President of Private Industry Council of Westmoreland-Fayette stepping down

Longtime Private Industry Council of Westmoreland-Fayette President and CEO Tim Yurcisin will step down this fall after 21 years in the role and nearly four decades with the PIC.

Yurcisin has helped shepherd the nonprofit corporation from a $10 million budget when he took over to a $23 million budget today. The PIC focuses on workforce development, adult education and early childhood education, directing programs in Allegheny, Beaver, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

“We’re providing holistic support to entire families,” said Yurcisin, who will pass the reins in October to Shujuane Martin of Mt. Pleasant, who joined the PIC in 2003 and currently serves as senior vice president and chief operating officer.

For Martin, the primary challenge is not just assuming a leadership role. It’s assuming that role amid a global pandemic.

“The obvious challenge is getting back to servicing families in the style they’re used to,” she said. “Everything now is virtual, which is not a bad thing, but our families are used to face-to-face, being able to look someone in their eyes and tell their story.”

Yurcisin looked back on his time as president and chose to focus on the PIC’s role in fostering early childhood development.

“We got into that business in 1994 with Head Start in Fayette County,” he said. “We built our main building, on Donohoe Road in Greensburg, in 2004, at a time when the government was not crazy about nonprofits owning property. And in 2013 we looked into it in Beaver County and secured a program there.”

The PIC earned national attention when it built its Lemont Furnace location in North Union.

“It was a place where a mom could bring her child for Head Start, and then go upstairs and take adult classes,” Yurcisin said.

Martin is in a good position to continue that legacy, having assisted with integrating technology and STEM education into early childhood classrooms and impacting more than 1,600 children through Head Start, Early Head Start and Pre-K Counts programs.

“I look forward to the opportunity to carry out my vision,” Martins said. “It’s not that different from what the PIC has already done in offering high-quality programs. But if I can add my spin on it and move it forward, that’s the goal.”

Yurcisin said he views Head Start participants as members of a future workforce in a couple decades.

“We’re trying to build that kind of love for education, love for success, so they can grow up, make a lot of money and give some of it back to their communities,” he said.

Martin will officially take over the PIC on Oct. 2. She said she can trace her success back to her own participation in Head Start.

“It takes the people within the community to build the community,” she said.