Preservation Action’s Hero of the Quarter is an outstanding historic preservation advocate who furthers our mission of making historic preservation a national priority by demonstrating exemplary leadership and making significant contributions to the field of historic preservation!
We’re thrilled to share our Q1 2025 Hero of the Quarter: Marian Lou!
Marian Liou is a founder, community advocate, and attorney who specializes in supporting diverse communities through arts and culture, urban planning, and community engagement. Her cross-sector experience brings together community members and community-based organizations with artists, cultural workers, advocates and activists, planners, local government, and other partners to nurture and sustain communities that are inclusive, just, and whole.
As the founder and executive director of We Love BuHi (Buford Highway), Marian established efforts to preserve and strengthen Buford Highway’s multicultural immigrant communities in metro Atlanta through storytelling, cultural preservation, and design.
Marian then led the arts and culture program at the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), metro Atlanta’s regional planning agency. At ARC, she guided the transformation of the agency’s community engagement practices and initiated an arts and culture-led, cross-sector approach to planning by centering artists and cultural workers as co-designers of social change.
As the Director of Arts and Culture at Smart Growth America, Marian leads the organization’s broad efforts to support communities, particularly those that have been most harmed by infrastructure systems, in integrating arts and culture in equitable development and planning. In connection with this work, along with several collaborators, she is interested in nurturing a national network of emerging suburban Asian American Pacific Islander leaders to advance collective thriving through cultural organizing and power-building. Read Marian’s recent piece on Substack to learn about supporting preservation in suburban Asian American communities.
Marian is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences and has served previously on the boards of Canopy Atlanta and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta.
Marian is a graduate of Stanford University and Columbia University School of Law.
Thank you, Marian, for embodying what it means to be a Preservation Action Hero!
Voting is now open for 2024 Hero of the Year. Meet the four quarterly heroes from last year here!
Want to nominate a Preservation Action Hero of the Quarter in your community? Click the button below to complete our nomination form!