Bill Thomas first experienced Route 66 at age eight, riding in his family’s new Chevy Bel Air station wagon from central Illinois to Disneyland in 1963. Today, he serves as Chairman of the Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership and is Economic Development Director for Logan County, Illinois, helping communities leverage the Mother Road’s heritage for renewed prosperity. A graduate of Eureka College and the University of Chicago, Thomas also serves on the U.S. Route 66 Centennial Commission. 

Candacy Taylor is an award-winning author, cultural documentarian, and photographer whose work explores the intersections of travel, race, and public history. She is the author of Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, a critically acclaimed study of how African American travelers navigated segregation through a network of safe spaces. Taylor has conducted extensive fieldwork along Route 66 and across the United States, documenting sites connected to the historic Green Book.  

Lisa Ackerman is the Senior Advisor at Woodlawn Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark noted for its idyllic landscape and remarkable collection of funerary art and architecture. Previously she served as Executive Director of Columbus Citizens Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to Italian Culture and Italian American Heritage and as EVP & COO of World Monuments Fund.

Dan Marriott is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University, and Principal and founder of Paul Daniel Marriott + Associates, a landscape architecture and heritage planning consultancy located in Washington, D.C. (2004-present). He is the author of Saving Historic Roads (Wiley, 1998), the most referenced book on historic roads, and is considered a global expert on the topic. His views on heritage have been featured in the New York Times, Financial Times, NPR and C-SPAN, and the WTTW-PBS ”10 Streets That Changed America.” 

Jon Buono is Senior Regional Director for the U.S. and Canada at WMF. As an architect and preservation planner, he brings over two decades of experience across the cultural, nonprofit, and public sectors. He began his career with the National Park Service, managing a portfolio of more than 2,500 historic structures and leading work at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. Buono has directed major preservation projects for universities and nationally significant landmarks, including the United Nations Headquarters' renovation.