Christine Madrid French is San Francisco Heritage’s Director of Advocacy, Programs, & Communications. She works closely with the President & CEO, Communications & Programs Manager, Museum and Tour Manager, and the Projects & Policy Committee of our Board of Directors to coordinate preservation goals over different program areas, including advocacy, research, education, communications, and outreach.
Christine is a historian and advocate for the study and preservation of American architecture. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and is a graduate of the University of Utah and the University of Virginia (MArH). She has worked as an historian for the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., directed the Modern + Recent Past Program at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in San Francisco, and most recently served as Director of Development & Marketing at the California Preservation Foundation. At the University of Florida, Christine taught courses at the College of Design, Construction and Planning and co-directed the first statewide survey “Mid-Century Modern Architecture in Florida (1945-75),” which was awarded a Documentation Award for Excellence by Docomomo-US. Over her career, she has raised more than $2.5 million for non-profit causes in art and architecture. Her book The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock, focusing on the real-world histories of cinematic structures, was just released by the University of Virginia Press and an excerpt of the Villain’s Lair chapter is featured in the October 2022 issue of Vanity Fair.