Our Board

John M. Fowler retired in 2021 after serving 24 years as the Executive Director of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, overseeing the staff and daily operations of the ACHP. Before becoming Executive Director, Mr. Fowler was the General Counsel and Deputy Executive Director of the ACHP. In 2010, he received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive for his work at the ACHP. He served twice as Chairman of the US Committee for the International Council of Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) and was named a US/ICOMOS Fellow in 1994. He holds an honors degree in history from Princeton University and a law degree from Yale Law School. He is a member of the District of Columbia and US Supreme Court bars.

Susan S. Barnes is CEO and President of Chicago area based The Landmark Group of Companies. Ms. Barnes served as Vice-Chairman and Expert Member of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation from 2002 to 2011. Since 2012, Ms. Barnes has been a board member of the ACHP Foundation and currently serves as Secretary and Treasurer. She has served on or advised educational, non-profit, and corporate Boards, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Rush University Health System, Smeja Homestead Foundation, and Preservation Houston. Her fundraising and philanthropic efforts range from charity event chairmanships to Purdue University’s multi-billion-dollar Capital Campaigns. She has a B.S. degree in Housing and Environmental Design from Purdue University and a Master of Architecture degree from University of Illinois.

Philip W. Grone is Vice President for Government Affairs at National Elevator Industry Inc. From 2001-2007, Mr. Grone served as Principal Assistant and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment, representing the Secretary of Defense on the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Subsequent to his Federal service, Mr. Grone was a senior official in the Internet Business Solutions Group of Cisco Systems. He subsequently established Findlay & Western Strategies, LLC, as a business and public policy consulting firm in 2011 and was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for the Defense Orientation Conference Association. He is currently a member of the National Policy Advisory Board for the Association of Defense Communities and the Board of Advisors for the Land Conservation Assistance Network. He holds a M.A. from the University of Virginia and a B.A. from Northern Kentucky University.

Julia King is a professor of anthropology and archaeology at St. Mary’s College in Maryland. She has 30 years experience studying, writing, and teaching about historical archaeology and Chesapeake history and culture. From 2003 to 2011, Dr. King served as an Expert Member on the ACHP. Her book, Archaeology, Narrative, and the Politics of the Past: The View from Southern Maryland, received a Book Award from the American Association of State and Local History in 2013. In 2018, the Society for Historical Archaeology presented Dr King with the J.C. Harrington Award in recognition of her scholarly contributions to the discipline. She has a Bachelor of Arts from William and Mary, a M.A. from Florida State University and a PhD from University of Pennsylvania.

Jordan E. Tannenbaum, is Acting Chairman and Vice Chairman of the ACHP, and was an ACHP staff member from 1972-82. He has been Chief Development Officer of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum since 2004. From 1999-2004, Mr. Tannenbaum was Vice President for Development for Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life in Washington, D.C. A lawyer by training, he has also held senior fundraising positions at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, B’nai B’rith International, and Brandeis University. Mr. Tannenbaum served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Army Reserve from 1983-2010.  Mr. Tannenbaum is a member of the Fairfax County History Commission and the Advisory Board of the Army Historical Foundation. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and American University’s Washington College of Law.

Luke Nichter is a Professor of History and James H. Cavanaugh Endowed Chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California. He is also a 2020-2021 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. His area of specialty is the Cold War, the modern presidency, and U.S. political and diplomatic history, with a focus on the “long 1960s” from John F. Kennedy through Watergate. Nichter is a noted expert on Richard Nixon’s 3,432 hours of secret White House tapes. He also has a website that offers free access to the publicly released tapes as a public service.  In addition, he is a New York Times bestselling author or editor of seven books and a founding executive producer of C-SPAN’s American History TV. A feature of the channel is “American Artifacts,” a weekly program that Nichter conceptualized, which lets viewers experience a museum, an archive, or a historic site from behind the scenes–something different than what they would ordinarily see as a member of the visiting public.