Executive Director Bob Ashley joined Preservation Durham as its executive director in April, 2011.

Ashley, a Durham resident, retired in January, 2011, after six years as editor of The Herald-Sun. Prior to joining The Herald-Sun, he edited newspapers in Owensboro, Ky., and in State College, Pa. He previously held management positions at The Charlotte Observer and at The Raleigh Times. He is a 1970 graduate of Duke University, where he was a history major and worked on The Chronicle.

Board of Directors President Paul N. Yale, Jr. announced the appointment and expressed his excitement with the role that Ashley will play in the organization. “Bob is deeply committed to preservation and to Durham and will bring great energy and innovation to Preservation Durham.”

“I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity to help lead an organization that has worked with great success since 1974 to ensure the preservation of many of Durham’s rich inventory of historically significant properties,” Ashley said. “This is a community that has recognized the social, as well as economic, advantages of adapting a unique historic built environment to be a vital part of a modern city.

“But it’s important that we not be lulled into thinking that such high-impact successes as West Village, Golden Belt and the American Tobacco Historic District mean that the work of preservation here is done,” he added. As a reminder, Preservation Durham recently released its second annual “Places in Peril” list, which identifies historic properties deemed at risk of being lost to neglect.

Ashley noted that he had worked closely with preservation groups in each city where he was editor, and he and his wife, Patricia Ashley, received an “Excellence in Historic Preservation, Private Residence” award from the Centre County Historical Society in 1988 for their work restoring an early-20th-century home in State College.

He and Pat have a son, Andrew, who will graduate in May from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Assistant Director Sean Stucker completed his Master of Historic Preservation degree from the University of Georgia in Athens in August of 2009, and he also holds a BA in English Literature and Composition from the University of Colorado at Boulder (2001).

In late 2009, Sean received a fellowship appointment from the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) to work in the Cultural Resource Management office at Fort Bragg, where he was responsible for managing the Historic Building Monitoring program which keeps track of the material conditions of Fort Bragg’s nearly 400 historic buildings and structures. Prior to returning to school in 2007, Sean worked in construction and property management for nearly 10 years in Colorado, South Carolina and Georgia.

Documentation of African American Historic Sites Coordinator April Johnson graduated from the University of Virginia in 2009 with a Master's Degree in Urban and Environmental Planning and a Master's Certificate in Historic Preservation. She has pursued a career in preservation because of its restorative value in community and economic development. She is excited about the opportunity to help revitalize neighborhoods and downtowns while maintaining a unique aesthetic quality. Her role with Preservation Durham is to identify and document African American historic sites, structures, and buildings in Durham that are not well known or formally identified. Eventually an inventory of sites can help the community decide how to interpret each site and celebrate Durham's diversity. April grew up in Goldsboro, NC and completed undergraduate studies in Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2001.