Hotel GM from Washington honored; shale leader retiring
It was showtime in Vegas and Perry Ivery was a hit.
Ivery, general manager of the Oaklander Hotel in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, was recently named General Manager of the Year for Autograph Collection Hotels by Marriott International. His selection was announced about three weeks ago at the Autograph by Marriott Mosaic Conference in Las Vegas.
The honor is based on criteria that include excellence in serving as a brand ambassador, sales leadership, financial performance and active engagement in the local community.
“We have an excellent team,” Ivery said, deflecting a large measure of credit to staff. Ivery, a city of Washington resident, added during a telephone interview that “I’m proud of what we are doing. I am truly honored to bring this award home to Pittsburgh.
“We are trying to establish ourselves so people 50 years from now will speak highly of us.”
He oversees operations at a 10-story hotel along Bigelow Boulevard, where the Syria Mosque music theater once stood. The Oaklander opened in 2019 and features 167 rooms and 7,000 feet of meeting space.
Oh, and fabulous panoramas. “We have a beautiful overview of Oakland,” Ivery said. You look across and see Soldiers & Sailors (Memorial Hall & Museum), (the University of Pittsburgh), Carnegie Mellon and Carnegie Museum of Natural History.”
Ivery said Autograph Collection Hotels “are an upscale brand of Marriott,” with about 150 locations worldwide, some in exotic locales.
He was an experienced hotelier when he was hired at the Oaklander in 2021, having toiled at hotels along Racetrack Road in North Strabane and in Green Tree. Now he has earned a major award that is not a leg lamp.
A couple of decades ago, as a teenager, Ivery distinguished himself as a football and basketball player at Fort Cherry High School.
“I’m a Washington County guy through and through,” he said, laughing.
As a senior wide receiver in 2001, Ivery became the first scholastic football player to score a touchdown at Heinz Field – now Acrisure Stadium. The facility opened that year and hosted four WPIAL championship games on a late November Saturday, including the Rangers’ 27-19 loss to Rochester.
Awards started coming shortly thereafter. Ivery was named first-team all-state after that football season, before enrolling at the University of Toledo, where he also played.
Then last year, he was selected to the Washington-Greene County Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
So the General Manager of the Year award was not the first time Perry Ivery has been lavishly honored, and has credited his teammates. Last year, he was selected to the Washington-Greene County Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
Other honors may be ahead.
MSC leader retiring
Energized by Pennsylvania’s energy industry for nearly two decades, Dave Callahan is retiring as president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
Callahan told the MSC board of his plans to do so a few months ago, and will remain on the job until the end of this year. Callahan has been with the coalition since it launched in 2008, and has been its president since 2021.
Jim Welty, MSC’s vice president of government affairs since 2013, will assume the president’s position on Jan. 1.
Robinson Township-based MSC says on its website that it “works with exploration and production, midstream and supply-chain partners in the Appalachian Basin and across the country to address issues regarding the production of clean, job-creating American natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica Shale plays.”
“Leading the MSC has been an incredible honor, both professionally and personally,” Callahan said. “Success starts with people, and our industry, as well as MSC’s talented staff, are second to none.
“It’s been a privilege to work alongside so many exceptional people who all care deeply about our energy, economic and environmental future. I have full confidence in Jim’s leadership, especially his advocacy and policy talents, to drive our organization’s success forward.”
The shale coalition said in a statement that “Callahan has been instrumental in advancing the coalition’s mission of promoting the responsible development, transportation and use of natural gas. Under his leadership, the MSC strengthened its advocacy efforts and enhanced membership.”
Welty, who has a wealth of public policy and management experience, has helped to shape and advocate for legislative and regulatory priorities on behalf of the natural gas industry and its employees in Pennsylvania.
Welty is a graduate of Westminster College and Widener University’s Commonwealth Law School. Before joining the MSC, he served in various leadership positions at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney and K&L Gates law firms.
He said in a statement: “I’m humbled and honored for the opportunity to lead the MSC and provide a continued voice for an industry that has done so much to advance economic and environmental progress.”