For more than twenty years, Spears’s career has focused on protecting the diverse history of the United States. He has been a powerful driver in preserving this history. Spears is the Senior Director of Cultural Resources in the Government Affairs department at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). He is the resident historian and cultural resources expert of the NPCA. Spears is the only staff person ever needing rescuing from a tidal marsh by a Park Police helicopter.

Spears started his role at NPCA’s Enhancing Cultural Diversity program in May 1999. He was hired, coached, and mentored by Iantha Gantt-Wright and given responsibility for managing NPCA’s National Parks Community Partners program from 1999 to 2003. This initiative aimed to connect national parks in Boston, Washington DC, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco more closely with racially and ethnically diverse constituents. The Community Partners program created a ground-breaking youth employment program, a guide to understanding the National Park Service hiring process. It launched a volunteer service initiative in northeast Washington, D.C., which grew into a highly successful friend group. He later moved to the organization’s Government Affairs department, serving as a program associate, program manager, and Director of Cultural Resources pro tem.

Spears began working on national monuments during the Obama administration. He has led or supported successful campaigns to establish Fort Monroe National Monument (V.A.), Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument (M.D.), Charles Young Buffalo Soldier National Monument (O.H.), and most recently, the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument (A.L.). Recognizing this work, he was promoted to Cultural Resources Director in 2013 and Senior Director of Cultural Resources in 2016.

Most recently, Spears has led NPC’s efforts to establish a national park site in Mississippi in close collaboration with partners at the Trust for Historic Preservation and the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. The site will commemorate the legacy of Emmett Till, his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and the foot soldiers of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. He has also dedicated years of leadership and labor to a campaign to establish a national park devoted to a Jewish American businessman and philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald, and the schools he helped build for African American students in the segregated South.

Spears helped win the introduction and passage of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Funding Reauthorization Act of 2008, which raised the authorized funding limit for the program to $2.5 million per year. Spears also championed passing a bill through the U.S. Congress that designated the Blackwell School National Historic Site in Marfa, TX. The Blackwell School was a segregated place of learning for Marfa’s Mexican American children, and the new park site examines the complex nature of race, education, and resilience in West Texas. And, in December 2022, Spears, working closely with the Alliance of National Heritage Areas, won passage of S. 1942, the National Heritage Area Program Act. The bill establishes much-needed protections for the National Heritage Area Program (managed by the National Park Service) and capped a twelve-year-long effort to pass the legislation.

Spears managed the Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens from 2007 to 2017. The group, an offshoot from the D.C. Community Partners Program, managed the volunteer calendar for the Park Service at this site on the Anacostia River banks in northeast Washington, DC. In 2022, Alan received The Robert G. Stanton Award. Below is a quote from Alan Spears after receiving the award (NPCA, 2022):

“Receiving an award that the bears the name of Mr. Robert G. Stanton is an extraordinary honor,” said Alan Spears. “I’m so very grateful to the Clemson Institute for Parks for the award and to Mr. Stanton, who set standards of commitment and excellence in the service of our public lands that I have done my best to follow. National parks protect invaluable American history that we cannot bear to lose. In turn, our job is to protect them.”

The Robert G. Stanton Award, named in appreciation of the remarkable career of the first African-American Director of the National Park Service, recognizes sustained and innovative achievement in promoting racial or ethnic diversity in managing North America’s natural, historic, and cultural heritage.

Spear’s work and dedication to bringing awareness, designation, and access to numerous cultural landmarks support Stanton’s lifelong desire to bring diversity to the National Parks Service.