The people who keep the New York Preservation Archive Project running.
Because the Archive Project is a lean and efficient preservation organization, we rely on our devoted and engaged board of directors. These directors, along with consultants, volunteers, and interns, allow the Archive Project’s professional staff of one to expand its reach in remarkable ways. Below are the people that make the Archive Project great.
Board of Directors
Lisa Ackerman
Chair
Lisa Ackerman is Executive Director of the Columbus Citizens Foundation. Previously she served as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the World Monuments Fund and as Executive Vice President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and currently serves on the boards of Historic House Trust of New York City and US/ICOMOS. In 2007 she received the Historic District Council’s Landmarks Lion award and in 2008 was named the first recipient of the US/ICOMOS Ann Webster Smith Award for International Heritage Achievement. She also holds an appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute.
Anthony C. Wood
Founder & Chair Emeritus
Anthony C. Wood is a preservationist, author, teacher, historian, and grant maker. Currently the Executive Director of the Ittleson Foundation, he has worked for the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the Municipal Art Society. For over 20 years, he was a member of the Adjunct Faculty of the Historic Preservation Program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. He is the author of Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks.
William J. Cook
Vice-Chair
William J. Cook is Special Counsel at Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC, a historic preservation and cultural heritage law firm. Previously, he served for eight years as associate general counsel at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Will is also a board member on the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, Valleys Planning Council, and Ladew Topiary Gardens. He teaches preservation law at Columbia University and lectures regularly to national audiences on issues related to property, land use, and historic preservation law.
Elizabeth Rohn Jeffe
Vice-Chair
Elizabeth Rohn Jeffe is a writer and historian. She joined the board of NYPAP in 2010. The founding editor of City Courant, a publication of the Museum of the City of New York, Ms. Jeffe has also served as an associate editor of the New-York Journal of American History, published by the New-York Historical Society. A former trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and The Green-Wood Cemetery, Ms. Jeffe has taught at Marymount Manhattan College and is engaged in philanthropic work focused on healthcare delivery, education, and historic preservation.
Shirley Ferguson Jenks
Treasurer
Shirley Ferguson Jenks is a fundraising and management consultant to not-for-profit organizations in New York, New England, and beyond. She has served as Chief Development Officer at the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the American Craft Museum, and the American Academy in Rome. She was also a board member of Women in Development New York and the American Foundation for the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Gina Pollara
Secretary
Gina Pollara is an architect, author, and urban designer. Formerly the Executive Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park and the President of the Municipal Art Society, she has also been involved with the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council and The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive.
John T. Reddick
John T. Reddick writes on Harlem’s architectural and cultural history and is currently researching its Black and Jewish music culture between 1890 and 1930. He has given lectures at the Apollo Theater and the Museum of the City of New York and led walking tours for El Museo de Barrio, Open House New York, and Harlem One Stop. Reddick has also spearheaded several of Harlem’s recent public space enhancement initiatives.
Stephen Facey
Stephen Facey is the retired Executive Vice President of The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine where, among other responsibilities, he coordinated the restoration of the Cathedral after a major 2001 fire. Previously, Mr. Facey directed the post-fire restoration of the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in the West Village. As Parish Administrator of St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, Stephen organized and directed the Preservation Youth Project, a pioneering work and training program for neighborhood youth focused on the preservation and, ultimately, the post-fire restorations of both the church and the rectory, the latter as an adaptive re-use site for the Neighborhood Preservation Center. Stephen is also a trustee of Movement Research, The Chocolate Factory Theater and the St. Mark’s Historic Landmark Fund.
Daniel J. Allen
Daniel J. Allen is an architect and principal at CTA Architects PC in New York City. He is a member of the Association for Preservation Technology, the American Institute of Architects, and previously served as President of the Board of Directors of the Historic Districts Council. He is also Adjunct Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
Michele H. Bogart
Michele H. Bogart taught American visual culture studies at Stony Brook University from 1982 through 2020, with areas of expertise in urban design and commercial culture. She has published on public art, memorials, animation, landscape history, photography, illustration, and advertising. From 1998 through 2003 she served as a member of the Art Commission of the City of New York (now the Public Design Commission), and was for four years its Vice President.
Matthew Owen Coody
Matthew Owen Coody is Director of External Affairs at the Historic House Trust of New York City and previously served as Executive Director of the New York Preservation Archive Project. He is a co-founder of Preservation Greenpoint and serves on the Board of Directors of the Historic Districts Council and the Preservation Committee of the Municipal Art Society.
Matt Dellinger
Matt Dellinger is a writer, public historian, and digital archive builder. He worked for ten years on staff at The New Yorker, overseeing the launch of the magazine’s editorial website, its first weekly podcast, and the creation of its online archive. His other digital-archive work includes transformational projects for Vogue, Esquire, the Mellon Foundation, and Gibson. He has written on the topics of transportation, urban planning, and local history for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Bloomberg Citylab, WNYC, and others. Matt is the author of Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway, and is at work on a second book about Brooklyn in the Civil War.
Christopher Jeannopoulos
Christopher Jeannopoulos is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Woodlawn Cemetery. Previously, he served as Chief Financial and Administrative Officer of the World Monuments Fund and as Chief Financial Officer of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. He is a Certified Public Accountant with a BS in Business Administration from the University at Buffalo.
Yukie Ohta
Yukie Ohta is an archivist, writer, and founder of the SoHo Memory Project, a nonprofit organization that celebrates and preserves the history of SoHo as a New York City neighborhood. Yukie was NYPAP’s 2021 Preservation Award Honoree and a recipient of a 2022 NYPAP Archival Assistance Grant. In 2015, she was named “The Memory-Keeper of SoHo” by The New York Times. She has written widely on SoHo history and serves on Village Preservation’s Archives Committee as well as the board of LREI, a downtown independent school where she is the volunteer archivist. A SoHo native, she still lives in the building where she formed her earliest SoHo memories.
Kate Burns Ottavino
Kate Burns Ottavino has been a practicing conservator for over thirty years and is a third-generation partner in her family’s stoneworks, A. Ottavino Corporation. Prior to rejoining A. Ottavino Corporation in 1993, she was the Director of Preservation for the architectural firm of Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut and Kuhn. Kate lectures and publishes widely on the practice of conservation and preservation education. She is a member of the stonecutters’ union and board member of the American Friends of Coubertin, The Merchant’s House Museum, Historic Districts Council (Advisory), and advises several high schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Anthony W. Robins
Author, historian, lecturer, and tour-leader, Anthony W. Robins has been guiding natives and visitors to New York City’s wonders of steel and stone for over 35 years. Formerly Deputy Director of Research and Director of Survey at the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, his preservation work earned him a “Rome Prize” from the American Academy in Rome. He teaches at Columbia and NYU, and serves as Vice President of the Art Deco Society of New York. His books include centennial celebrations of the New York City subway, Grand Central Terminal, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. His New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture won a “New York City Book Award” from the New York Society Library. And he was recently honored with the “Guiding Spirit Award” from the Guides Association of New York City.
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Adrian Untermyer
Adrian Untermyer is an attorney, urbanist, and historian who fights for stronger cities and communities. Untermyer previously served as Deputy Director of the Historic Districts Council, and is a frequent panelist and commentator on planning, preservation, and transportation issues impacting New York and the nation. In 2016, he was featured in The New York Times for improving Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal — “New York’s Most Hated Building” — by placing a piano inside. In addition to his NYPAP duties, Untermyer serves on the board of the Woodlawn Cemetery Conservancy and is a founding member of the Friends of George McAneny.
Staff
Executive Director
Emily Kahn is a historic preservationist, public historian, and experienced nonprofit leader who started as the Executive Director of the New York Preservation Archive Project in July 2023. She previously worked at the National Trust for Historic Preservation as well as numerous small preservation advocacy organizations, where she developed interdisciplinary skills in archival research, storytelling, museum interpretation, grantmaking, public programming, and fundraising. Passionate about increasing equity in the preservation field, she also serves as the Board President of Columbia’s Preservation Alumni. Emily holds a Master’s degree in Historic Preservation from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in History from Colgate University.
Jeffe Fellow
Katie Heiserman is passionate about preserving and publicizing overlooked New York histories. She is a recent graduate from NYU’s Archives & Public History Master's program, where she researched grassroots activists on the Lower East Side who protected community gardens and buildings from demolition in the 1990s. In addition to her role at the Archive Project, Katie serves as Assistant Curator at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. She has previously worked at museums and media companies including the New-York Historical Society, BRIC Arts Media, the Museum of the City of New York, and Best Case Studios.
Reisinger Scholar
Olivia VF Chaudhury, born in New York City and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh, earned her B.S. Urban & Regional Studies and M.A. Historic Preservation Planning from Cornell University. With a museum background spanning country historical societies to large non-profits, she co-created the longest existing timeline of John W. Jones' life, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, at the John W. Jones Museum in Elmira, NY. She is excited by the opportunities for historic preservation and museums in American anniversary years, which she explored in her M.A. thesis, "How America Remembers Itself: An Analysis of Programming in the Bicentennial, Semiquincentennial and American Girl, Centering Indigenous Perspectives."
Oral Historian
Sarah Dziedzic is an oral historian, project consultant, grant advisor, teaching artist, and workshop facilitator based in New York City. She produces oral history projects in partnership with museums, archives, and community groups on NYC neighborhood history, visual arts, and cultural heritage, and has been the Oral Historian at the Archive Project since 2019. She graduated from Columbia University’s Oral History MA program in 2011, and is a vocal advocate for economic accessibility within the oral history profession and across the cultural work sector.
Administrative Coordinator
Coco Nelson is the Administrative Coordinator at NYPAP, where she assists the organization’s daily operations and supports its mission. With a B.A. in English, she brings a passion for literature, history, and art history to her role. She looks forward to merging these interests with her growing knowledge in preservation and contributing to the organization’s efforts to protect and celebrate historical assets.
Project Archivist
Caroline Williams is an archivist, researcher, and environmentalist with experience working at the intersection of history and science since 2017. In 2023, Caroline received the Ellen Brenner Fellowship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and in 2024, was accepted into the Climatebase Fellowship. In addition to CSHL, Caroline has worked on archival projects for the Maryland State Medical Society and Brownsville Heritage House. Caroline is the Co-Chair of the Young Professionals Board at Christodora and serves on the Associate Board of WINGS WorldQuest. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo and is obtaining a MS degree at the Pratt School of Information.