About Heritage Consulting Inc.

Donna Ann Harris is the principal of Heritage Consulting Inc, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm that works in three practice areas: downtown and commercial district revitalization, historic preservation and organizational development.

With over twenty five years of experience as a trainer, program designer and manager in the historic preservation field, Ms. Harris has worked in all levels of government, in the for-profit and the non-profit sectors.

Ms. Harris is the author of New Solutions for House Museums published by AltaMira Press in April 2007 which contains a dozen case studies of historic house museums around the country and in Canada that have successfully made a transition to a new use or user to assure the building’s preservation for the coming generations. During the last three years, Ms. Harris has been consulting with historic house stewards on reuse planning in California and Philadelphia and has presented programs at statewide and national conferences on her research findings. The research for the book was supported by the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation in NYC, through their Mid Career Fellowship, which Ms. Harris was awarded in 2003.

Prior to starting her firm in 2004, Ms. Harris was state coordinator for the Illinois Main Street program for two years and the manager of the Illinois suburban Main Street program for four years. With a staff of twelve including four Main Street architects, Ms. Harris led the largest staffed and budgeted Main Street program in the country servicing 56 communities.  Ms. Harris provided overall leadership for the Illinois Main Street program including marketing the program to new communities and managing the annual training schedule for managers and volunteers.

In her career, Ms. Harris has been an executive director for two statewide preservation organizations, a land conservancy, and a senior manager for a local preservation organization in Philadelphia where she raised over $3.7 million dollars from foundations and corporations.

Ms. Harris holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Center of Government (1994) and a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Columbia University (1981), New York City.  She received Bachelor of Arts degrees in both American Studies and Art History (1976) from the State University of New York at Albany.