About The Board

Tony Timmons serves as the assistant vice president of Nevada Regional Banking Communications for Wells Fargo Bank, one of the nation’s largest consumer and commercial banks. In his role, he strategically directs media relations, executive communications and team member internal communications for the state of Nevada.He is very involved in the community, serving on the President’s Council for Nevada State College as well as on the Department of Marketing Advisory Board at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In his spare time, he is a volunteer for the State of Nevada Historic Preservation Office and is the head of the Cultural Resources committee for the Friends of Red Rock Canyon.

Timmons earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with a concentration in marketing, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Missouri State University.

Michelle Schmitter has over 25 years of experience in the field of Historic Preservation. Michelle received her MS degree in Arts Administration from the University of Oregon School of Architecture with an emphasis in museum management and historic preservation.  Between 1997 and 2005, Michelle served as an Executive Director at museum properties listed on the National Register of Historic Place in Oregon, Maine, New York, and Nevada where she planned and implemented large-scale preservation projects and interpretive programs.  Michelle meets and exceeds the National Park Service qualification standards for architectural historian, works within the Secretary of Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, and has extensive technical experience with multiple preservation, restoration, rehabilitation and reconstruction projects.

Understanding that the greenest building is the one already built, and to further her efforts to sustain and rehabilitate buildings, Michelle received her LEED Green Associate certification in 2015. Michelle formed her firm mschmitter consulting llc in 2016. Today, Michelle concentrates her efforts primarily on projects in Northern Nevada and the Tahoe Basin and provides historic building consulting and architectural history services. In addition to historic building projects, Michelle works with non-profits on capital projects and fund development.  Michelle has over 10 years’ experience in healthcare philanthropy.  Michelle serves on the Board of Preserve Nevada and is the Vice-chair of the Carson City Historic Resources Commission.

Daniel Markoff earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of San Diego School of Law. He entered private practice and was appointed assistant federal public defender, and later federal public defender for Nevada by the U.S. Court of Appeals 9th Circuit. Returning to private practice, he handled cases at all levels of state and federal courts, including winning a challenge to the constitutionality of a Nevada mandatory death penalty law before the U.S. Supreme Court.Mr. Markoff has several passions in life, including wife Ditty, to whom he has been married for 30 years. He first met her on the ranch near Tucson in the early 1960s, when she rode her horse to his home. Another is flying, acquired from his father, who was also a pilot. The third is sharing his 1875 Baldwin locomotive Eureka that he restored between 1986 and 1991. The locomotive has run throughout the West for events, and through the Colorado and New Mexico Rocky Mountains each summer for 20 years. Eureka brings history to life for people who had no idea how beautiful locomotives were when they ran through the Nevada wilderness. Other interests include reading history, rifle and trap shooting, and helping to preserve Nevada’s history.

Seth Schorr is chief executive officer of Fifth Street Gaming and chairman of Downtown Grand Hotel & Casino. Schorr is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a major in Chinese Studies. He was recognized by VEGAS Inc. as a member of the elite “40 Under 40,” and “The Vegas Dozen.”Schorr serves on the boards of the Las Vegas Natural History Museum, Nevada Restaurant Association, Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, Advisory Board of The Smith Center for Performing Arts, One Night for One Drop and was appointed by Governor Brian Sandoval to the Nevada State Board of Museums and History. He is an executive board member and treasurer of the Downtown Las Vegas Alliance and a member of Young Presidents Organization.

Since 1991, Schorr served as an integral member of the Wynn Resorts team, developing the international marketing department in Macau, the interactive gaming division and The Wynn Collection of Fine Art. He also worked at Bellagio Resort and Casino, The Mirage and Treasure Island hotels and casinos, and the Golden Nugget, Laughlin.

Schorr and partner Jeffrey Fine own and operate Fifth Street Gaming and its affiliate, Lucky Silver Management, including three casinos in North Las Vegas. The principals of Fifth Street Gaming also control, through affiliates, the LEV Restaurant Group, a food and beverage operation with more than 35 restaurants in the Las Vegas area.

Mercedes De La Garza practices architecture in Reno, Tahoe, and San Francisco. She is recognized for her work in historic preservation such as the restoration St. Mary’s in the Mountains Cathedral in Virginia City.

Heavily involved in the regional community, she is one of the founding members of the nonprofit Historic Reno Preservation Society. Mercedes currently serves on the Reno Philharmonic Board of Trustees, KNPB Channel 5 Public Broadcasting Board of Trustees, Sierra Business Council Board and the EDAWN Foundation Board of Directors. She also has served on the advisory boards of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the Holland Project, a nonprofit youth arts organization, as well as served two appointed terms on the City of Reno Historic Resources Commission.

Mercedes received her first professional degree of Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, her second professional degree of Master of Architecture, Design and Theory at the University of California, Los Angeles. She continued her studies with Enric Miralles (Spain) and Peter Cook (UK) in Post Graduate Master Class at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Staedelschule, Frankfurt Germany. She has been employed with several award-winning architecture firms, most notably with AIA Gold Medalist Charles W. Moore FAIA.

Janet Pearce Petersen is a fifth-generation Nevadan and the director of the Cowboy Arts & Gear Museum in Elko. She has a lifelong interest in and appreciation of the customs, legacies and stories of northeastern Nevada, the Great Basin and the American West.Born and raised in Elko County (both she and her husband, Dennis, had family members in Elko since 1869), Petersen attended Elko schools and Great Basin College. She spent many years at the Northeastern Nevada Museum, worked as a history interpreter at the California Trails Interpretive Center in Elko. She also runs the kids’ program during the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering for the Western Folklife Center.

She is passionate about Nevada history and was appointed to the Board of Museums and History by Gov. Brian Sandoval in 2018.

Mark C. Slaughter has more than four decades of experience as an archaeologist and has undertaken excavation and survey projects throughout the western United States, Midwest, and in foreign countries. Until retirement, he was the Regional Archaeologist at the Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado River Basin Office in Boulder City, Nevada.

He has MA degree in Anthropology from Eastern New Mexico University and a BA in History from Missouri State University. Mr. Slaughter has numerous publications that include editing four Three Corners Conference volumes on the archaeology of the Lower Colorado River area. He has been a reviewer for submissions to various professional journals (e.g., American Antiquity, Kiva, Nevada Archaeologist, Advances in Archaeology) and served on the editorial board for North American Archaeologist.

He taught courses at the College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas, Pima Community College, Tucson, and Eastern New Mexico University. Mr. Slaughter also has held numerous service positions that include the Southern Nevada Agency Partnership Cultural Resource Team Leader, Southern Nevada Agency Partnership Site Steward team, Chair of the Committee on Awards for the Society for American Archaeology, and the organizer for Three Corners Conference’s held in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 2020, he was presented with the Silver Trowel from the Nevada Archaeological Association for Lifetime Achievement in Nevada Archaeology. Mr. Slaughter also received numerous other awards (individually and team) that include the Environmental Achievement Award from the Department of the Interior, Historic Preservation Award from Boulder City, Nevada for the Date Street 100 Building, Partners in Conservation Award Preserve America Steward Award from First Lady Michelle Obama, Preserve America Steward Award for the Southern Nevada Agency Partnership Team from the Department Of Interior and the National Advisory Council on Preservation, Department of the Interior Cooperative Conservation Award, Certificate of Commendation from Senator Harry Reid, House of Representatives Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from Representative Dean Heller, House of Representatives Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from Congressman John C. Porter, and Southern Nevada Agency Partnership Service for Outstanding Natural Resource Stewardship.

Michael “Bert” Bedeau recently retired after serving for 23 years as District Administrator for the Comstock Historic District Commission and the Comstock History Center Museum in Virginia City. As a member of the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office staff he often worked as both an architectural historian and historian in a wide variety of areas. He gained museum experience from the time the Comstock History Center opened in 2005. He is proud to have been a founding board member of Preserve Nevada and served in that capacity for 15 years. He was also on the board of the Society for Commercial Archaeology for 9 years, hosting three conferences including their 2002 get-together in Reno. He also served as co-editor of the SCA Journal for several years and was president of the SCA board in 2002-2003.

Prior to coming to Nevada, Bert worked for the Idaho State Historical Society and before that the South Dakota State Historical Society. He received a Master of Arts degree in Historic Preservation Studies from Boston University in 1989. He also holds a Juris Doctor from the Washington College of Law, American University in Washington, DC and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA.

Bert was born in Salt Lake City and grew up in that state on the other side of the Sierra Nevada where his father’s people have been since the Gold Rush. He rode his first train, the California Zephyr, from Herlong CA to Salt Lake City at the ripe old age of three. When he asked the conductor about seat belts, he was informed very loftily “Son, this train is so safe it doesn’t need them.” He has been in love with trains ever since!

Nathan Harper’s passion for the past began at an early age helping his parents investigate the family’s history in small, dusty courthouses and storerooms across Kansas. This early experience would lead him to search even deeper into the history and prehistory of the people of the American Southwest, Great Basin, and the eastern Mediterranean.

He completed his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in Anthropology at Wichita State University, culminating in a Fulbright Fellowship to Cyprus in 2001. Nathan has conducted fieldwork in Nevada, Arizona, Kansas, Texas and internationally in Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, Mexico.

From 2010 to 2022 Nathan served as the Preserve Archaeologist at the Springs Preserve in Las Vegas, conducting preservation and compliance projects and was part of a curation team that restored and rehabilitated four San Pedro railroad workers cottages for the development of Boomtown 1905. Nathan currently serves as the Archaeologist for the Southern Nevada Water Authority conducting preservation and compliance work on all SNWA and Las Vegas Valley Water District managed properties, which includes the Springs Preserve, Warm Springs Natural Area, and the Las Vegas Wash.

Nathan was a member of the Western Museums Association Program Committee from 2013-2016 and a member of the Host Committee for WMAs Annual Meeting in Las Vegas in 2014. Harper continued to serve on the WMA Programming Committee as Co-chair for the 2015 and 2016 meetings. He served as Host Committee Co-Chair for a proposed Fall 2020 meeting of the American Association of State and Local History to be held in Las Vegas, supported by the Las Vegas Museum Alliance and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. That meeting was moved online in the fall of 2021 due to the COVID pandemic.

In the community, Harper served as a member of the School Organizational Team for Newton Elementary in Henderson, serving as Chair of the Team from 2016-2018. He also participates in the Clark County School District’s PAYBAC (Professionals and Youth Building a Commitment) program since 2017.

Rochanne Downs is a tribal member of the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe and currently serves as the NAGPRA Liaison and Project Manager for the University of Nevada Reno.  Rochanne brings true passion for the meaningful work of repatriation, cultural resources protection, consultation and collaboration with Tribal communities.

Prior to her work with the University of Nevada Reno, Rochanne served as the Education Director, Cultural Resources Director and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe where she advocated and fought for Tribal rights and sovereignty as well as building a greater understanding and collaboration between Tribal communities and state, federal and local agencies.

Rochanne completed a double major and received B.A degrees in History and Geography from California State University Chico in 1998.  Rochanne enjoys spending time with her family, exploring the Great Basin, and sharing and preserving Great Basin culture for the future generations.