The LOEB Fellowship

Bonnie McDonald advances building reuse as a systems-level response to climate change, housing, public health and spatial injustice.

Since 2005, she has been reframing preservation from a practice centering on regulation and materials to people and social needs. Bonnie received the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation’s 2020 Mid-Career Fellowship to research how preservation can deliver greater social impact, resulting in “The Relevancy Guidebook: How We Can Transform the Future of Preservation” (2023), now shaping practice and policy conversations nationwide.

Bonnie has led initiatives including the National Preservation Partners Network and Chicago’s mayoral-appointed Monuments Project and currently serves on the Illinois Route 66 Centennial Commission and National Council on Public History Labor Task Force. She holds a master’s degree in historic preservation planning from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree in art history, summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota.