The AHA is pleased to welcome three new faces to its Washington, DC, townhouse: Victor Medina Del Toro as the new AHA meetings and executive assistant, Devon Reich as the operations and marketing assistant, and Katie Kaefer as the Association’s new marketing manager.

Victor Medina Del Toro is the new AHA meetings and executive assistant. 

While studying history at Haverford College, Victor Medina Del Toro “made it a point not to have a narrow historical focus.” Water and World History, History of Humanitarian Organizations, History of Science, and History and Fiction are just a few of the courses Medina Del Toro took while completing his BA in history and minor in anthropology.

His studies led him to several internships and volunteer opportunities related to museum exhibits and archives. While completing the Joseph E. O’Donnell Student Library Research Internship at Haverford, Medina Del Toro spent two years curating an exhibition on the history of astronomy, focused on the development of the telescope. In 2016, Medina Del Toro completed an internship at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, where he realized his interest in museum administration and learned about the policies and regulations surrounding the ownership and trafficking of artifacts. He recently started coursework for a postgraduate certificate on antiquities trafficking and art crime at the University of Glasgow’s distance learning program.

Medina Del Toro came to the DC area in February 2018, when he started working at the US Capitol Visitor Center. He most enjoyed the moments when visitors asked him questions about the building’s history. “It reminded me of why I want to be in museums,” he says. Medina Del Toro is looking forward to gaining experience in nonprofit administration.

Devon Reich joins the AHA as its new operations and marketing assistant.

Devon Reich, a recent graduate of the Ohio State University, majored in history with a thematic concentration in power, culture, and society; she minored in world politics and anthropology. Reich’s interests have always extended far beyond a single time period or location. When choosing her major, she asked herself: “How can I study the most regions of the world?” Her research varied from studying the role of ambassadors’ wives in the early modern Ottoman Empire to the language that museums in the West used when acquiring non-Western artifacts.

While in college, Reich’s research interests spread to the field of bio-archaeology, and she used a bio-cultural approach to study a unique hip condition among Native communities in the Lake Erie region of the United States. She also participated in an excavation in Trim, Ireland, at the Black Friary monastery, built in the 13th century.

After graduating in May 2018, Reich worked as a special exhibits specialist at the Cincinnati Museum Center and enjoyed making history learning more interactive through exhibits and educational programming.

Reich is looking forward to gaining experience in development and marketing and finding opportunities to increase undergraduate involvement in AHA initiatives. She loves working with students and is always searching for ways to encourage them to share their research and participate in the historical community.

Katie Kaefer is the AHA’s new marketing manager.

Finally, the AHA welcomes Katie Kaefer. Originally from Buffalo, New York, Kaefer double majored in history and English literature at SUNY Geneseo. She completed her master’s degree in American history, public history, and women’s studies at the University of Houston and focused much of her research on women in the South in the 19th century, building on the material she worked on as a research assistant for her adviser at SUNY Geneseo. She wrote her thesis on women slaveholders in Louisiana and the relationship they had with the people they enslaved.

Before coming to the AHA, Kaefer was publicist and exhibits coordinator at Duke University Press, where she applied her interests in cultural and women’s studies to her work. She managed marketing and publicity for the press’s 60 journals, designed and managed approximately 80 exhibits a year, and managed social media, press, and review copy requests.

“I’m looking forward to using my history background again,” Kaefer says, discussing her new role at the AHA. She is especially excited about the AHA’s annual meeting in January: “It’s interesting to see how all the parts of the organization are working together for this big event.” Kaefer is also eager to experience the meeting from an organizational perspective, rather than from the viewpoint of an exhibitor/publicist.

In her free time, Kaefer is an avid reader and has set the impressive goal of reading more than 100 books written (mostly) by women every year.