Team Bios

Tommy Rueff

—Executive Director
Tommy is a practicing artist with a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting. He has taught both design and drawing on the college level and continues to successfully make and show his work both regionally and nationally. Mr. Rueff has worked for commercial design companies as both a designer and production artist. From 1995 to 1998, he was the cofounder, art director, and copywriter of Barefoot Advertising in Cincinnati. Mr. Rueff left the advertising world in 1998 with the mission of bringing together parents and children in a highly creative way.

Rick Mallette

—Office Manager
Born and raised in Saginaw, Michigan, Rick completed a BFA at Western Michigan University in 1990 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. He lived in Chicago for 12 years, working many years for the Art Institute. Specializing in drawing/painting, he has exhibited in the Greater Cincinnati area, Chicago, throughout Michigan, and nationally. Rick began working for Happen in 2000 on special projects such as the Gameshow, Lights, Camera, Learning in Action and Happen’s Toy Lab. In 2002, he relocated to Cincinnati and joined staff as an assembly specialist for Happen’s Toy Lab and has been the office manager at Happen since 2004.

Russell Ihrig

—Toy Lab Manager
Born and raised in Alexandria, Kentucky, Russell is a practicing artist and actor. He earned his BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and has shown his art nationally and locally, including at Publico and the Warsaw Project Space. He began working at Happen in September 2003, and spends most of his time at Happen in costume, portraying various characters and acting foolish. He also helps develop new ideas for classes, is good at making spaghetti, and has a tiny dog named Donnie.

TT Stern-Enzi

—Program Support
Born in North Carolina, this University of Pennsylvania graduate (with a BS in Economics—Class of 1991) worked for several nonprofits in Philly before arriving in Cincinnati in 2000 to focus on fiction and screenplay projects. Since then, TT has become a freelance writer and film critic with Cincinnati's CityBeat and Dayton's CityPaper. He also has recently joined the journalism faculty at the University of Cincinnati as an adjunct. TT discovered Happen during the first Lights, Camera, Learning in Action summer program back in 2002 and was adopted into the Happen family soon after.

Christine Gardner

—Creative Assistant
Christine credits a portion of her original creativity to genetics and spending her earlier years in Mt. Adams, where her fine arts talents were fully brought to light while studying with the Seton High School teacher Mr. Ben Price. She later earned an associate's degree in industrial design at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. Currently, she splits her time between serving her west-side grocer and Happen, where her fanatical Professor-ing skills are at home in Happen’s Toy Lab. Christine loves to read Marvel Comics. Her superhero mission in life is to make the world a better place through art.

Megan Shapiro

—Happen Northside Manager
Megan was born in Attelborough, Massachusetts, moving often until she found Cincinnati, which she now calls home. It's here that she studied history at Xavier University, graduating in 2007. Xavier has been a longtime friend of Happen, supplying us with several volunteer groups a year, annual summer interns, and sometimes, when we're fortunate, employees. Megan's first exposure to Happen was through participating in a campus volunteer group, Community Action Day, and then again through the Summer Service Program. She was always jealous of our summer interns, who helped with our Lights, Camera, Learning in Action program. So, upon graduation, she sought out and found employment at Happen. She's worked with After-School Art Programs, Community Canvas, and Happen's Toy Lab, and now manages Happen Northside, not to mention co-coaches the Happen Northside Soccer Team.