Christine Madrid French, an advocate for the study and preservation of American modern buildings, was born and raised in Los Angeles. She graduated from the University of Utah in Architectural Studies in 1992 and later moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the National Park Service as an historian. After four years documenting historic resources in the parks of the mid-Atlantic and western states, she left government service to earn her master’s degree in Architectural History from the University of Virginia. She is also a writer and photographer, with her work appearing in U.S. News & World Report, Virginia Living, Modernism Magazine, and Landscape Architecture. In 2000, Ms. French co-founded the Recent Past Preservation Network and served as the president for nine years. She is currently the Director of the Modernism + Recent Past Initiative with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and also serves on the 20th-Century Heritage Committee for the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).