brian wants to devote some of his new-found time and energy to promotion of the SCA. Objective: more resources to advance the Society's mission.

Carol Ingald
Treasurer
Historic Preservation Specialist. Philadelphia, PA
Kimberly Ellis
Secretary
From East to West and back East again, Kimberly has been braking for roadside kitsch since she received her driver’s license. Kimberly is inspired by programmatic architecture, outsider art, dive bars and the magical, place-unmaking powers of all things Tiki. She believes her favorite structures contribute to a distinctly American landscape: the roadside. Kimberly grew up among the brick rowhomes of Philadelphia. She has an undergraduate degree in Urban Studies from Temple University and a Master’s Degree in Historic Preservation from the University of Georgia. Her thesis, titled “Here Briefly Rests a Restless Tribe: Preserving Frank Redford’s Wigwam Villages” examines the eccentric but strategic ways early business owners vied for roadside visibility. After graduate school, she was the Director of Architectural Services for the Woodwork Institute in San Diego. In this role, she spent over two years driving the highways and exploring the back roads of Southern California, Nevada, and Arizona. Kimberly is currently the Director of Operations Strategy for the Orleans Parish School Board in New Orleans, Louisiana. In her spare time she enjoys roller skating, exploring the South and creating detailed maps to share her experiences with others. Kimberly encourages everyone to brake (responsibly) and support the businesses that make up the endangered American roadscape.
Marla Akin

Marla Akin is a native Texan who lives in Austin and was Assistant Director of the University of Texas Michener Center for Writers for 25 years and still serves on their Advisory Board. She volunteers with Preservation Austin’s annual home tour and serves on the Advisory Board of SIGHTLINES, an online journal of news, culture and ideas, where she contributes occasional content on architecture or local history.

Her interest in all things roadside began in childhood on trips west with her family, who eschewed the commercialism of greasy spoons, motels, snake farms, and ice cold cherry cider stands in favor of national parks, picnics, and camping. To fill this gap, she began buying old roadside postcards over 30 years ago and has a respectable collection of linen and pre-linen motels, roadside businesses, cafes and gas stations now collecting dust. Since retiring, she travels the old roads with her husband and their dog, most recently in a camping van with a national parks pass, and photographs the signage and detritus of the places she missed out on earlier in life.

Frank Brusca

Frank is a lifelong odologist with a concentrated interest in the highway U.S. Route 40 (Atlantic City to San Francisco). His areas of expertise include cartography, diners, roadside ephemera and artifacts, family road trips, and Jack Kerouac. A member of the SCA since 1995, he served as a board member for the group between 2002-2006 where he served as web manager and membership chair. In addition, he was a charter member of the Ohio National Road Association (2002-2004). He has authored over 200 articles in publications such as American Road, the SCA Journal and Newsletter, Old Roads (Mighty Networks), and Milestones and Waymarkers (U.K.). Frank also created one of the first roadside web sites in 1997 (now located at www.route40.net).  In addition to the written word, he has made numerous presentations on roadside topics including a recent online SCA presentation about reconstructing Jack Kerouac’s On the Road travels. His current works in progress include a seven-decade update to George R. Stewart’s U.S. 40, several Kerouac-related projects, and memoirs of family road trips (1957-1977) and post-9/11 travels. Moreover, he is currently working with a major filmmaker on a documentary about Route 40. He has been the focus of many mainstream news features and three chapters in William Least Heat-Moon’s 2008 book Roads to Quoz.

In addition to the SCA board, Frank has served on the boards of the International Television Association (1991-1992, communications officer) and the Chelmsford Village Condo Association (2014-2016). He has also volunteered with various habitat and Special Olympics groups in Ohio, Louisiana, and Massachusetts.

Retired since early 2022, he previously worked in the IT field, most recently as an IT director for online learning systems at Southern New Hampshire University. He worked in higher education for 20 years following a 24-year stint in the corporate world. He holds B.S. (Theatre Arts) and M.S. (Instructional Technology) degrees from Towson University.

His avocations include genealogy, amateur radio (N3HVX), and building and playing musical instruments.

Mike Carsten
Mike Carsten is an environmental graphic designer in New York City whose passion for architecture, history, and signage has led to the execution of projects built on planning, skill, and expertise. Mike graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn with a BFA in Communications and Graphic Design. Today he is a senior designer spearheading design, implementation and project management of architectural graphics and signage programs for a variety of clients. In addition to his professional accomplishments, and job of designing signs and future commercial archeology, he has committed himself to documenting and preserving the signs, structures, and curiosities of his native New York, and other cities through fascinating images. Mike travels and seeks out his urban interests such as neon signs, diners, old skybridges, historic or quirky buildings, small or interesting architectural details, any and all commercial archeology with a story, or the obscure and weird things around us. This started with a fascination with documenting the old things left in New York City, as the city is changing, and these older remnants are removed and replaced with new. He realized it’s extremely important to preserve these sights anywhere the best we can, even if by a photograph or memory. Nostalgia is his middle name.
Jeremy Ebersole
Leaping Muffler Men in a single bound, Jeremy is a passionate lover of all things quirky, off-beat, and eccentric. Growing up on a solid 1980s diet of Midwestern drive-in movie theatres, a requisite college cross-country Route 66 road trip, and a stint amongst the exquisite movie palaces of Los Angeles, his appetite for mimetic architecture, flashy signs, Art Deco chevrons, and Googie boomerangs is limitless. Jeremy recently completed his Master's degree in Historic Preservation amidst the neon, trees, and neon trees of Portland at the University of Oregon and currently serves as Executive Director at the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance in Wisconsin. He has also worked as a concierge at a Vermont resort, in Massachusetts with the Essex National Heritage Commission, and in Philadelphia as the regional National Heritage Areas Communications Coordinator with the National Park Service. He previously served as an Admissions Counselor at his alma mater, Elizabethtown College, built a labyrinth along the border of the ancient Roman Empire in Germany, dug through ancient dirt pursuing below-ground archaeology in Israel, and of course worked at multiple old neighborhood cinemas. Jeremy holds fast to his conviction that the best architecture is the kind that makes you smile.
Cindy Flora
Cindy Flora has enjoyed writing, art, travel, and photography her entire life and tried to combine those interests whenever possible. She has worked 32 years for Pinellas County Schools (PCS). She was a high school language arts teacher, yearbook advisor, and multicultural committee sponsor before serving in various coordinator and specialist positions at the district level for the past 16 years. She currently coordinates the Principal’s Multicultural Advisory Committee (PMAC) program and Character Education initiatives under the social studies department. She is the editor of the Pinellas County Schools’ Dimensions of Diversity newsletter which she created in 2002. She is also the webmaster for the PCS PMAC http://www.pcsb.org/Domain/5058 and Character Education http://www.pcsb.org/Page/362 web site pages. She was the past editor for the St. Petersburg Historical Museum newsletter and the Society for Prevention of Cruelty of Animals Largo, Florida, newsletter. She is a regular contributor to the Storycircle Network and SCA Road Notes. Her interests also include commercial archaeology (she has spent a lifetime exploring this topic informally and collecting its ephemeral), gardening, horseback riding, running, art (painting, folk art, crafts, etc.), mid-century modern architecture and furnishings, vintage clothes, exotica music and Tiki culture, etc…really the list and future possibilities are infinite. She has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications, a master’s degree in Composition and Rhetoric, and a master’s degree in Educational Leadership, all from the University of South Florida. She has been married 27 years to Tom Flora, has one daughter, Kaycee Flora, in college, and two step-sons, Jason and Shawn.
Ronald Ladouceur
Ron is the principal and founder of POSTMKTG, a branding, design and digital media agency in Schenectady, New York. Among his duties as a member of the board of directors, Ron manages and maintains the SCA website. In addition, Ron teaches advertising in the School of Business at the University at Albany, volunteers his web and promotional skills to support several causes (and lost causes) and spends a good deal of his free time (free time?) documenting, researching and contextualizing ghost signs and Googie treasures.

Ron holds a BA in General Studies from SUNY Oneonta (1981), an MA in Liberal Studies from SUNY Empire State College (2008) and is currently pursuing a PhD in History at Binghamton University.
Tim O’Brien

Tim has been interested in non-mainstream pop and roadside culture for several decades. During his professional career, Tim was senior editor for Amusement Business magazine, a business to business trade publication, covering the amusement park, fair, carnival, circus and sideshow industries, for 18 years. After that he served as VP of Communications for Ripley’s Believe it or Not! for 12 years. He was the corporation’s media voice, and cartoon editor. He also booked sideshow talent into the Ripley venues worldwide, and for the last five years, produced and cohosted the Ripley’s Believe if or Not! radio show, The Oddcast.

Stefanie Poteet

Stefanie fell in love with neon signs 15 years ago and never looked back. Signs with personality speak to her; it’s like they call her name. A paralegal by day and photographer nights and weekends, Stefanie has traveled more than 300,000 miles chasing neon. If it’s a long weekend, she’s likely on a road trip.

In 2014, Stefanie successfully launched her own Kickstarter project and traveled the country for four months photographing neon signs, roadside oddities, and fiberglass giants. Through her photography she aims to raise awareness and promote sign preservation and restoration.

Emily Schricker
Emily Taggart Schricker has been enjoying neon signs and abandoned gas stations since she drove solo across the country on her move to Los Angeles, California. Add seven years of living on the west coast, surrounded by amazing twentieth-century goodness, and she was well prepared to join the SCA in 2014. Following her time in the television industry and roaming the streets of Hollywood, she moved to Fredericksburg, VA to make her Historic Preservation education official. There Emily studied at the University of Mary Washington and received her Bachelor of Liberal Studies in Historic Preservation. Her focus was on historic materials and building documentation as well as grant writing; she received a variety of awards upon her graduation from the program in 2015. Between her studies and work at a local CRM company, Emily explored and documented Fredericksburg's untapped roadside history of U.S. Route 1. While volunteering at the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc. (HFFI) Emily coordinated an annual event focusing on Fredericksburg’s twentieth-century history, the Vintage Route 1 Event, it included tours and exhibits focusing on the local road's history and more modern architectural treasures. In 2016 Emily joined the HFFI staff and soon became Executive Director. Now living in Philadelphia, PA Emily is closer to her family and hometown of Lancaster, PA where giant shoes, the occasional 15-foot Amish statue, and rarely appreciated early-twentieth century architecture lurks.
Josh Silber
Josh Silber, a lifelong New Yorker, is an attorney by profession and an amateur travel photographer whenever he gets the opportunity. He has long put his focus on mid-20th century vintage storefronts, theaters and signage. He has traveled extensively in the US and Europe and has visited Cuba many times, organizing trips for fellow photographers with similar interests to capture and share the beauty of the island and particularly the crumbling mid-century remains which are a time capsule to that whimsical and optimistic era before the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Stephanie Stuckey
Stephanie Stuckey is CEO of Stuckey’s, the highway oasis that’s been serving pecan log rolls and kitschy souvenirs to road trippers since 1937. Founded by her grandfather, W.S. Stuckey, Sr. in Eastman, Georgia, Stuckey’s grew into over 350 stores nationwide by its peak in the 1970’s. The company was sold in 1964 and sadly declined for decades under a series of corporate owners. Fortunately, Stuckey’s is now in family hands again and making a comeback, with a mission to make road trips fun.

Stephanie received both her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Georgia. She worked as a trial lawyer, was elected to seven terms as a state representative, ran an environmental nonprofit law firm, served as Director of Sustainability for the City of Atlanta, and taught as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Georgia School of Law. Stephanie purchased Stuckey’s in November of 2019 and assumed the role of CEO at that time. Stephanie’s achievements include being named one of the 100 Most Influential Georgians by Georgia Trend Magazine and a graduate of Leadership Atlanta. She is active in her community and has served on many nonprofit boards, including the National Sierra Club Foundation, EarthShare of Georgia, and her local zoning review board.

When she’s not running the Stuckey’s candy and pecan shelling plant in Wrens, Georgia or the distribution operations in Eastman, Georgia, Stephanie enjoys traveling by car to explore the back roads of America and pulling over for every roadside oddity and souvenir shop along the way.
Bill Swislow

Bill Swislow counts roadside art among his longest-standing passions, starting in the late 1970s when he began following blue highways in preference to the interstate (though he has learned to value interstate travel as well). He appreciates all manner of roadside architecture, with a particular love of the vernacular kind and a particular interest in hand-painted signs. Early adoption of the Internet made his interestingideas.com site one of the first Web destinations for lovers of roadside and outsider art, though his efforts now seem modest compared with those of the many other advocates who eventually took up residence online.

Bill, a founder and former executive at Cars.com, is a writer and art collector. Before joining Cars.com, Bill worked at the Chicago Tribune and at other media organizations. Besides operating interestingideas.com, he sits on the board of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. He has written about art for a variety of publications, including the Chicago Tribune, Raw Vision, Folk Art Messenger and Intuit’s Outsider Magazine. His account of The Gyros Project, a celebration of hand-painted signs, appeared in the SCA Journal. He also has curated exhibits focused on art made from bottle caps and on popular crafts, among others. He has written and published two books: Lakefront Anonymous: Chicago’s Unknown Art Gallery, which documents the thousands of mostly anonymous rock carvings that line Chicago’s lakefront, and Bizarre Bazaars, which collects oddball names of stores, restaurants and other businesses.

Laura Weston

Laura Weston, a native of Marion, Ohio, currently lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. At Ball State University, she majored in American History and minored in Jazz Studies. She did her graduate work in historic preservation & urban planning. She interned at the Cincinnati Preservation Association and the City of Kansas City, Missouri Planning Department. She has served on several boards, the Indiana Barn Foundation, Friends of the Parks of Allen County and the Indiana Lincoln Highway Association, serving as president during the Lincoln Highway’s centennial year. She spent 27 years as a journalist. Currently, she is the staff historic preservationist at ARCH, Inc., northeast Indiana’s historic preservation nonprofit. Her passion is old signs, programmatic architecture and historic bridges.