As we spent time scouring the city for GenX voices bringing us emerging ideas, Marieke Van Damme’s name kept popping up as a change maker. The irony is that she is the Director of a the Cambridge Historical Society, headquartered on fabled Brattle Street, but a few houses away from the poet Henry Longfellow’s house where our first President, George Washington, camped out during the revolution.

The Hooper-Lee-Nichols House, under her stewardship, where we met for this interview, is a place one might think would be draped in old Cambridge. Aesthetically speaking, it is – I swear I see an old cat up in the top window when I pass by on my way into the Square – but for her, the historic homes are only the launch pad. Van Damme is stirring things up by bringing this vintage society into modernity with annual themes that have sparked conversations around the housing crisis, the changing face and development in Harvard Square, and the emergence of Kendall as the poster child for change, all with a historical context of what it means for city-building and culture. She understands the power of competing for dollars and attention in a digital world, and we discuss new models of funding that will be required to give cities the pillars we have long understood create vibrancy and civil connection.