Nathaniel Guest

Nathaniel C. Guest is an attorney and preservation advocate. Guest is the founding director of the Keystone Marker Trust, a statewide nonprofit dedicated to enhancing community gateways through Pennsylvania’s iconic roadside markers. In 2008, he founded the Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance to facilitate reuse of the former Pennhurst State School, an International Site of Conscience.

A steam locomotive engineer, Guest founded the Colebrookdale Railroad Preservation Trust to restore a Civil War-era rail line in southeastern Pennsylvania. He has served as an intern with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s legal department; director of the Cornell Tradition, a multimillion-dollar fellowship recognizing volunteer service; Tompkins County, New York, Human Rights Commissioner; and an elected representative on the Cornell Employee Assembly. He is a director for Preservation Pennsylvania and the Schuylkill River National and State Heritage Area and serves as the preservation programs director and National Heritage Grants chairman for the National Railway Historical Society, the nation’s largest railway preservation organization.

Guest lectures on topics pertinent to preservation, including law, economics, advocacy, fundraising, and ethics. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1994 (magna cum laude), his J.D. from Temple University in 2010 (cum laude), and his M.A. in historic preservation planning from Cornell AAP in 2012.