National Trust names Brent Leggs as next president and CEO

Brent Leggs is poised to take over the National Trust for Historic Preservation at a moment when the nonprofit is acting less like a quiet steward of old buildings and more like a force in national culture and land-use fights. The leadership change comes after the organization challenged White House ballroom construction and joined a separate legal push over the Kennedy Center, putting preservation squarely into the center of America’s political divides.

Leggs currently leads the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and serves as strategic advisor to the CEO. The trust says the Action Fund, launched in November 2017, is its largest preservation campaign ever undertaken on behalf of African American historic places, with a focus on sites tied to Black activism, achievement and resilience. The National Trust board unanimously elected Leggs as the next president and CEO in March 2026, according to Preservation Texas, though he is still listed in the organization’s executive leadership materials in his current Action Fund role.

The National Trust itself has deep institutional roots. Chartered by Congress in 1949 to facilitate public participation in preserving sites of national significance, it has been led since January 16, 2024, by Carol Quillen, its 10th president and chief executive. Her tenure has overlapped with a sharper, more public legal strategy that has drawn the trust into disputes with the Trump administration over some of the country’s most visible cultural landmarks.

That strategy escalated on December 12, 2025, when the National Trust filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop White House ballroom construction. The trust argued that the work was unlawful and should pause until legally required review processes, including public comment, were completed. Reporting on the dispute described the project as a proposed $400 million ballroom and said the administration pressed ahead despite growing legal and political resistance.

Then, on March 23, 2026, the National Trust joined a coalition of eight cultural heritage and architectural organizations in another lawsuit over the Kennedy Center. That case sought historic-preservation review and congressional authorization before changes to the performing arts complex in Washington, D.C. Taken together, the suits suggest the National Trust is willing to test the boundaries of preservation law when federal projects threaten places it sees as nationally significant.

The organization marked its 75th anniversary in 2025 and said its anniversary gala raised $1.8 million. It also has tied its 2026 America’s 250th anniversary campaign to expanded funding for historically Black churches, underscoring how Leggs’s work has helped broaden preservation beyond architecture alone to the civic institutions that have long anchored community life.