Tracy Certo
Tracy Certo joined The Pittsburgh Foundation Board in September 2024. She is the editor of the New Americans, a series of stories giving voice to immigrants and showing how vital they are to a Pittsburgh region suffering from population decline and one of the lowest immigration rates in the country. The stories are available free to all Pittsburgh media.
She is the founder of NEXTpittsburgh, the online publication covering the people advancing Pittsburgh and the innovative things happening in the region. She served as publisher for eight years before selling the publication in December 2021. Under her leadership, NEXT reached 2.1 million unique visitors annually. Today the publication is celebrating 10 years of helping readers get more engaged with and better navigate our city.
Prior to founding NEXT, Tracy was publisher and editor of Pop City and editor of Columns, the magazine of the American Institute of Architects’ Pittsburgh affiliate.
For more than 10 years, she had her own communications company, writing articles, speeches and marketing materials for clients such as Highmark, PNC, the Heinz Endowments, Carnegie Mellon University and the Office of Child Development at the University of Pittsburgh.
Early in her career she was an account executive in local media sales, then moved into national media sales at Katz Radio in Los Angeles where she lived for five years.
She has led or participated in seven international Habitat for Humanity trips, including Chile, Mozambique and Thailand. She was named a Woman of Distinction by the Girl Scouts of Western PA for her work in the arts in Pittsburgh, and a Woman of Achievement by Cribs for Kids, among other civic honors. She has received numerous writing awards and was featured on C-SPAN in an hour-long segment interviewing author Ted Dintersmith. In September 2022, Mayor Bill Peduto declared a Tracy Certo Day in Pittsburgh in honor of her work in advancing the city.
Tracy has served on the boards of the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management, Contemporary Craft, VisitPittsburgh and the Community Design Center. She is currently on the board of the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Film Pittsburgh, the Strategic Partnerships and Community Engagement committee of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and The Pittsburgh Foundation. She is a graduate of Leadership Pittsburgh XVII and the year-long program at the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence.
She was a member of the German Marshall Fund’s Ideas Exchange Network, and joined representatives from across the United States and Europe to meet each year in a city such as Charlotte, North Carolina or Brussels, Belgium to learn about best practices in cities. In 2006, she was part of a small group from Pittsburgh to travel to the Ruhr Valley in Germany and Torino, Italy to take a deep dive in two regions that were decimated from single-industry decline, similar to Pittsburgh.
A writer and photographer at heart, she writes about her frequent travels (50 states and soon seven continents), and is an advocate for healthy, vibrant and sustainable cities, especially Pittsburgh.
She is one of the founders of the Seesaw Center, an indoor educational play center that was the first of its kind in the region when it was opened 30 years ago, and is still in operation today.
She lives very happily on one of the riverfront trails with her husband, Nick, where they love to kayak, bike and walk. She has two grown sons, one in Pittsburgh, the other in Denver, and a lovable doodle named Dublin.