Robert Meckfessel is an activist architect with more than 30 years of experience in the planning and design of institutional, residential, and commercial projects throughout North America and Asia. Many of these projects have been recognized for innovation and excellence in urban design, architecture, and preservation from professional and industry organizations, including AIA Dallas, Texas Society of Architects, Preservation Texas and Preservation Dallas. He serves or has served in a leadership role of many organizations involved with the quality and public awareness of the built environment, including Docomomo US, the Trinity Park Conservancy, the Trinity Commons Foundation, Texas Society of Architects, and AIA Dallas.

M. Jeff Hardwick is the Acting Director of the Division of Public Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has worked at NEH for the last thirteen years. His academic background is in American studies, with a doctorate from Yale University, a master’s from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the University of Delaware, and an undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Jeff has taught American history and literature, urban history, and public history courses at Temple University, the New School, George Mason University, and George Washington University. He is the author of Mall Maker (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), a biography of the Viennese émigré architect Victor Gruen. Other publications include a history of African American architecture in Langston, Oklahoma, the impact of urban renewal in New Haven, the death of suburban shopping malls, and the preservation of modernist architecture. He has appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, CBC, 99% Invisible, and several podcasts speaking about consumer culture and postwar suburbanization.

Alexandra Lange is a design critic and author of Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, (Bloomsbury, 2022). She has written extensively on postwar design, particularly for children. She is currently a columnist for Bloomberg CityLab, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Curbed, Design Observer, New York Magazine, the New York Times and the New Yorker, among many other publications.

Caroline Rob Zaleski is a preservation activist and writer. She is the author of the critically acclaimed illustrated book, Long Island Modernism 1930-1980 (W.W. Norton with the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, 2012). This book is based on her all-island field survey conducted with serial funding from the New York State Council on the Arts. In 2000, she received her MS in architectural preservation from Columbia University School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she pioneered concentrating on the preservation of Modernism. Soon after graduation, she became a leading advocate for the preservation of important modern architecture in New York City and on Long Island, while spearheading campaigns to save the Conger Goodyear House by Edward Durell Stone, the Edgar Kauffman Conference Rooms by Alvar and Elissa Aalto and Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal. Much of this work was done in her role as Director of Advocacy for Docomomo US/New York Tri-State. She is currently chair of the New York Preservation League Seven to Save Endangered Sites program and also sits on the board and curatorial and preservation committees of Preservation Long Island. She has appeared on radio and in film, but her favorite way to communicate is by organizing and leading tours.