Mabel O. Wilson, is Nancy and George Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, as well as a Professor in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. She also serves as the Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies and co-director of Global Africa Lab. She has authored Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2017), Negro Building: African Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012/21) and the volume Race and Modern Architecture: From the Enlightenment to Today (2020) with Irene Cheng and Charles Davis. With her practice Studio&, she is member of the architectural team that recently completed the Memorial to Enslaved African American Laborers at the University of Virginia. She is co-curator of the exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America (2021) at MoMA. She is a founding member of Who Builds Your Architecture? (WBYA?)—an advocacy project to educate the architectural profession about the problems of globalization and labor.

Jack Pyburn, FAIA is a preservation architect and principal at Lord Aeck Sargent in Atlanta, Georgia. His career, after graduating from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971, started as a planner working with neighborhood leaders to improve the public infrastructure in the African American community of Mecham Park in suburban St. Louis. Since that exceptional formative experience, he has had the privilege of working on a number of buildings and sites important to African American history ranging from slave quarters at Oakland Plantation in Louisiana to the home of Ms. Modjeska Simpkins in Columbia, SC where Ms. Simpkins and Thurgood Marshal planned early and successful civil rights litigation on which the Brown vs the Board of Education decision was based.

Lisa Napoles received her Master of Science in Historic Preservation from the School of the Art Institute. Her broad experience in preservation has included work in the private, public, and non-profit sectors, which has brought her to her current position as a planner for the Will County Land Use Department. She has presented her independent research at annual conferences for the College Art Association and the Vernacular Architecture Forum and at the 2013 Docomomo National Symposium in Sarasota. She has contributed to publications including the third edition of the AIA Guide to Chicago and Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America. She has walked on roofs and spent a summer on a scaffold restoring windows, but has always felt most at home in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.

Connie Zeigler is an architecture and design historian who had been working in Indianapolis for more than 20 years prior to a recent move to Rhode Island. She has taught about the history of design at Purdue University, writes a monthly history column for an Indianapolis newspaper, and has been hired by a graphic design firm to write at least one design-related publication each year for the last eleven years. She been interviewed by several publications including Curbed and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Her book, Indianapolis an Unusual Urban History is being published by the Indiana Historical Society. Connie has a Master’s degree from Indiana University and she is currently working on a book, The Wives of Modernism: the Important, Unknown Women behind Modernism’s Famous Architects.

Lee Bey is member of the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board, where he shapes the newspaper’s position on a range of issues including urban planning, land use, politics. He is also a photographer, writer, consultant and lecturer whose work deals in the documentation and interpretation of the built environment—and the often complex political, social and racial forces that shape spaces and places. Bey is the author of Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press, October 2019), a book that showcases his architectural and social commentary and his architectural photography.

Elizabeth Blasius is an architectural historian based in Chicago. Blasius has worked extensively in the public and private sector consulting clients in following the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). Much of her work relates to how these laws come into play in the recovery and mitigation of the historic built environment during a natural disaster, event of climate violence, or terrorist attack. Blasius formerly served as the Midwest editor of The Architect’s Newspaper, and has had her work featured in Curbed Chicago, The Chicago Tribune, The Daily Line and MAS Context. Blasius has served on the board of Logan Square Preservation since 2015 and the Docomomo US/Chicago board since 2019. Blasius is a founding member of the James R. Thompson Center Historical Society. She received a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008, and a Bachelor of Art History, also from SAIC, in 2004.

Jonathan Solomon is an architect and partner in the Chicago-based firm Preservation Futures. His diverse experience includes award-winning adaptive reuse design; consultation on neighborhood planning studies for the Government of Hong Kong; and preservation advocacy in Chicago. Solomon has two decades of international experience in arts leadership and has directed schools, taught, and developed programming with institutions worldwide. Solomon has a lifelong interest in overlooked spaces and conversations. He was a founding editor of 306090 Books for 14 years, and a curator of the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010. His 2004 book 13 Projects for the Sheridan Expressway explored alternative futures for a disused roadway in New York; and in 2012 he co-authored Cities Without Ground, a guidebook to the unique pedestrian walkways of Hong Kong. Today Solomon is Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an editor of the journal Forty-Five, and a director of Space p11, an independent art gallery located in a vacant storefront in the Chicago Pedway. He is a member of the board of the Emmett Till House Museum and a member of the Institute for Community Controlled Development at Blacks in Green. Solomon is a registered architect in the State of Illinois and a member of the American Institute of Architects. 

Michelangelo Sabatino trained as an architect, preservationist, and historian. As an educator, academic leader, and award-winning scholar, Sabatino contributes to shaping architectural discourse and practice in the Americas and beyond. Between 2017–19 Professor Sabatino served as interim dean for the College of Architecture of the Illinois Institute of Technology. He currently directs the PhD program in architecture and is the inaugural John Vinci Distinguished Research Fellow. Sabatino’s book Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (2011) won multiple awards, including the Society of Architectural Historians’ Alice Davis Hitchcock Award. His recent books include Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in New Harmony (with Ben Nicholson, 2019), Making Houston Modern: The Life and Architecture of Howard Barnstone (with Barrie Scardino Bradley and Stephen Fox, 2020), Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929–1975 (with Susan Benjamin, 2020) and Carlo Mollino: Architect and Storyteller (with Napoleone Ferrari, 2021).

Miriam Kelly is a British Architect experienced in the repair and adaptive reuse of historic buildings. In 2006, she won the prestigious Lethaby Scholarship with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) and has since joined the UK’s Register for Architects Accredited in Building Conservation. In 2013, she became a Fellow of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and undertook a travelling research scholarship to study post-industrial regeneration. Miriam joined BBB in 2014 and is working on projects for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MCR Development, The Frick Collection, New York Public Library, Cornell University, Hispanic Society Museum & Library, MIT, and Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. She holds two Masters Degrees in Architecture from the University of Edinburgh. Before moving to the US, Miriam worked at some of the most sensitive historic sites in the UK including Windsor Castle, the Royal Pavilion Estate, Lowther Castle and Bath Abbey.

Lacey Bubnash is an architect and materials conservator at Architectural Resources Group in San Francisco. She has over 12 years of experience in historic preservation, with combined training as an architect and conservator. Her material experience includes the evaluation and testing of masonry, wood, architectural metals, and waterproofing systems, and the design of repair details and specifications for those materials and assemblies. She has worked on numerous historic buildings throughout California, including Coit Tower, Los Angeles Union Station, the New Mission Theater, Fort Point, and the Santa Barbara County Courthouse. Lacey is a member of the Association for Preservation Technology (APT), the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and is the current chair of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) Architecture Specialty Group. She is a member of Docomomo US and has served on the board of the Northern California Chapter of Docomomo US for the past 11 years.

Lucy Moore, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is an architect and historic preservation specialist at Quinn Evans in Washington, DC. Her work has focused on the preservation and rehabilitation of modern and late modern architecture. Her experience includes the Conservation Management Plan for Wellesley College’s Science Center (1977); the Historic Structure Report for Carter Barron Amphitheater (1950) in Washington, DC; and the renovation of Ralph Rapson’s Fraser Library (1962) in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Lucy is President of the Washington, DC Chapter of Docomomo US and has served on its board for five years. She is also a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA). Active in her community, she leads city-level reviews of commercial property projects in her local historic district.

Sherry A. Frear, RLA, is Chief of the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program, a role she assumed in May 2020.  Supported by credentials in historic preservation, landscape architecture, project management, and sustainable practices, her experience ranges from programming and planning to design and construction management to interpretation and outreach. Sherry spent her formative professional years working for a large Washington, D.C., law firm, where she specialized in construction litigation support. Through volunteer work at the National Building Museum, she discovered the range of career options in the A/E/C profession, which lead her to Cornell University, where she earned both a Master’s in Historic Preservation Planning and a Master’s in Landscape Architecture. She has worked at the city, county, and federal levels, including a previous stint with NPS in 2010-2012 at Lowell National Historical Park. Sherry is a licensed landscape architect (MD).

Rachel Leibowitz, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse and is a co-director of its Center for Cultural Landscape Preservation. She has taught courses in the history of architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Rachel’s prior practice in design and in public history includes positions at two Chicago architecture firms; the Historic Preservation Division of the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development; and the state historic preservation offices of Texas and Illinois. Most recently, Dr. Leibowitz served for five years as the Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer and head of the Preservation Services Division for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. She has received fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the American Council of Learned Societies/Luce Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Society of Architectural Historians, among others. Rachel currently serves on the boards of the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation, the Preservation Association of Central New York, and the Barry Lopez Foundation for Art + Environment, and she is the book review editor for Buildings & Landscapes, the journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

Thomas Leslie, FAIA is the Morrill Professor in Architecture at Iowa State University in Ames, IA. Professor Leslie has taught building design, history, and technology at Iowa State University since 2000.  He has degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Columbia University.  Prior to teaching he spent seven years with Norman Foster and Partners, London. Leslie is the author of Louis I. Kahn: Building Art, Building Science (Braziller, 2005), Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 (University of Illinois, 2013), and Beauty’s Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi (University of Illinois, 2017). In 2013-2014, Leslie was the Booth Family Rome Prize Fellow in Historic Preservation at the American Academy in Rome, and in 2018 he was elevated to Fellowship in the American Institute of Architects for his contributions to architectural education and research.  His current project, a history of postwar skyscraper construction in Chicago, is scheduled for publication in 2022.

Gunny Harboe, FAIA, Fellow US/ICOMOS, is an internationally recognized architect dedicated to the conservation of the world’s cultural heritage. With over 30 years of experience, Gunny currently runs his own small architecture firm in Chicago, with a focus on historic preservation and sustainable design.  He has worked on many iconic modern masterpieces including numerous works by Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan. Gunny was a founding member and is a current board member of Docomomo US and a founding member and immediate past President of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on 20th Century Heritage (ISC20C).  He is also a past board member of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, a General Services Administration (GSA) Peer Professional, and a Fellow of the AIA and US/ICOMOS. He also teaches at the Illinois Institute of Technology as an Adjunct Professor.  Gunny is NCARB certified and is licensed in six states and the District of Columbia. Gunny received his M.Arch from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (including study in Copenhagen, Denmark); a M.Sc. in Historic Preservation from Columbia University in New York; and a B.A in History from Brown University. He also completed the ICCROM Architectural Conservation Course in Rome, Italy.

Rosa Novak is a researcher at the Brian and Edith Heath Foundation. She received her BFA in Ceramics from the California College of the Arts and will be entering the PhD program in the History of Art at the University of Michigan this fall. Novak has given talks on Edith Heath’s design ideology and approach to ceramic materials at the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts and the Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley. She authored three chapters in the book Edith Heath: Philosophies, published in April 2021 by Information Office and Berkeley Design Books. Novak is a co-founder of Mutual Stores, an artist-run space in Oakland, CA.

Tyler S. Sprague is structural engineer and historian, in the Department of Architecture, with an adjunct appointment in Civil and Environmental Engineering, at the University of Washington, where he teaches courses in architectural & structural history and design.  He earned engineering degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Washington, and worked professionally as a structural engineer, before completing his Ph.D. in architectural history in the College of Built Environments at the UW.  His research investigates the intersection of architecture and structural engineering, through a variety of methods, throughout history.  His book, Sculpture on a Grand Scale: The Thin Shell Modernism of Jack Christiansen, was published by the UW Press in 2019.  The Seattle-based engineer Jack Christiansen was an under-recognized contributor to the global thin shell concrete community, as the designer of the largest thin shell concrete dome in the world, the Seattle Kingdome (1976).  His work on early concrete-frame skyscrapers in the Pacific Northwest was awarded the 2016 Charles Gates Award by the Washington State Historical Society for "best article of the year" in Pacific Northwest Quarterly. He currently serves on the board of the Construction History Society of America, and as president Docomomo US/WeWa (Western Washington).

Robert Bruegmann is an historian and critic of the built environment.  He received his PhD in art history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 and since 1979 has been at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning. He has also taught at the Philadelphia College of Art, MIT and Columbia University. Among his books are Holabird & Roche and Holabird & Root, An Illustrated Catalogue of Work, 1991; The Architects and the City: Holabird & Roche of Chicago 1880-1918, 1998; Sprawl: A Compact History, 2005; The Architecture of Harry Weese, 2010, and, as editor, Modernism at Mid-Century, The Architecture of the United States Airforce Academy, 1995; and Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America, 2018. His main areas of research are in the history of architecture, urban planning, landscape and historic preservation.

Gail Ostergren is a research specialist with Getty Conservation Institute’s Buildings and Sites department, where she works with a number of projects including the Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative, the Eames House Conservation Project, and the Los Angeles African American Historic Places Project. Gail earned her PhD in history at UCLA. She serves on the historic preservation commission in West Hollywood, CA, and is a founding board member of the Docomomo US/Southern California chapter. She is one of the authors of the Eames House Conservation Management Plan.

Frank G. Matero is Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. He is Director and founder of the Center for Architectural Conservation, a member of the Graduate Group in the Department of Art History, and Research Associate of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He is founder and editor-in-chief of Change Over Time, the international journal on conservation and the built environment published by Penn Press.  His teaching and research are focused on historic building technology and the conservation of building materials, with an emphasis on masonry and earthen construction, the conservation of archaeological sites, and issues related to preservation and appropriate technology for traditional societies and places.

John Eifler is the president of the architectural firm of Eifler & Associates. He received a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee in 1979 and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Valparaiso University in 1973. Mr. Eifler began practicing architecture in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where he worked from 1979 to 1989. While employed at SOM, he was project architect for the restoration of the Charnley House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan in 1892. John Eifler established his office in 1990. His firm has been responsible for the restoration of a number of buildings designed by noteworthy architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, George Maher, Walter Burley Griffin, Schmidt Garden & Martin, Tallmadge & Watson, Pond and Pond and E.E. Roberts.

Susan Benjamin is an architectural historian with 40-plus years of experience in a broad variety of preservation activities. She and members of her firm, Benjamin Historic Certifications, write National Register nominations, prepare Historic American Buildings Survey documentation and work with homeowners and developers so they may receive tax incentives for rehabilitating their historic buildings.  Susan frequently lectures on a variety of topics from historic landscapes and residential architecture to intriguing subjects like the history of the shopping mall. Before completing Modern in the Middle (Monacelli Press, 2020) with Michelangelo Sabatino, she and architect Stuart Cohen co-authored two books on Chicago area architecture: Great Houses of Chicago: 1871-1921 and North Shore Chicago: Houses of the Lakefront Suburbs 1890-1940, (Acanthus Press, 2008, 2004).

Serge Ambrose is an architect and engineer focused on contemporary design and the conservation of 20th Century architectural heritage. He has worked on building projects in Florida, Texas and Illinois and has presented conservation research at several Docomomo US Symposia and other conferences. Serge is a member of the Association for Preservation Technology and has served on the Riverside (IL) Historical Commission. Serge served as the Docomomo US/Chicago Board Chair from 2016-2020. He is currently working on the restoration of the 1930’s modernist Benda House and landscape in Riverside, IL.

Scott Mehaffey, MS, FASLA is Executive Director of the 56-acre Farnsworth House National Historic Landmark, a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Scott holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois College of Fine & Applied Arts, and a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership from Dominican University. Prior to joining the National Trust, Scott was Landscape Coordinator for the City of Chicago under Mayor Richard M. Daley, and for many years, was Landscape Architect for the historic Morton Arboretum. Scott is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and has been active in cultural landscape preservation since the 1980s as a consultant, curator, program organizer, author, speaker and advocate. Scott has been an Adjunct Professor in the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture, a workshop leader and recurrent speaker for the American Public Gardens Association, and has taught cultural landscape preservation for landscape architects, contractors and historic preservation students.

Brian Lee, FAIA, is a Design Partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM), one of the largest and most influential architecture, interior design, engineering, and urban planning firms in the world. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture with Highest Honors from the University of California, Berkeley in 1976 and his Master of Architecture with Commendation from Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1978. After practicing in the SOM San Francisco office for 28 years, he joined the Chicago office in 2007. Brian Lee’s portfolio encompasses an array of award-winning domestic and international projects on all scales, including the Chicago Public Library, Chinatown Branch, and the China World Trade Center in Beijing. His work has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Urban Land Institute, American Library Association, the Chicago Athenaeum, MIPIM, and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Brian has lectured, taught, and participated in studio reviews or Dean’s committees at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Stanford, California College of Arts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Virginia Tech, and TU Delft; served on AIA, Athenaeum, Marcus Prize, and Spark juries; and has been published worldwide. His work was exhibited in the 2004 Venice and Beijing Biennales, featured at the 2008 World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, and the 2015 Chicago Biennial. Brian plays an active role in the community with the Urban Land Institute, Chicago Architecture Foundation, the Economic Club of Chicago, and the Chinese American Service League of Chicago. He is a former board member of Habitat for Humanity San Francisco, Chinatown Community Development Corporation San Francisco, and is Director Emeritus of On Lok Inc., a nationally recognized leader in community healthcare. Brian is a registered NCARB architect and in multiple states across the nation, and is a LEED accredited professional. He is a member of the AIA and was named to its College of Fellows in 2008.

Michael J. Mills, FAIA, has devoted his career to the preservation and adaptive use design of some of the nation’s most historic structures such as: The Statue of Liberty, Louis Kahn’s Trenton Bath House, Saarinen’s Hill College House at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Milwaukee Federal Building and Courthouse. He has served as Chair of the Advisory Group of the AIA Historic Resources Committee and is a past president of Preservation New Jersey. Michael is a national peer reviewer for the GSA Design Excellence program, and former member of the NJ Uniform Construction Code Advisory Board. He has lectured at Princeton University’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, the Association for Preservation Technology’s (APT) international conference, and serves as Associate Graduate Faculty in the Rutgers University Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies program.

Jon Buono is an Associate Director with SOM’s New York office and leads the firm’s work for adaptive reuse and higher education. His focus on modern architecture began while with the National Park Service, contributing to preservation of the agency’s “Mission 66” building program. In 2005 he lead the University System of Georgia’s “Guidelines for Campus Historic Preservation,“ which created one of the largest statewide campus preservation programs in the country. Additional preservation work includes projects for the UMass Amherst campus, Massachusetts State House, and the Cartier Mansion in New York. From 2006-13, Jon was a consulting preservation expert for the United Nations Capital Master Plan including restoration of the Conference and General Assembly Building interiors. Jon is a past Board Member of Docomomo US.

Justin Miller is an architectural historian at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He specializes in historic preservation legal compliance, historic tax credit consulting, and research and documentation for the National Register of Historic Places. He has presented on a variety of topics for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Victorian Society in America. Justin’s recent articles, talks, and tours have ranged from an exploration of a modernist ski resort in northern Wisconsin to a Chicago tour of the buildings of African American architect John Moutoussamy. Justin is a member of the Docomomo US/Chicago chapter.

George Dodds taught throughout the United States, and practiced in offices in Detroit, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia, before earning his Master of Architecture, Master of Science, and a PhD in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, writing on Landscape and Garden in the Work of Carlo Scarpa. Immediately before arriving at the University of Tennessee, he was a fellow at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library. Dodds has published Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, with Robert Tavernor, and Building Desire: On the Barcelona Pavilion, in addition to over fifty scholarly articles, and over thirty critical commentaries on the built environment. He was the Executive Editor of The Journal of Architectural Education (2006-2010); The Mickel Visiting Professor at Clemson University (2008) and the first Cox Professor from the UT College of Architecture + Design (2006-09). He is a Distinguished Professor of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and is currently the UT Alvin and Sally Beaman Professor of Architecture where he has served as Chair of the Graduate Architecture Program, Associate Dean of Research and Academic Affairs, and co-founded the Graduate Program in Landscape Architecture. Among his current projects is a critical monograph on the Jackson, Mississippi practice of Duvall Decker Architects with Jori Erdman.

Todd Wenger is a registered landscape architect and has served as an urban planner with the Village of Schaumburg for the past 23 years. During his time at the village, he has created numerous award-winning parks and public spaces for Schaumburg residents to enjoy. He has been appointed to the village’s One Percent for Art Committee since 2001, having worked with a variety of artists over the years on dynamic public art installations. In 2009, Todd established the nonprofit Schweikher House Preservation Trust organization to oversee programming, events, tours, and the ongoing preservation of the historic 1938 Modernist home designed by famed architect, Paul Schweikher. Todd has served as the Trust’s executive director since 2010, overseeing and coordinating daily operations at the house.

Sidney K. Robinson, AIA, ArchD, is an educator, author, and architect who taught at Iowa State University (1973-85), University of Illinois at Chicago (1985-2007), and now at the School of Architecture at Taliesin since 1997. His teaching of history, design, and theory approaches architecture as the response to requests for artifacts that Enable, Encourage, and Enhance human purposes. He has written books and articles on Wright, The Picturesque, American organic architects Alden Dow and Bruce Goff, and historic preservation, and presented these subjects at venues including universities and museums in the United States and abroad. He is a member of the American Institute of Architects, Society of Architectural Historians, has architectural degrees from Columbia University and the University of Michigan and has lived in Bruce Goff’s Ford house (1949-50) for thirty years.

John McKinnon has over fifteen years of curatorial and administrative experience. In 2017, he was appointed Executive Director of the Elmhurst Art Museum, where he oversaw the fundraising and restorations of Mies van der Rohe's McCormick House - revealing the full exterior for the first time in nearly 25 years. Under his leadership, the museum changed physically and philosophically, including rebranding and programming expansion. McKinnon currently serves on the City of Elmhurst's Public Arts Commission and the Arts DuPage Advisory Committee. His previous positions include Program Director of the Society for Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Milwaukee Art Museum. He earned dual MA degrees in Arts Administration and Policy and Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Grace Ong Yan is Assistant Professor of Interior Design in the College of Architecture and the Built Environment at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia where she teaches history of architecture and design, research methodologies, and design studio. Her scholarship explores histories of modernism and intersections of business histories, media, and architecture. She received her Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, M.Arch. from Yale University, and B.Arch. at the University of Texas at Austin. Grace is the co-editor of Architect: The Pritzker Prize Laureates in their own Words, (Blackdog and Levanthal, 1st ed. 2010, 2nd ed. 2018) and has also published articles and chapters on subjects ranging from the intersections of consumerism and modernism to material complexities in post-war design and architecture. Her recent book Building Brands: Corporations and Modern Architecture explores the role of architectural branding in the design of mid-twentieth century corporate modernism and tells how business strategies, modern architecture, urban conditions, and conceptions of society shaped the ambitious branding goals of corporate clients. (Lund Humphries, 2021) Grace is a board member of Docomomo US/Greater Philadelphia and past chapter president.

Daniel Paul is a Southern California-based architectural historian. Federally qualified, he has 15 years’ experience in the field of built environment regulatory consulting, and historic preservation experience of more than 25 years. His 2004 art history master’s thesis, completed at the California State University Northridge, is an early history of Late-Modern mirror glass skins: the subject of his presentation. For the City of Los Angeles, Daniel wrote the historic context statements and registration requirements for identifying significant Late-Modern and Postmodern architecture city-wide. Daniel has worked with Docomomo US on various projects that include the guest editing of “Peak Cambrian: Architecture 1993” on 1990s architecture, and content-edited the 2017 designation of the Roche- Dinkeloo UN Plaza lobby and Ambassador Grill spaces, New York City’s first Postmodern interior landmark.

Jennie Gwin, AIA, is a Principal in Beyer Blinder Belle’s (BBB) Washington, DC, office who specializes in projects that integrate historic preservation, new design, and adaptive re-use. She has deployed this expertise on high-profile historic landmarks with complex project requirements, including Vizcaya, National Park Service National Capital Region Headquarters, National Gallery of Art, and numerous buildings for the Architect of the Capitol. She has an extensive technical background in historic preservation with particular expertise in building repositioning, government projects involving multiple stakeholders, and federal historic rehabilitation tax credit projects. 

David Fixler is an architect in practice since 1980.  A graduate of Tufts and Columbia Universities, he is an expert in working with historic buildings and precincts of the 20th century modern movement, having guided the rehabilitation of numerous landmark facilities for government, cultural and higher education clients.  A frequent writer and lecturer on architecture and preservation, David has had his design and written work published in books and journals internationally, including Aalto and America, co-edited with Stanford Anderson and Gail Fenske, published by Yale U. Press in 2012. Currently a Lecturer at the Harvard GSD he has also lectured and taught at a variety of institutions and venues in 16 countries on 5 continents. Mr. Fixler is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the Association for Preservation Technology International (APTI), Design Peer Review Architect for the United States General Services Administration, co-founder and past president of Docomomo US/New England, past United States representative on the Docomomo International Specialty Committee for Registers, co-founder and former co-chair of the APTI Technical Committee on Modern Heritage, and former chair and current member of the Heritage Conservation Committee of the Society of Architectural Historians. 

Todd Grover, FAIA, is Principal at MacDonald & Mack Architects in Minneapolis. In 2011 the AIA MN gave MacDonald & Mack the Firm of the Year Award stating that they were the “gold standard in historic preservation”. Todd is influential in Modernist Preservation where he is currently a Director on the US Board of Docomomo, serving as Executive Committee Secretary and Chair of the Advocacy Committee. Todd is a Recognized Professional with the Association for Preservation Technology and is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota. He holds a B.A. and MArch from the University of Minnesota and a MS in Historic Preservation from the University of Oregon.

Thomas Jester, FAIA, FAPT, LEED AP, is a Principal at Quinn Evans Architects in Washington, DC. He has been involved in efforts to preserve modern architecture since the early 1990s and is the editor of Twentieth-Century Building Materials: History and Conservation, which was republished by the Getty Conservation Institute in 2014. He co-chaired the Association for Preservation Technology’s Technical Committee on Modern Heritage from 2007-2012 and is a founding board member of Docomomo US/DC. Some of his notable modern era projects at Quinn Evans include the AIA Headquarters, National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, Benjamin Franklin Museum in Philadelphia, the National Air and Space Museum, and the Arvonne Fraser Library in Minneapolis (with MacDonald and Mack). He is currently working on the renovation and expansion of the Federal Reserve Building, which was designed by Paul Cret. Mr. Jester holds a B.A. from Colby College, a Master’s degree in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Architecture from the University of Maryland.

Ben Nicholson was educated at the Architectural Association in London, Cooper Union School of Architecture, and Cranbrook Academy of Art, and is currently Professor at SAIC, Chicago. He has been a named guest professor at the Universities of Edinburgh, London, Michigan, Houston and Cornell. Monographs include, Appliance House, Thinking the Unthinkable House and The World: Who Wants It? He contributed to Visionary Architecture, Ineffable Architecture and Educating Architects, and co-edited Utopia in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape & Preservation in New Harmony, for which he wrote chapters on Richard Meier and Frederick Kiesler. He guest-edited the design journal, CLOG x GUNS, on America’s firearm culture. Over his career, he has exhibited at Foundation Cartier, the Renaissance Society, Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Venice Biennale. 

Carol Neff is the Coordinator of Mid-Century Modern Midland (MCMM). After graduating with a BA in multi-disciplinary social science from Michigan State University, she began a 32-year career teaching middle and high school students. She also earned a Masters in Humanities from Central Michigan University. Since her retirement from teaching in 2016, she has coordinated the MCMM project.

Craig McDonald is the Director of the Alden B. Dow Home and Studio and the Alden and Vada Dow Family Foundations. After earning his BA in Psychology and Public relations from Western Michigan University, he returned to his home town to assist the Dow family in transitioning the Home and Studio, a National Historic Landmark, into a public entity that offers a wide range of educational programming, public tours and research opportunities. Under his direction in 2000, the Home and Studio was awarded recognition for their “preservation and care of collections” from Heritage Preservation and the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Mr. McDonald founded Mid-Century Modern Midland, an organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Midland, Michigan’s Mid-Twentieth Century Modern Architectural heritage. In the spring of 2019, Mid-Century Modern Midland received a Modernism in America Award from Docomomo US.

Bryony Roberts leads the design and research practice Bryony Roberts Studio based in New York. Roberts combines experience in studio art, architecture, and historic preservation to create projects that activate public spaces and historical sites around the world. For over ten years, Roberts has been designing site-specific projects that bring deep engagement with existing buildings and communities and find expression through experimental material craft. The practice has been awarded the Architectural League Prize and New Practices New York from AIA New York as well as support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the American Academy in Rome, where Roberts was awarded the Rome Prize for 2015-16 for Historic Preservation and Conservation. Roberts also instigates research and publication projects about designing in response to social and cultural histories. She guest-edited the recent volume Log 48: Expanding Modes of Practice, edited the book Tabula Plena: Forms of Urban Preservation published by Lars Müller Publishers, and co-guest-edited Log 31: New Ancients. Roberts earned her B.A. at Yale University and her M.Arch at the Princeton School of Architecture. She teaches architecture and preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York.

Joshua Freedland is Director of Historic Preservation at Bulley & Andrews Masonry Restoration, LLC. During his 20+ year career, his expertise has benefited hundreds of historically significant buildings and sites throughout the country and abroad including the Prudential Plaza, Farnsworth House and the Washington Monument. Joshua is a professional associate of the American Institute of Conservation (AIC) and past chair of the AIC’s Architectural Specialty Group. He is also an associate editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Conservation and is the preservation issues committee chair for Landmarks Illinois. Joshua earned a Master of Arts Degree in Comparative History from Brandeis University and a Master of Science Degree in Historic Preservation from University of Pennsylvania. His penchant for preservation has extended his professional contributions to include teaching, lecturing and publishing extensively in both academic and professional circles.

Ashley Wilson, FAIA, ASID is the Chief Architect for the Historic Sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in an endowed position named the Graham Gund Architect. This position provides broad oversight responsibilities related to the conservation and preservation of the architecture and landscapes of the Trust’s historic sites. With thirty years of experience as a Preservation Architect, Ashley specializes in modernizing and stewarding significant historic buildings to make them relevant within the modern environment. Before working at the National Trust, she was a tenured professor at the Clemson University/College of Charleston Graduate Program for Historic Preservation in Charleston, SC and in private architectural practice. She graduated from the architecture schools at the University of Virginia and the University of Notre Dame.

George Thomas Kapelos, OAA FRAIC, is an architect, urban planner and professor in Canada at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). He studied architecture and urbanism at Princeton University, and holds a Masters of City Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Masters of Architecture from Yale University. 

He is the past president of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, and the past chair of the Toronto Society of Architects. 

He has published on a wide range of topics in architectural history, design pedagogy, urbanism and contemporary environmental design. His architectural research focuses on post-war modernity. His book and exhibition, Competing Modernisms (Dalhousie Architectural Press, 2015), explored the impact of the 1958 Toronto City Hall and Square Competition on national architectural culture. He is a contributing author to the book, Canadian Modern Architecture 1967 to the Present (Princeton Architectural Press 2019), writing a chapter on institutional architecture in Canada over the past five decades.

He is currently examining the role of photography in the preservation of Newfoundland’s vernacular architectural heritage.

Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FAAR, is the president, CEO, and founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF). Prior to creating TCLF, Birnbaum spent fifteen years as the coordinator of the National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative (HLI) and a decade in private practice in New York City, with a focus on landscape preservation and urban design.

Since taking the helm at the foundation in 2008, Birnbaum’s major projects include the web-based initiative What’s Out There (a searchable database of the nation’s designed landscape heritage) and the creation of the first International Prize in Landscape Architecture named for Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. He has authored and edited numerous publications, including Shaping the Postwar Landscape, (UVA Press, 2018), the Modern Landscapes: Transition and Transformation series (Princeton Architectural Press, Volumes printed in 2012 and 2014), Shaping the American Landscape (UVA Press, 2009), Design with Culture: Claiming America’s Landscape Heritage (UVA Press, 2005), Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture (1999) and its follow-up publication, Making Post-War Landscapes Visible (2004, both for Spacemaker Press), Pioneers of American Landscape Design (McGraw Hill 2000) and The Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes (National Park Service, 1996).

In 1995, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) awarded the HLI the President's Award of Excellence. In 1996, the ASLA inducted Birnbaum as a Fellow of the Society. He served as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, during which time he founded TCLF. In 2004, Birnbaum was awarded the Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation and spent the spring and summer of that year at the American Academy in Rome. In 2008, he was the Visiting Glimcher Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University's Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture. That same year, the ASLA awarded him the Alfred B. LaGasse Medal, followed by the President’s Medal in 2009. In 2017, Birnbaum received the ASLA Medal, the Society's highest award. Birnbaum has served as a Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, a visiting critic at Harvard’s GSD, and currently serves as a Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He was also a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post (2011-18). In 2020 Birnbaum received the Landezine International Landscape Honour Award as well as the Garden Club of America’s Historic Preservation Medal.

Eric has an unconventional stance on design: truly new ideas are tremendously rare. Hear him out—he’s not one to abandon innovation and creativity. Instead, Eric sees our shared past as a rich source of valuable lessons. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s an accomplished architectural historian, having authored Paffard Keatinge-Clay: Modern Architecture/Modern Masters and co-authored 100 Buildings Every Architect Should Know. Informed by this broad historical knowledge, Eric’s work exists at the intersection of design, architectural history, contemporary visual arts, and state-of-the-art building technology. And, despite dozens of design awards and international acclaim, his metrics for success are simple: impact people’s lives, improve the environment, and transform contemporary society—to the benefit of all.

Eric is the Design Director for the Boston studio of global architecture and design firm Perkins & Will. A self-proclaimed disciple and teacher of Modernism, he serves on the United States board of Docomomo, an international advocacy group focused on works of the Modern movement. Outside the studio, he’s a father, collector of antique modern furniture and miniature buildings, as well as a classic car enthusiast.

William Whitaker is curator of the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. He is coauthor (with George Marcus) of The Houses of Louis Kahn. Trained as an architect at Penn and the University of New Mexico, Whitaker works most closely with the archival collections of Louis I. Kahn, Lawrence Halprin, and the partnership of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, in support of teaching, scholarship, preservation, and public engagement. He co-curated over forty exhibitions including Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966-71 (Graham Foundation), Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry (Graham Foundation and Penn’s ICA), and, most recently, Design With Nature Now (with the McHarg Center) – a major program of exhibitions, conference, and public programs that highlight the dynamic and visionary approaches to landscape design and development in the face of climate change and global urbanization. He is project director for What Minerva Built, an exhibition project focused on America’s first independent female architect, Minerva Parker Nichols.

Craig Brandt, AIA, AFAAR, designs and executes public projects which transform historic buildings and elevate new buildings within sensitive and diverse contexts. He is a principal with HBRA Architects, a firm founded in 1961 whose history is notable in the architectural legacy of Chicago’s modernism. Craig has guided the renovation of numerous landmark facilities for cultural and higher education projects with a focus on sensitive adaptation and sustainability, and has participated as design critic, lecturer, and moderator nationally. His various activities promote a wide gamut of design excellence and preservation with leadership roles in the American Institute of Architects Committee on Design National Advisory Group, Docomomo US/Chicago Board of Directors, and the AIA Federal Architecture Task Force. He is a member of the Society of Fellows at the American Academy of Rome, a General Services Administration (GSA) National Peer, and has served as adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Theodore Prudon is a leading expert on the preservation of modern architecture and a practicing architect in New York City. Dr. Prudon has worked on the terra cotta restoration of the Woolworth Building, the exterior restoration of the Chrysler Building, and of a 1941 Lescaze townhouse in Manhattan. Dr. Prudon teaches preservation at Columbia University and Pratt Institute. He is the recipient of a Graham Foundation Individual grant for his book “Preservation of Modern Architecture.” He is the founding President of Docomomo US and a board member of Docomomo International.