Mascara retiring after 45 years with SPHS

By TAYLOR BROWN

tbrown@yourmvi.com

After more than four decades of helping Mon Valley residents, Jeff Burks Mascara will retire as executive vice president/CEO of Southwestern Pennsylvania Human Services.

A collaborative system that provides health and human services programs throughout Washington, Greene, Fayette, Westmoreland and Butler counties, SPHS helps more than 70,000 people through nine nonprofit corporations.  

A former Speers resident, Mascara joined the SPHS team in 1975 as a community caseworker. 

In the years that followed, he held several senior management positions before taking his current role in 2000. 

He announced Thursday that he will retire at the end of the year.

He helped to grow SPHS into one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the state, offering behavioral health programs, substance abuse treatment, homelessness prevention, senior citizen services, in-home aging services, child care and residential care for the developmentally disabled.

During Mascara’s two decades of leadership as CEO, the SPHS system doubled its annual budget to more than $70 million and grew to a staff of more than 1,100 professionals and support employees. 

In 2006, Mascara led the effort to purchase and renovate the former Montgomery Ward in Charleroi. The 74,000-square-foot space became the headquarters of SPHS in a move that brought more than 300 jobs to the community. 

Ken Wiltz, president of the SPHS board of directors, said Mascara has helped the organization advance.

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