Preservation is Climate Action

Setting the context for climate action in the preservation movement in The Relevancy Project.

Over her 12-year tenure as President & CEO, Bonnie McDonald has led Landmarks Illinois to become a statewide and national voice for relevant change at this inflection point for the preservation movement. Bonnie’s transformative leadership has led Landmarks Illinois to focus on people and their vital connection to place, and to develop collaborative solutions addressing community concerns like climate change, affordable housing and lack of access to capital. Her policy work to incent preservation has led to over $6B in investment in existing buildings and over 30K new jobs created. The James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation awarded Bonnie its 2020 Mid-Career Fellowship to inform, inspire and support preservation’s evolution through The Relevancy Project, a four-year interview and research initiative culminating in “The Relevancy Guidebook: How We Can Transform the Future of Preservation,” published in November 2023 by Landmarks Illinois. She has since published several articles elaborating on the book’s essays and is a frequent keynote speaker on the topic of enhancing preservation’s relevance. She chaired the board of the National Preservation Partners Network, co-chaired the Chicago Monuments Project Advisory Committee, a two-year truth and racial reckoning process around the city’s problematic artworks, and is an appointee to the State of Illinois Route 66 Centennial Commission. Bonnie serves on task forces for the American Planning Association and the National Council on Public History. In 2022, AIA Chicago honored Bonnie and Landmarks Illinois with its Distinguished Service Award. She holds a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning - Historic Preservation Planning from Cornell University.

Renewable energy at historic sites

Sian Phillips is a renewable energy developer with over 20 years of experience and serves as a Director of the British Hydro Association. Currently, she is the Hydro Energy Specialist at the National Trust, where she oversees the implementation and management of renewable energy solutions across heritage sites in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Her combination of legal expertise, technical engineering skills, and passion for environmental conservation has made her a key figure in integrating renewable technologies—such as hydro and solar energy—into historically significant sites. Sian is committed to finding balanced solutions that address climate change while preserving cultural heritage. She regularly presents to industry and heritage organisations on the intersection of planning, development, and heritage conservation.

Salvaging and repurposing construction and demolition waste

Career

Before joining the City, Shanon was with the City of Franklin, Tennessee, where she served as the Historic Preservation Officer and Interim Planning Director. In this role, she was involved in:

• the designation of many new historic districts

• the purchase and planning for the largest battlefield reclamation in the US

• the purchase and rehabilitation of a National Register horse farm

• the design of a comprehensive heritage tourism wayfinding system

• the implementation of the Civil War Trails Program

She also served as chair of the City’s Battlefield Task Force and directed an annual event commemorating the Battle of Franklin. Additionally, she served as a City appointee to the Williamson County Convention, the Visitors Bureau Board and as an appointed member of the Tennessee Historical Commission’s State Review Board. 

Shanon also served for four years as an adjunct professor teaching a course on the philosophy of historic preservation at O’More College of Design in Franklin.

Before moving to Franklin, Shanon served as the Historic Preservation Officer in Fort Worth, Texas, where she directed the preservation program. A major highlight of her time there was serving as project manager for a nine-month Citywide Historic Preservation Plan process.

Education

• Masters of Arts in Historic Preservation, Goucher College

• Masters of Public Service and Administration, Texas A&M University

• Bachelors of Arts in History with minors in Economics and Art History, Western Kentucky University

Professional Memberships

• Preservation Action: Chair Elect

• Preservation Action Foundation: President

• Power of Preservation Foundation: Founding Board

• American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP)

• City of San Antonio Executive Leadership Program

• Leadership America Graduate: 2012

• National Alliance of Preservation Commissions Board Member

• Carter House Association: President 

• Franklin’s Charge: Board Member

• Williamson County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau: Board Member

• City of Franklin Leadership University: Inaugural class

Personal

Shanon is happily married to Hugh Miller. She is fortunate to get to do two things she is passionate about: historic preservation and central city revitalization.

Shanon enjoys swimming, travel and exploration, Tennessee Titans football and Kansas Jayhawks basketball.

Overview of the Trust’s work in climate action

Carol Quillen is the 10th President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

As the 18th president of Davidson College (2011-2022), she sought to honor the institution’s abiding values—integrity, humane instincts, creativity, discipline, leadership, and service— within our rapidly evolving, increasingly interconnected world. To that end, she helped the campus define a vision founded on ensuring access and affordability, reimagining the liberal arts for today, and equipping graduates to have disproportionate impact for good. Carol also strengthened the college’s commitment to meeting 100 percent of demonstrated financial need for all students with no packaged loans.

Nationally, Carol is a founding member of the American Talent Initiative (ATI), a consortium that aims to graduate annually 50,000 additional low- and moderate-income students from the nation’s top colleges and universities.

Leadership for Carol means creating a context where communities can make desired or necessary changes to become more just, more humane, and better equipped to fulfill their shared aims. With her guidance, Davidson built on a liberal arts philosophy to develop a three-pronged model for education that serves the aspirations of a broadly diverse, very talented student body who live within a complex global society. The college’s students cultivate core capacities, like empathy, humane instincts, self-awareness, and intellectual humility; they learn transferable skills, such as creative problem-solving, quantitative analysis, cross-cultural collaboration and effective communication; and they develop technical expertise in their chosen fields, from computer science to art to public health. Combined with local and global experiential learning opportunities such as internships, international study, entrepreneurial projects, and community engagement, students graduate ready to lead meaningful, impactful lives.

Realizing this vision required a flexible and inclusive organization, Carol restructured and diversified the college’s leadership team, supported a reorganization of the board, developed an agile strategic framework to guide resource allocation, and built partnerships with organizations whose aspirations align with those of Davidson.In this work, she relied on Davidson’s longstanding commitment to both community and good stewardship.

Beyond Davidson, Carol has advocated for educational equity, institutional accountability, freedom of inquiry, honesty about our history, and the value of the liberal arts. Among other roles, she co-chaired, with General Robert Caslen, the NCAA’s Commission to Combat Campus Sexual Violence and she served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans. She has spoken at numerous venues, including the Aspen Ideas Festival, edX Global Forum, and the Milken Global Conference. She has served on the boards of the Kinkaid School (Houston, Texas), American Council on Education (Washington, D.C.), the Levine Museum of the New South (Charlotte, North Carolina), and Credential Engine, a national organization that enables “credential transparency” in the post-secondary educational sector.

In 2019, Princeton awarded Carol the James Madison medal, given in recognition of an alumnus/a’s distinguished career advancing the cause of graduate education or record of outstanding public service.

Carol grew up in historic New Castle, Delaware and attended Wilmington Friends School. She earned a B.A. in American history from the University of Chicago, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with special and general honors, and a Ph.D. in European history from Princeton University. She then joined the History Department at Rice University, serving there on the faculty, as the founding director of the Boniuk Center (now the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance), and as a vice provost and vice president before she was named president of Davidson.

She has received numerous academic awards, including the Amoco, Brown, Salgo and Sarofim teaching awards (at Rice) and earned fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation and Villa I Tatti, Harvard’s Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy. Carol is the author of two books and many articles. Her writings have appeared in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Huffington Post, The Hechinger Report, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Introducing The Climate Heritage Network’s Imagining Low Carbon, Just, Climate Resilient Futures Through Culture and Heritage Initiative

Andrew Potts is the Community of Practice Director for the National Geographic Society-funded Preserving Legacies (PL) project. When the full Community of Practice goes live in 2025, it will be an open-source platform where diverse advocates from around the world who are working to protect heritage places from the impacts of climate risks can come to learn, share tips and best practices, ask questions, and support each other. The PL Community of Practice includes the Heritage Adapts to Climate Alliance (HACA), which was launched in 2024 to advocate for culture, heritage, Indigenous Knowledge, and traditional knowledge in the new UN Global Goal on Adaptation.

In addition, Potts serves as Heritage and Climate Action Adviser to the Europa Nostra European Heritage Hub. He was the lead author of Europa Nostra’s 2021 European Cultural Heritage Green Paper “Putting Europe’s shared heritage at the heart of the European Green Deal.” Potts served as an expert advisor to the Urban Agenda for the EU Partnership for Culture and Cultural Heritage Action 9: Observatory on culture/cultural heritage and climate change in the urban framework.

Potts also serves as climate policy advisor to the “Global Call to Put Cultural Heritage, Arts and the Creative Sector at the Heart of Climate Action Campaign” where he contributed to the 2023 launch of the new “Group of Friends of Culture-Based Climate Action at the UNFCCC.” At home in the United States, Potts serves on the Expert Advisory Committee for the United States Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

Andrew founded and coordinated the Secretariat of the Climate Heritage Network and played an instrumental role in the 2024 launch of the Network’s flagship project “Imagining Low Carbon, Just, Climate Resilient Futures Through Culture and Heritage,” which to date has attracted $US 1.5M in funding.

Previously Andrew served as the Coordinator of the Climate Change and Heritage Working Group of the Paris-based International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) where he was a lead author of the 2019 report “The Future of Our Pasts: Engaging cultural heritage in climate action.” Before that he was the ICOMOS Focal Point for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In 2021 he served as a director of the Operating Committee of the IPCC-ICOMOS-UNESCO International Co-Sponsored Meeting on Culture, Heritage and Climate Change and he is an author of the 2022 “Global research and action agenda on culture, heritage and climate change: scientific outcome of the International Co-Sponsored Meeting on Culture, Heritage and Climate Change.”

A policy and finance for development (FfD) lawyer by training, Andrew previously served as Associate General Counsel of the US National Trust for Historic Preservation and is the recipient of its John H. Chafee Trustees Award for Outstanding Achievement in Public Policy. Andew’s law practice originally focused on arranging public and private finance for the adaptive reuse of historic buildings in the United States and then expanded to a financing for culture-based sustainable development projects more generally. He has made international culture and climate change policy his focus since 2015.

Can Historic Properties be assessed en masse through a certification system?  

Mark C. McDonald retired in the fall of 2023 after 15 years as president and CEO of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and a 37-year career in historic preservation.

Under McDonald’s leadership, the Georgia Trust doubled the number of properties protected by its Revolving Fund and Easements programs, successfully completed a $2.3 million capital campaign for the restoration of its headquarters, Rhodes Hall, and its grounds, established the country’s first green certification program for historic buildings and residences, and strengthened its financial position.

McDonald has been named four times to Georgia Trend magazine’s list of “Notable Georgians,” and in 2022, was included in the publication’s “Georgia 500: the State’s Most Influential Leaders” listing. He served as chairman of the Partners Network of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and on the organization’s Board of Trustees and Board of Advisors. He currently serves as chairman of the Georgia Women of Achievement’s Selection Committee, a post he has held since 2011, and on the board of trustees of the Ossabaw Island Foundation.

In addition to the Trust, McDonald served as executive director for three preservation organizations in the Southeast, including the Historic Salisbury Foundation in North Carolina from 1986-1990, the Mobile Historic Development Commission in Mobile, Alabama from 1990-1998, and Historic Savannah Foundation from 1998-2008, and was recognized by the American Institute of Architects with a Citation of Excellence for his 10 years of service in Savannah

McDonald holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in history and English from Emory University and a law degree from the University of Georgia School of Law. He currently resides in Ansley Park with his wife Carmie, an Episcopal Priest, and their dog Ramsey. He has 3 adult sons, Will, Charles, and Francis, and 2 granddaughters, Blair and Birdie.

CARE Tool (Carbon Avoided Retrofit Estimator)

Lori Ferriss, AIA, PE, LEED AP BD+C is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Built Buildings Lab. She is an internationally recognized expert in leveraging existing and historic buildings toward a sustainable, resilient, and equitable future. Her award-winning work as an architect, structural engineer, conservator, and educator combines broad policy development with deep technical insights to harness the existing built environment as a climate solution. As a Principal at Boston-based design firm Goody Clancy, she founded the Regenerative Renewal practice that re-envisions architecture at the intersection of decarbonization and heritage. Her work establishing carbon accounting methods for historic buildings has been featured in publications ranging from the Journal of Architectural Conservation to Architect Magazine and presented on-stage at the UN COP28 climate conference. She is a co-developer of Architecture 2030’s CARE Tool, which estimates the carbon benefits of reusing and retrofitting buildings. 

The AIA recognized Lori with the Young Architect Award for expanding the role of architects while elevating building reuse as a prime strategy to combat climate change. Lori has served as a Design Research and Teaching Fellow with Northeastern University and has taught as an adjunct at the University of Washington. She was the 2023 Chair of the AIA Committee on the Environment and serves as a Steering Committee representative of the Climate Heritage Network, a founding Co-Chair of the Zero Net Carbon Collaboration for Existing and Historic Buildings, an expert member on the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Energy, Sustainability and Climate Change, and a Senior Fellow of Architecture 2030.

Campus-wide climate action programs

Margaret Waldock is a social sector changemaker with over 20 years of experience in the non-profit, government and philanthropic fields. As executive director at Duke Farms, Waldock brings a deep interest in the root causes of social, environmental and economic challenges, and turning big ideas into actionable plans that support healthy, equitable and sustainable communities. She believes in the power of the non-profit sector to drive and demonstrate solutions and build inclusive networks and strategic relationships to leverage systems level change.

Prior to joining the Doris Duke Foundation, Waldock was the Environment Program director at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation based in Morristown, N.J., overseeing philanthropic grantmaking strategies to foster equitable and sustainable communities through watershed protection and restoration, green cities and regional food systems. She has worked for leading conservation organizations and government agencies including the American Farmland Trust, the Trust for Public Land and the New Jersey Green Acres Program, and she was the first executive director of the Hunterdon Land Trust where she led the transition from an all-volunteer organization to a professionally staffed and nationally accredited land trust. Waldock received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the State University of New York at Brockport and is a graduate of Vermont Law School where she earned both a Juris Doctorate degree and a Master of Studies in environmental law.

Jonathan (Jon) Wagar is responsible for operations and sustainability at Duke Farms, serving as a key leader overseeing facilities, landscaping, budgeting, technology, visitor services, public engagement, and public safety for the organization.

Wagar also teaches environmental studies and climate change courses at Raritan Valley Community College as an adjunct assistant professor. Previously, he worked in land acquisition and stewardship roles at Conservation Resources, New Jersey Conservation Foundation, and Schiff Natural Lands Trust.

Wagar earned his biology degree from Richard Stockton University and Master of Forestry degree from Yale School of the Environment. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala focused on sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation.

A native of New Jersey, Wagar lives locally with his wife and children.

Joie Grandbois is the Sustainability Coordinator for Historic New England. Joie is a skilled storyteller who excels in conveying complex environmental concepts with clarity and passion. Born and raised in New England, she has witnessed the impacts of climate change and observed the remarkable recovery of rivers and forests due to environmental legislation. Her firsthand experience of New England's changing climate led Joie to leverage her deep-rooted connection to the region and her background in environmental economics consulting to become a powerful advocate for environmental stewardship.

At Historic New England, Joie facilitates climate action planning that connects historic preservation with a sustainable future. Armed with a degree in sustainable business and a minor in environmental sustainability from the University of Southern Maine and a Permaculture Design Certificate from Permaculture Institute of North America, Joie brings a unique blend of academic and practical knowledge to her role. Her experience includes assessing the impact of rising sea levels in Maine, contributing to watershed assessments for the Long Island Sound, and connecting land conservation with economic outcomes in Massachusetts. Joie's love of storytelling extends beyond her professional endeavors; as a graduate of the Portland History Docent program, she designs and conducts walking tours in Southern Maine that intertwine local history with sustainability themes.

Federal Action on Climate Heritage

Sara C. Bronin is a Mexican-American architect, attorney, professor, and policymaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. She is the author of Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World (W.W. Norton), and she founded and directs the National Zoning Atlas, which aims to digitize, demystify, and democratize information about zoning in the United States.

Academics

Bronin is widely recognized as one of the foremost experts in property, land use, zoning, and historic preservation law.

She is a tenured professor at Cornell University with appointments in the planning, law, real estate, and architecture faculties. She directs the Legal Constructs Lab and is a faculty fellow of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. She is also an elected member of the American Law Institute and a past chair of the State & Local Government Section of the American Association of Law Schools.

Bronin has co-authored two treatises, including the land use volume of the Restatement (Fourth) of Property, which distills principles of black letter law that will shape judicial decisions for decades to come. She has also written four books and dozens of articles on renewable energy, climate change, housing, urban planning, transportation, real estate development, and federalism. She has received millions of dollars of grants from the federal government, state governments, foundations, and nonprofit organizations to build teams to support her research, including 20 full-time staff for the National Zoning Atlas alone.

Public Service

Bronin has been a reformer and change-maker in public roles at the local, state, and federal levels.

In the area of land use, Bronin chaired the planning and zoning commission of Connecticut’s capital city for seven years, leading its nationally-recognized efforts to overhaul its zoning code and to adopt a new decennial city plan. In that role, she also spearheaded the city’s first climate action plan and helped create a City Sustainability Office. In 2020, she founded DesegregateCT, a pro-homes grassroots coalition that successfully advanced the first major statewide zoning reforms in several decades. 

In the area of historic preservation, Bronin was nominated by President Biden to serve as the 12th chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the independent federal agency charged with preserving the country’s historic places. She was confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate in 2022 and is the first person of color to serve as chair. In that role, she has prioritized the improvement of federal regulatory and policy approaches to housing, climate change, and the concerns of Indigenous Peoples. Previously, Bronin served as a board member for Latinos in Heritage Conservation, an advisor for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the chair of Preservation Connecticut, and the vice chair of the city of Hartford historic preservation commission.

In 2023, Bronin was appointed by President Biden to serve as a Trustee of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. 

Consulting & Practice

Bronin has been an attorney, adviser, and expert witness for institutional clients, governments, and law firms dealing with complex matters.

Bronin won several architectural design awards for the rehabilitation of her family’s National-Register-listed 1865 brownstone. 

Education & Personal Information

Bronin holds a J.D. from Yale Law School (Harry S Truman Scholarship), M.Sc. from the University of Oxford (Rhodes Scholarship), and B.Architecture and B.A. in Plan II from the University of Texas. While in law school, she clerked for then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

A seventh-generation Texan, Sara is a native Houstonian. She grew up working in her grandparents’ Mexican restaurant.

What do we need to move forward?

Patrice Frey is Senior Advisor to Main Street America, where she leads an initiative to accelerate investment in small-scale real estate development projects on Main Streets. Patrice previously served as President & CEO of Main Street America between 2013 and 2022, overseeing the creation of MSA as an independent subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

Prior to her time at MSA, Patrice served as the Director of Sustainability at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where she led the National Trust’s efforts to promote the reuse and greening of older and historic buildings. Before joining the National Trust, Patrice worked for several years in the field of community development and urban research. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s program in historic preservation, where she received a master’s degree in preservation planning and a certificate in real estate design and development through the Penn School of Design and Wharton Business School.

James B. Lindberg is Senior Policy Director at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  Based in Denver, he works with partners across the country, providing policy research and solutions for more inclusive, healthy, and resilient communities.

Jim has co-authored numerous research and policy publications for the National Trust on the economic, social, and environmental benefits of building conservation and reuse. He is a lecturer in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver.