Alan Spears – Senior Director for Cultural Resources, National Parks Conservation Association

As NPCA’s senior director for cultural resources Alan serves as an advocate for the interpretation, management, and preservation of cultural and historic resources and programs within the National Park Service’s inventory. He believes that NPS is the nation’s leading storyteller, a conclusion he reached early on in life during battlefield walks and ranger-led tours at Antietam, Gettysburg, and Harpers Ferry.

Alan helped win the designation of Fort Monroe, Harriet Tubman, and Birmingham Civil Rights National Monuments. He began leading NPCA’s campaign to designate the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in 2018 and working with local and national partners helped win designation of that site in July of 2023, when President Joe Biden used the Antiquities Act to add the Till-Mobley site to the National Park System.

In December of 2022 Alan worked with the Alliance of National Heritage Areas to pass the Heritage Area Act. The bill, which enjoyed strong bipartisan support, established a system of heritage areas and extended federal funding for all NHAs out to the year 2037.

Alan is currently working to secure a new national park commemorating businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Schools. He is also devoting much of his time to leading NPCA’s efforts to oppose the sanitization and erasure of American history from our national parks.

Alan is a native of Washington, DC, and remains the only NPCA staff person ever to be rescued from a tidal marsh by a Park Police helicopter.