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Kim Dawson has been a fixture for the Penn Hills Library officially since 2002, but the library board president’s pathway started much earlier.

The longtime Penn Hills resident grew up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, “in the heart of the hill.”

“Having used the library as a resource throughout my life from being a young child to college and then through my career later in life — being part of it this way is important to me,” she said.

The bulk of Dawson’s career was spent at the Westinghouse Research Center in Churchill, where she worked for the company’s physics department for instrumentation and control. She now works for Monroeville PPG Industries Inc.

“There was a lot of research to be done, so I used the library a lot,” she said.

She finished her schooling at the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in electrical engineering and utilized the library quite often during her education.

She enjoys being on the other side of the library as a board member and seeing how policies and fiduciary duties affect positive change in a public entity she loves.

But the board does more than just manage money, said Tina Zins, the library’s director.

Zins was hired in May 2019 and found Dawson’s knowledge and support helpful in making the transition.

“I’ve been working with her from the get-go,” Zins said of Dawson. “It’s been great, and I think we’ve really been able to improve library services under her leadership. She’s a great communicator and very dedicated.”

Dawson was first appointed to the Library Advisory Board in 2002 by former Mayor Bill DeSantis. She has stuck with it through the years and just last year was voted in as its president. When she first started, the new library that now sits at the intersection of Stotler and Saltsburg roads was still in the designing phase. It was completed in 2009.

She said she has enjoyed watching the library grow.

“It’s really nice to see people use the facility,” she said. “I like to sit up on the mezzanine and see people using the computers, studying — all the rooms being used. It’s just an excellent resource.”

As society works to get back to some sort of normalcy, she hopes to bring back programs she helped implement, such as the Teen Advisory Board — a group developed to get young people involved with programming at the library.

She also hopes to find someone to run the library’s children’s department. Its director retired a few months before the pandemic in 2020.

“I would love people to know the library is for them,” Dawson said. “It’s their library. Hopefully, we’re back to being open full time when everyone is vaccinated and safe.”

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