Preservation Detroit, the city’s largest historic preservation organization, has a new executive director, Claire Nowak-Boyd.
Nowak-Boyd will build the organization’s administrative capacity, strengthen its partnerships in the community, and develop philanthropic support, the organization said in a news release.
In her hometown of St. Louis, Nowak-Boyd was a founding member of the North Side Community Benefits Alliance, where she organized with neighbors to preserve the built and social fabric of the threatened Near North Side.
She served as co-chair of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home Committee of the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group, working to stabilize an 1860s building listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Nowak-Boyd was also a volunteer with the Building Arts Foundation and a regular voice at Preservation Review Board hearings. For two years, she hosted Drinks & Mortar, a casual networking event for preservationists and architects.
Since moving to Detroit four years ago, Nowak-Boyd has been active and outspoken in favor of alternatives to the widening of I-94 as part of the MOSES Transportation Task Force. She recently graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of arts urban studies from Wayne State University.
“I’m interested in the ways that the preservation of historic buildings can dovetail with keeping longtime residents and businesses in place as Detroit rebuilds,” Nowak-Boyd said.
