“I read about the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike in high school,” says Squirrel Hill genealogist Tammy Hepps. “Until just a few years ago, I had no idea my family had significant roots in either Homestead or that era of labor history.”

Raised in Philadelphia’s New Jersey suburbs, Hepps earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Harvard University in 2000 and worked until 2014 in New York City as a technology executive for Dow Jones, The New York Times, NBCUniversal, Barnes & Noble and other media and healthcare companies.

Today she works as a genealogist with a mission to create “usable history for families and communities.”

The effort started with a few family records and has now grown to databases listing tens of thousands of people, organizations, business records and demographic trends spanning more than a century — all of it accessible online.

Hepps has developed collaborative storytelling software, taught classes for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, and this past spring, organized a Jewish Roots in Ukraine workshop that raised $30,000 for Ukrainian war relief efforts.

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