The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been in the minority… It will take such a small committed minority to work unrelentingly to win the uncommitted majority. Such a group may transform America’s greatest dilemma into her most glorious opportunity.
Background
Monica Rhodes is an entrepreneur and public intellectual whose work examines the relationship between the past and possibility. As Founder and President of Rhodes Heritage Group, she leads interdisciplinary work at the intersection of cultural strategy, creative practice, and place-based investment, helping communities and institutions prioritize the value of people and cultural assets.
She currently serves as an elected board member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the world’s leading organization dedicated to the conservation and stewardship of cultural heritage, and is a candidate for Vice President for the Americas. Rhodes previously served as a presidentially appointed Expert Member of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the federal agency responsible for advising the President and Congress on matters of national preservation policy.
Her contributions to the field have earned national and international recognition, including the 2023 Rome Prize Fellowship in Historic Preservation and Conservation and the 2022 Harvard Loeb Fellowship. Throughout her career, Rhodes has led complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives involving public, private, and philanthropic investment; developed the first nationwide effort to broaden access to the preservation profession; and advised organizations and communities on the intersection of culture, place, and long-term resilience.
A sought-after speaker and thought leader, Rhodes has lectured extensively on cultural stewardship, community transformation, and the future of place. Her work and ideas have been featured in The Washington Post, Architectural Digest, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international media outlets.
Rhodes’s work is grounded in the belief that a deeper understanding of place expands the horizon of possibility. At its core, her work asks a simple but consequential question: What becomes possible when we understand where we have been?
Interests
Past and future, historical understanding, cultural stewardship, public memory, place, emerging technologies, collective memory, cultural heritage, temporal imagination, technology and society, place-based identity, cultural values, future possibilities, community memory, and placemaking