Kimberly Bender is a cultural administrator and public historian who reinterprets established narratives. Over the last decade, she has transformed the Heurich House Museum into a vibrant and inclusive space that explores immigration and the American Dream. She has extensive expertise implementing best practices in cultural organizations, and curating public history educational experiences. Key to Ms. Bender’s work is her background as an attorney, which has not only helped her reinvent organizations, but assists in her DC history research. Her innovative work has led her to be recognized by the Washington Business Journal as one of DC’s “40 Under 40.”

Anne Dobberteen is a Ph.D. candidate in history at George Mason University, and a former Guggenheim Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Her dissertation explores the visual culture of air defense in Washington, DC, and the surrounding region during World War II. Dobberteen has also worked as a public historian and museum professional in Washington, most recently at the Heurich House Museum and the Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection at The George Washington University Museum.

Jenna Febrizio is an empathy-focused historian. She received her PhD at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she looked at relationships between immigrants and United States art professionals in the 20th century. She is currently a Historian for the Heurich House Museum working on a project to make the museum more accessible to a wider audience. Her current research examines the lives of craftspeople and laborers who built the historic mansion.

Laura Brower Hagood is the Executive Director of the DC History Center. She served as the Vice President of Development at the National Building Museum as well as Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations. She received a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship in 2014, which she spent in Berlin. In addition to fundraising roles at Cultural Vistas and FINCA, Laura held public relations positions at Cultural Tourism DC and Biltmore Estate. She earned a dual MA from American University in arts management and art history, where she teaches fundraising as an adjunct faculty member. She holds a BA in English from Bryn Mawr College. She is a proud resident of Shaw

Linnea Hegarty is the Director of Events, Exhibits and Development at the DC Public Library. Hegarty brings more than 17 years of experience in leadership positions at nonprofit and political organizations to the DC Public Library. For the past seven years, she served as the Executive Director of the DC Public Library Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides programmatic resources to the DC Public Library to supplement local government funding. Linnea lives in Mount Pleasant, DC, with her husband and two young boys, where they are frequent visitors at their favorite DCPL neighborhood library.

Julianna Jackson brings a decade of experience as a preservation professional to the DC History Conference. She holds an MA in Anthropology from the College of William and Mary, where her graduate research explored the role of architecture in landscapes of slavery in the Washington region. Originally from Baltimore, Julianna is now a proud DC resident with a love for history and the built environment. She has had the privilege of being on the conference planning committee for the past four years.

Tim Kumfer is the Henry A. Wallace Fellowship Program Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he supports activists in building skills for public scholarship. A 2023-2024 Mellon Sawyer Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown University affiliated with the "Creative Placemaking, Black Restorative Ecologies, and Black Spatial Futures” Seminar, he received his PhD in American Studies from The University of Maryland in 2023. He was a 2022-2023 Totman Fellow at the DC History Center.

Rebecca is a native Washingtonian who has served her community as an executive leader in the non-profit sector for more than two decades. Now the executive director of HumanitiesDC, Rebecca co-founded and served as Executive Director for City Blossoms. Lemos Otero is a graduate of Fordham University, received an M.F.A from the Maryland Institute College of Arts and holds a certificate in Nonprofit Management from Georgetown University.

Lina Mann joined the White House Historical Association in 2017 as American University’s Public History Fellow and came onboard as a historian in March 2020. She is interested in many aspects of White House history, including her latest research on the enslaved individuals that built, lived, and worked in the White House. She previously worked with the National Park Service and the Maryland Historical Society. Lina holds degrees from St. Mary’s College of Maryland (BA, history, anthropology, environmental studies, and museum studies and American University (MA, public history). She is pursuing a PhD at George Mason University.

Lana Mason is an archivist at the District of Columbia Office of Public Records and Archives. She began her archives career in 2018, and has experience with government, academic, and non-profit archives. She holds an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons University, where she specialized in archives management, and a BA in Art History from George Mason University. 

Lopez D. Matthews Jr., PhD, is the State Archivist and Public Records Administrator for the District of Columbia. Formerly, he was the manager of the Digital Production Center and Digital Production Librarian for the Howard University Libraries and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. He was a commissioner on the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture and a member of the board of directors of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore. Currently, he is a member of the Council of State Archivists, and an Executive Council Member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Lois Nembhard is the Director of Grantmaking and Programs at HumanitiesDC, the Humanities Council of Washington, DC. She leads the creation and implementation of grantmaking and public programs that use the humanities as a tool to enrich lives and promote cross-cultural understanding. Lois has spent most of her career supporting the work of nonprofit organizations. She worked for the federal government as a grantmaker managing the AmeriCorps and Social Innovation Fund programs. More recently she has been a nonprofit consultant with Resiliency Blueprint. Lois loves being a DC resident and is excited to help promote and celebrate the history of the District.

Maren Orchard is the Senior Manager of Programs at the DC History Center where she is responsible for producing a slate of relevant, history-based public programs for public audiences. In her role at the DC History Center, she serves as the project manager for the DC History Conference working with the braintrust and committee to make this annual tradition possible. She holds an MA in Public History from American University and a BA in History and Women and Gender Studies from Ball State University.

M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska is Associate Professor of History at American University, researching and teaching 19th and 20th century U.S. history, public history, and historiography. She is the author of History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s and is currently working on a book about “visitors” to Washington, DC: appointees, tourists, activists, and militia. She is Scholar-In-Residence at the Heurich House Museum and holds a Humanities Truck Fellowship. M.J.’s sits on the HumanitiesDC Board of Directors, the Washington History editorial board, and the DC History Center University Advisory Board.

Kasey Sease, PhD, is Curator of the Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum. Beyond developing exhibitions and activating the collection, she programs the Albert H. Small Center for National Capital Area Studies. A former Managing Editor of Washington History, Kasey holds degrees from the College of William and Mary (PhD, MA, history) and the University of Virginia (BA, history and government).