Michael Creasey serves as Superintendent of Lowell National Historical Park, a preservation model that blends community and national values to unveil a national story of America’s Industrial Revolution and preserves an urban landscape of mills, mill housing, canal systems, and commercial properties, while stimulating economic sustainability. Lowell was the first urban cultural park in the United States and is considered exemplary in its efforts to provide leadership on issues in preservation, civic engagement and experiential learning. After 25 years with the National Park Service, Creasey has taken a sabbatical to attend Harvard University as a Loeb Fellow within the Graduate School of Design. Working throughout the United States National Park System and in others countries, Michael has had the opportunity to participate in landscape-scale conservation and heritage development strategies. He was the executive director for 10 years at the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Area in Massachusetts and Rhode Island which included 24 cities and towns along a 46-mile long river corridor. The Blackstone was an experiment in how a region could create a balanced framework for preservation and development within a working landscape. He also led planning teams in landscape preservation and heritage development along the Lower Rio Grande - Los Caminos del Rio Heritage Project; in Flagstaff, Arizona, on open space planning and urban growth strategies; in southern West Virginia addressing opportunities for heritage-based tourism development; and in New Mexico developing a statewide river assessment. International work has included work in Poland’s Babia Gora National Park, Canada’s Richelieu Valley, and in China’s Gansu Province along the Silk Road.