The WVU Cancer Institute is pleased to announce the 2025 Spring Gala featured guest and entertainment lineup:
Elizabeth Heiskell is a regular food contributor to the Today show, a Southern Living contributing editor, seasoned chef, caterer, and culinary instructor. Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, she grew a passion for combining her love of food and the history of the rich agricultural area in which she was raised. Heiskell maintains her catering company of 22 years, Elizabeth Heiskell Catering, and under the brand name The Debutante Farmer, produces homegrown gourmet pickles, jellies, jams, salsas and a popular Bloody Mary mix.
Heiskell was head chef at Viking Range Corporation for 8 years where she added fun and vitality to all of her cooking classes. In addition to the Today show, she has appeared on Food Network’s The Kitchen and on Chopped as a judge. She has also authored three best-selling cookbooks: “What Can I Bring”, “The Southern Living Party Cook Book” and “Come On Over”. Cookbook sales and a signing will be held as part of the Spring Gala festivities, with a portion of the proceeds benefitting the WVU Cancer Institute. The Gala’s cause is near to Heiskell’s heart, due to her own journey with breast cancer.
“You don’t get to choose if you get cancer, but you do get to choose how you experience this cancer journey. It is different for everyone, but I choose to search for joy and to lean into all the lessons that only moments like these can teach me,” said Heiskell in a published essay regarding her survivorship. Read the rest of her story, shared via the Today show, here.
Heiskell lives in Oxford, Mississippi where she and her husband are raising three beautiful daughters.
A member of the inaugural class of Steinway “Legends” chosen from over a century of Steinway Artists, and a recent inductee into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, pianist Barbara Nissman has performed with major conductors and orchestras on nearly every continent. She believes her mission is to inspire and uplift people through her music, and Barbara is still sharing her passion and joy with audiences around the world. She makes music relevant, connecting the composer to the listener, touching souls in the process.
Her recordings of Liszt, Prokofiev, Bartók and Ginastera are considered definitive, and she has garnered high praise for her series on 19th century composers Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff, all available on her label, Three Oranges Recordings. Long associated with the music of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, Barbara is the dedicatee of the composer’s final work, the Sonata No. 3.
Regarded as a significant Prokofiev scholar, Nissman made history in 1989 by being the first person to perform his complete piano sonatas in a series of three recitals in both New York and London. Her recordings represented the first complete set of Prokofiev’s piano sonatas made available on CD. BBC Magazine selected Nissman’s recordings as “the best recordings of Prokofiev’s piano music.” At the invitation of both the Moscow and St. Petersburg Conservatories, she has presented recitals and master classes on Prokofiev. In the UK, the Prokofiev Family Trust has awarded Barbara a grant to film a video masterclass on his Three War Sonatas.
Barbara recently returned to Amsterdam to perform before a live audience of some 12,000 and a television audience of 1.2 million to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Prinsengracht concerts that she helped initiate in 1982. These concerts have remained a popular summer tradition with audiences arriving on foot or in their boats to listen.
Performer, writer, lecturer, producer, film-maker, and frequent guest artist/clinician, Barbara Nissman has toured and given master classes throughout the United States, Europe, the Far East, New Zealand, and South America. In 2014, at Steinway Hall in New York, Nissman launched her record label Three Oranges Recordings. In 2017, the Three Oranges Foundation was established with the mission of making classical music accessible and relevant and supporting Nissman’s educational projects.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Barbara received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in music from the University of Michigan. In May 2024, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from West Virginia University, and in 2020 she received the West Virginia Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Barbara calls West Virginia home and lives on a farm in Greenbrier County. Her website is: http://barbaranissman.com
International opera star James Valenti has sung leading tenor roles all over the world at The Metropolitan Opera New York, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, La Scala Milan, Royal Opera House London, Paris Opéra Bastille, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Salzburg Festival, Buenos Aires Teatro Colón, Sydney Opera House, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur and Zürich.
He made his professional debut as Rodolfo in La Bohème with Rome Opera. Mr. Valenti is the winner of prestigious Richard Tucker Award, he was the youngest ever inductee into the Academy of Distinguished Alumni at WVU, he has recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London, was featured on a PBS “Live from Lincoln Center” telecast, was the soloist for Midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, he was a featured performer at the Italian Heritage Columbus Day Parade in New York City on ABC7 and he was part of the national tour of the crossover show, “Rocktopia”.
Recently he gave masterclasses at Oberlin Conservatory and Westminster Choir College and he is the committee chair of the Mildred May Award for aspiring opera singers from NJ. Mr. Valenti recently performed at Carnegie Hall, The Greenbrier (this is his third appearance at the WVU Cancer Research Gala), Mar-a-Lago Club, Cipriani Wall Street, The Plaza, The National Polo Center, The Bentley Polo Championships and over the past year he has been a featured performer at Formula 1 Grand Prix racing events with Ferrari. He is originally from New Jersey and recently moved to Palm Beach Florida. Follow him: IG: jamesj_valenti www.jamesvalenti.com
Rich Rodriguez returned to West Virginia University as the 36 th head football coach on Dec. 12, 2024.
The architect of the no-huddle, zone-read spread option offense started his coaching career as the youngest head coach in the nation at 24. He has spent his entire 30-plus year career, including 27 as a head coach, showcasing an outstanding resume as a coach. Rodriguez is a master tactician, innovator, developer of talent, program builder and a winner.
Rodriguez has guided six different schools during his head coaching tenure, producing a 190-129-2 overall record and winning nearly 60% of his games. He has earned conference or national coach of the year honors seven times (WVIAC 1993, 1994; Big East 2003, 2005; Pac-12 2014; C-USA 2024 and NAIA National Coach of the Year in 1993). He has led his squads to eight or more wins 15 times, 10 or more wins five times and has won the conference or division championship seven times (Glenville State 1993-96, West Virginia 2003-05, ’07, Arizona 2014, Jacksonville State 2022, ’24).
He has led his programs to 14 bowl games, including three BCS games (2006 Sugar, 2008 Fiesta, 2014 Fiesta) and two NAIA Division I playoff appearances (the championship game in 1993 and the quarterfinals in 1994). He has coached offenses that have produced 10 conference players of the year, has coached 56 NFL players and more than 30 All-Americans during his career.
He returns to West Virginia after leading Jacksonville State to outstanding success, guiding the Gamecocks from NCAA FCS level to the FBS ranks over the past three seasons. The 2024 Conference USA Coach of the Year compiled a 27-10 record (three-straight nine-win seasons), earned the 2024 C-USA regular season and conference championships, won the 2023 New Orleans Bowl and had a first-place finish in the Atlantic Sun Conference in 2022.
Rodriguez was 60-26 in seven seasons at West Virginia, where he won the Big East Conference championship four times (2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007) and was named the Big East's Coach of the Year in 2003 and 2005. The Mountaineers won the 2006 Sugar Bowl and the 2008 Fiesta Bowl.
A 1986 graduate of West Virginia and native of Grant Town, West Virginia, Rodriguez started at defensive back as a walk-on in 1981 and became a three-year letterwinner as a defensive back for the Mountaineers from 1982-84 under Hall of Fame coach Don Nehlen.
Rodriguez and his wife, Rita, have two children, Raquel and Rhett.
In his first two years as West Virginia’s vice president and director of athletics, Wren Baker has faced every challenge head on and has never looked back. His energy has ignited a department, which turned in unprecedented success in 2023-24. A bowl victory, a men’s soccer College Cup appearance and a first-ever baseball Super Regional were just some of the big moments in year two under Baker, and his high-energy and success have been contagious for Mountaineer Athletics in competition and in the classroom.
Athletic success and best-ever academic achievement by Mountaineer student-athletes have highlighted Baker’s tenure, while the department also turned in its second-best fundraising numbers ever during the 2024 athletic year.
Baker’s success at WVU did not come overnight. He first traveled the state to learn its culture, met Mountaineer fans from all over the world and immersed himself on what it meant to be a proud West Virginian. The results of Baker’s approach and work ethic speak volumes and have re-energized West Virginia Athletics.
Despite already hiring five new head coaches, creating a 20-year facility master plan and developing the department’s strategic vision for the coming years, Baker’s plate continues to be full. Budget concerns, a competitive NIL structure, lack of premium seating options in his two major sports venues and new revenue generation are being addressed by his administration to solidify the future of West Virginia Athletics. WVU President E. Gordon Gee named Baker as WVU’s vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics on Nov. 30, 2022. He has oversight of 18 varsity sports, a department budget of more than $90 million, approximately 250 employees and nearly 500 student-athletes.
Baker and his wife, Heather, a Bokchito, Oklahoma, native, have two daughters, Addisyn and Reagan.