Greg Werkheiser is a serial entrepreneur, cultural heritage and civil rights attorney, and leadership educator. He advances four strategies for shared social progress: leverage history; prepare leaders; engage directly; and secure rights.
Greg is cofounder of the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC. To strengthen bridges between humanity’s past, present, and future, CHP serves clients worldwide who seek to solve complex challenges involving the preservation of artifacts, art, architecture, landscapes, sacred places, and living traditions. Greg’s advocacy has resulted in major victories for Indigenous and Black cultural heritage and civil rights, in particular.
Greg is also cofounder and CEO of technology company ARtGlass, a global pioneer in augmented reality (AR) software. ARtGlass enables museums, historic sites, and cultural attractions to offer immersive tours to millions of visitors, easily layering digital visuals and sound over real-world places and objects, as experienced through transparent smartglasses, tablets, and phones.
Named among America’s leading civic educators by the Carnegie Foundation for Teaching, over two decades Greg founded and led five national centers fostering movements toward new approaches to leadership education aimed at solving major societal challenges. These groundbreaking institutes include the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia’s youth programs in bipartisan civic engagement (formerly the Virginia Citizenship Institute), the Phoenix Project and its programs in social entrepreneurship and civic capacity-building in severely distressed communities, the George Mason University Center for Social Innovation, the Presidio Institute and its programs in cross-sector leadership, and the ARCUS academy for emerging leaders in heritage preservation.
To advance more thoughtful public leadership Greg has stood as a candidate for the Virginia legislature, earning the endorsement of The Washington Post, and raising more financial support than any prior candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. His platform drove deeper debate in the Commonwealth about government ethics and electoral reform, civil rights, educational opportunity, child welfare, and transportation.
A student of oratory, Greg has written speeches at the White House, at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, and for candidates for national office. He is a frequent speaker on topics such as the societal implications of the exponential growth in technology, the value of heritage preservation, the evolving nature of public leadership, and the necessity of political engagement.
Greg earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law. He earned his B.A. in government from the College of William and Mary, where he served as student government president, chaired the statewide student coalition protecting investments in public higher education, and cofounded the NAACP.
Greg’s work has appeared in more than 500 media outlets, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on National Public Radio. Examples include:
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