Eileen Weiner, whose Pitt career included stints as director of international advancement for the University Center for International Studies (2001-2007), associate director of UCIS (2007-2010) and, after her official retirement, assisting history faculty member Marcus Rediker with producing and distributing his documentary, “Ghosts of Amistad” (2014-2017), died Sept. 18, 2024, at 76.
There will be a celebration of her life from 3 to 5 p.m. Nov. 2, at the City of Asylum’s Alphabet City, 40 W. North Ave., Pittsburgh.
“It was an honor to work with her,” said William Brustein, who was the senior international officer directing UCIS during Weiner’s time as UCIS’s chief fundraising officer. “We achieved a lot in those years and it could never have been done without both her networking and her insightful work.”
While Brustein, with others, often handled the in-person donor meetings, Weiner was vitalin maintaining day-to-day contact with donors and finding the best way they could help the University with their gift, he said.
She was central to the successful creation of an endowed fellowship centered around women and conflict resolution at UCIS, which served both the donor’s desires and the University’s needs, Brustein said. She also was instrumental in bringing the then-largest individual gift to UCIS: $1 million from local businessman William F. Benter to create the UCIS Endowed Visiting Professorship in Contemporary International Issues, focused on the Middle East.
“Eileen worked so diligently to answer all the questions that Bill had and to make the realization of the gift possible,” Brustein recalled. “It would never have occurred without her.”
Weiner developed a slide show on “the art of advancement and fundraising,” he said, that proved very successful at professional conferences. “I was able to use it and build upon that at many conferences for the next five to 10 years.
“I couldn't think of a better partner in terms of what we were doing” for the advancement of UCIS “and trying to connect with the community,” he added. “She was wonderful.”
Rediker, in a remembrance written for the University Times, recalled her work on “Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of the Rebels,” about the local memories in Sierra Leone of the slave ship revolt of 1839 (since all of the participants were from Sierra Leone and the survivors were repatriated there in 1842, after gaining their freedom following a U.S. Supreme Court decision). The film was funded by the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences.
“Eileen was super-talented in all kinds of ways,” Rediker wrote. “She was also smart, charming and tough. She really knew how to get things done. My favorite example of this was when we were planning to go to Sierra Leone to meet with village elders and ask about the local memory of the uprising through the oral tradition.
“I used University funds to take most of our creative team to Sierra Leone. I wanted Eileen to go, but she declined. But Eileen jumped in to make all of the arrangements. She kept butting heads with the Pitt bureaucracy about the use of the funds. … Little did they know that the person making the requests was a high-powered lawyer who specialized in reading and analyzing documents. Eileen devoured all of the relevant University regulations and patiently explained to the administrators how by their own rules they could do exactly what they were saying that they could not do. She convinced them on each and every point, thereby making our trip possible.
“Eileen was the engine of the film's success. She not only made possible the filming at the heart of it, she worked on the script and on various aspects of post-production. She came up with the title. She handled our submissions to film festivals, ten of which selected us. She worked with specialists to add subtitles to the film in French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish so the film could reach more people around the world. She arranged screenings of the film and talkbacks for our team with audiences. She worked on the film website and took a special interest in creating educational resources for teachers and students who wished to use it. She worked out all of the intellectual property issues with the University of Pittsburgh, a very complicated undertaking. She negotiated a deal for rights with a global film distributor. She worked with WQED and the larger Public Broadcasting System to get the film on national television several times.”
“She was a great team player, contributing intelligence, savvy, humor and determination to everything we did.”
Eileen Judith Weiner was born on March 1, 1948, in New York City. She earned her bachelor of arts degree from City College, CUNY, in 1968 and earned a JD with honors from the University of Maryland in 1984.
Her long career included work as a public information officer at the United Nations Association in New York; private practice as a lawyer in Baltimore; and working as senior counsel at the predecessor of the Allegheny Health Network. Her international experience, including several years at the Sorbonne in Paris and in Argentina, coupled with her volunteer work at Global Links, an international medical aid nonprofit, were also influential in leading to her work at UCIS.
She was predeceased by her brother Lawrence Weiner and is survived by her sister-in-law Alice Zimmerman Weiner, niece Kirsten Weiner and husband Lokke Heiss, and grandnephew Henry Skigen.
— Marty Levine