Trafford native Sylvia Hill Fields directs Pittsburgh foundation

It is a long way from South Trafford, where Sylvia Hill Fields grew up in the 1960s, to an office on the 50th floor of Pittsburgh’s tallest building.

But the lessons she learned while being raised in a diverse neighborhood by a single mother with strong family ties helped lay the base for a career helping countless people as head of one of the city’s foundations.

“Everybody was there — African-Americans, Irish and Italian. You learned all the different foods and cultures. This is the environment in which I grew up,” said Fields, 63, of Penn Township, who has been the executive director of the Eden Hall Foundation since May 1996.

Her experience growing up in Trafford, one of seven children raised by her widowed mother, taught her a valuable lesson about people that transcended the color of their skin and their ethnic heritage.

“We were really more similar than different,” Fields said, even though there was a diverse group of people in terms of gender, race and religion.

Fields is the first African-American woman to direct a major private foundation in the Pittsburgh area. From its offices in the US Steel Tower, Eden Hall has distributed millions of dollars in grants, including $9.7 million last year, to help launch and sustain initiatives to improve the lives of girls and women. The foundation has supported the Girl Scouts of Western Pennsylvania, Magee-Women’s Research Institute and Foundation, the August Wilson Center for African-American Culture and Chatham University’s School of Sustainability, as well as Seton Hill University in Greensburg and Saint Vincent College near Latrobe.

Last year, Fields received the Athena Award of Greater Pittsburgh. She initiated the Women in Philanthropy Program with Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania, is a founding member of the African-American Funders Group of Southwestern Pennsylvania and has served on national boards of the YWCA-USA and World Affairs Councils of America.

She gets satisfaction “knowing you can make a change from beginning to end in the lives of people that need help” through initiatives the foundation supports in social welfare, health, education and the arts.

Fields is committed to the work of United Way-supported organizations and helping women, said Robert Nelkin, president and CEO of the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Fields’ background of how she grew up in a small community is the foundation for her outlook on life — “family, community and church,” Nelkin said.

It’s where she learned about gender equity, long before it became a major issue in society. Girls played on the same pickup baseball teams as the boys. Her sister, Marsha, was good enough to be picked before boys, Fields said proudly.

“I grew up in that kind of environment,” said Fields, who with her husband, Fred, have two adult children, Justin, 28, and Jettie, 26.

‘Network of the heart’

She did not stray too far from that hometown environment when she opted for what was then Seton Hill College in Greensburg, where her mother was friends with a member of the Sisters of Charity, the founding order of the college. She went to Seton Hill, where she visited as a young girl, with the intention of getting an education so she could work in government.

“Seton Hill is like a sisterhood. It is a network of the heart, all these years later,” said Fields, a 1978 graduate. “You create lifelong friends you are connected to.”

Seton Hill President Mary Finger called Fields an exceptional leader — not only in the Pittsburgh region, but on the state and national level as well.

“Sylvia’s deep commitment to social issues and community service has had a profound impact on countless lives,” Finger said.

Fields has been honored with the university’s Distinguished Alumni Leadership Award.

“Sylvia’s efforts have created in those around her a desire to be part of the change that is needed in our community and in the world,” Finger added.

The foundation’s most recent commitment to Seton Hill, where Fields is a former trustee, allowed the university to complete construction of the JoAnne Woodyard Boyle Health Sciences Center, providing the laboratory, research and classroom space necessary to prepare future health care professionals, Finger said.

As a student at Seton Hill, Fields worked with Saint Vincent College as a counselor for a program serving middle and high school students from Pittsburgh’s North Side with educational programming. As executive director of the Eden Hall Foundation, she encouraged and supported Saint Vincent to do a Pathways to Success program for students from that same neighborhood from 1998-2008, said Saint Vincent College President Brother Norman Hipps, who calls Fields a “lifelong friend.”

In accepting an honorary doctorate of humane letters degree from Saint Vincent in December, Fields noted that not only was she the daughter of a single mother who raised seven children after her father died, she is the great-granddaughter of “some who had been enslaved in this country.”

Fields is likely to quote her grandmother, an indication of how important family is to her, Nelkin said.

While the foundation’s efforts have focused on Western Pennsylvania, including shepherding such successful initiatives as establishing Chatham University’s Eden Hall Campus, its reach has extended beyond the region to Wilson College in Chambersburg, a former all-women’s school. Fields is proud that the foundation in 1997 provided close to $1 million for that college’s Single Parent Scholar Program, which allows single parents to live on campus with their child while they work toward earning a degree.

The funding helped remodel dormitories to create units for families, said Margaret Light, director of corporate and foundation relations at Wilson College. The project has helped 120 women and at least that many children, Light said.

“You can change lives for the next 100 years” through the Single Parent Scholar Program, Fields said.

Making a positive change in society is something she has worked hard to achieve, both professionally and personally.

“Don’t let people dissuade you,” Fields said. “If you work hard, it can happen.”

Joe Napsha is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Joe at 724-836-5252 or
jnapsha@tribweb.com.