Richard Moe

When Richard Moe became the seventh president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, he brought to the position a lifelong interest in history and a career-long commitment to public service.

A native of Duluth, Minnesota, Moe graduated from Williams College in 1959 and soon launched the public-service career that led to administrative positions in city and state government and the chairmanship of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. During this period he also received a law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School.

In 1972 he moved to Washington to be administrative assistant to Senator Walter F. Mondale. Five years later he was named chief of staff to Vice President Mondale and a member of the Carter White House senior staff. He practiced law in Washington from 1981 until he assumed the presidency of the National Trust in January of 1993.

A member of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House and the boards of the Ford Foundation and the Civil War Trust, Moe was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1998 which recognized his work in the field of historic preservation. He is co-author of Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl, a study of the causes of urban decline and the use of historic preservation as a tool for revitalization, published in 1997; and author of The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers, a Civil War history published in 1993.

Chartered by Congress in 1949, the National Trust is the largest nonprofit preservation organization in the United States. It has approximately 270,000 members nationwide, operates six regional offices and has 20 historic sites. As president, Moe is responsible for leading the organization in its mission to provide leadership, education and advocacy to save the nation’s diverse historic places and create more livable communities for all Americans. Under his direction, the National Trust has become an outspoken and effective advocate of controlling sprawl, has launched efforts to demonstrate and document the effectiveness of preservation as a tool for community revitalization, and has reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening the organized preservation movement.

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