Brent Leggs is the eleventh President and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has served in the role since 2026. Brent has been with the National Trust for over twenty years, most recently as the founding executive director of its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which has raised over $200 million for the preservation of sites associated with Black history across the country.

Brent is a former Resident of the American Academy in Rome, Harvard University Loeb Fellow, 2018 recipient of the Robert G. Stanton National Preservation Award, and author of Preserving African American Historic Places, which is considered the “seminal publication on preserving African American historic sites” by the Smithsonian Institution.

Selected Media:

• “Imagining a Future for Langston Hughes’s Harlem Brownstone,” The New York Times
• “Saving the House That Gave Voice to Nina Simone,” Architectural Digest
• “MacKenzie Scott Gives $40 Million to Help Preserve Black History,” The New York Times
• “Historic Preservation Is Having a Renaissance. Meet the Man Driving It,” Bloomberg
• “The Fight to Preserve African-American History,” The New Yorker