Meet Brittany Reno (CGS '12), Executive Director of the Sharpsburg Neighborhood Organization and Council President and Mayor-Elect of Sharpsburg Borough. She is a proud graduate of the College of General Studies, where she earned a BA in media and professional communications as well as a certificate in corporate and community relations.
Since graduating from Pitt I've served two successful terms in AmeriCorps (working with youth aging out of the foster care system) and moved to Sharpsburg Borough, where I became the youngest woman ever elected to serve on the Sharpsburg Borough council (2015), became the youngest woman to serve as the Borough Council president (unanimously elected by my peers on council twice), was re-elected (2017), and have now been elected to serve as Sharpsburg's youngest ever and first woman mayor (will begin acting duties on December 17, 2021 and sworn in January 4, 2022).
During this time, I also founded a local nonprofit in 2014, Sharpsburg Neighborhood Organization, which has since grown from a two-page idea to an organization with two full-time staffers and a number of equity-centered programs focused on improving the local quality of life, building community power and resilience, and healing environmental challenges in Sharpsburg. I have also served on a number of boards, including the boards for the Triboro Ecodistrict, the Cooper-Siegel and Sharpsburg Community Libraries, and the Tri-COG Land Bank.
In 2020, I was awarded a full-ride scholarship to Chatham University's Falk School of Sustainability and Environment, where I am pursuing a Master of Sustainability in sustainable community & urban planning with plans to graduate in April 2022. As an undergrad at CGS, I was granted the flexibility to learn and develop as a leader in ways that suited my passions, interests, and skills. Between my classes and involvement in the Resident Student Association and the Pitt College Democrats, my education at the University of Pittsburgh set me on the path to a lifetime of public service.