Liz McEnaney is a cultural heritage practitioner, educator and executive.
She collaborates with organizations and institutions in the US and the Middle East on education, storytelling, and program development. Examples of recent work includes the design and implementation of preservation-related curricula to build organizational capacity, the launch of an annual architecture festival, developing interpretation strategies for heritage sites, and identifying financial resources to make projects possible.
Her experience as Executive Director at Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation and the SS Columbia Project honed her skills at strategic planning and positioning, as well as fundraising. Her independent research projects focus on helping communities define and preserve their architectural heritage to improve quality of life and strengthen community ties, and she looks at how stories and histories of places can be agents for change and understanding. Much of this independent research is based in Newburgh, New York.
From 2010-2019 and 2022-2023, Liz was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, instructing Historic Preservation Thesis and studios in both the historic preservation and urban design programs. The studio courses focused on regional issues, often using the Hudson Valley as a laboratory for exploration. She also taught urban policy and advised on integrated digital media thesis projects at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.
She is a founding trustee of Awesome Newburgh and is on the board of The Preservation League of New York State, The Fullerton Center, The Hudson River Maritime Museum, and Project Hello World. She is a two-time recipient of an Architecture + Design Independent Projects Grant from The New York State Council on the Arts, and has received grants from the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
She holds an M.S. in Historic Preservation from Columbia University and an B.A. from Wellesley College.