Dr. Anthea M. Hartig is the Elizabeth MacMillan Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. She began her tenure in 2019 as the first woman to hold the position since the museum’s opening in 1964. Hartig oversees more than 250 employees, a budget of over $40 million, and a collection that includes 1.8 million objects and more than three shelf-miles of archives. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hartig has put in place two task forces: one on collecting around the current crisis and the other a digital response team to create new content, particularly in the area of K-12 education. An award-winning public historian and cultural heritage expert, Hartig is dedicated to making the nation’s richly diverse history accessible and relevant. She is currently leading the museum in crafting a vibrant new strategic plan. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification granting women the right to vote, the museum presented new exhibitions in 2020 that are powerful contributors to the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, including “Creating Icons: How We Remember Woman Suffrage” and “Girlhood (It’s Complicated).” Hartig was previously executive director and CEO of the California Historical Society.

David M. Rubenstein is a co-founder and co-executive chairman of The Carlyle Group and a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He also is chairman of the boards of trustees of the Kennedy Center and the Council on Foreign Relations; a fellow of the Harvard Corporation; and a trustee of the following: the National Gallery of Art, the University of Chicago, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Constitution Center, the Brookings Institution, and the World Economic Forum. He is a director of Lincoln Center and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a president of the Economic Club of Washington. Previously, he served as chair of the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents and the Duke University Board of Trustees, and was co-chair of the Board of the Brookings Institution. Rubenstein is an original signatory of the Giving Pledge and a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. He is host of The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations, and author of The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians (2019) and How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers (2020).