Mark Updegrove
Presidential historian and author
Mark K. Updegrove is an author, historian, journalist and television commentator. He is inaugural CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum, to be built on Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. From 2009 to 2017, he served as the director of the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, and remains a trustee of the LBJ Foundation board.
As director of the LBJ Library, Updegrove hosted the 2014 Civil Rights Summit, an historic three-day conference around the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, which included President Barack Obama and former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, as well as many civil rights luminaries. The summit garnered international news coverage, including the New York Times profile on Updegrove titled, “Chronicler of Presidents Brings Four Together.”
Later in his tenure, Updegrove hosted the Vietnam War Summit, featuring Secretary of State John Kerry, Henry Kissinger, and Ken Burns, and partnered with The Aspen Institute on “Medicare and Medicaid Turn 50,” in Washington, DC, and with PBS on “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of American Creativity,” which was hosted by President and Mrs. Obama.