Closing Conversation - 250 Con

Rosie Rios is the Chair of America 250, the United States Congressional Commission planning the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. She served as the 43rd Treasurer of the United States and was the CEO of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Mint, including Fort Knox with oversight over 4,000 employees and a $5 billion budget. She also initiated and led the efforts to place a portrait of a woman on U.S. currency for the first time in over a century. Following her eight-year tenure, she was appointed as a Visiting Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University with a focus on Millennials and Post-Millennials and resumed her role as CEO of Red River Associates, an investment management consulting firm and a co-host of several reality series focused on pre-IPO investments. Rosie served twice on the Treasury/Federal Reserve Transition Teams on behalf of President Barack Obama at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and again during the pandemic economy of 2020 on behalf of President Biden. 

Rosie’s entire career has focused on real estate finance, economic development, and urban revitalization in both the public and private sectors. Prior to her presidential appointment in Treasury, she was Managing Director of Investments for MacFarlane Partners, a $22 billion real estate investment management firm based in San Francisco. She is a graduate of Harvard University and was selected as the first Latina in Harvard’s 388-year history to have a portrait commissioned in her honor. The portrait was unveiled in Winthrop House in 2019. She currently serves on the board of American Family Insurance, Ripple Labs, Inc., and Fidelity Charitable Trust and was previously a board member for the Alameda County Employees Retirement Association (ACERA) prior to her time in the Obama Administration. Her personal passion includes serving as Founder and CEO of EMPOWERMENT 2026, an initiative that facilitates the physical recognition of historical American women in classrooms and public spaces across the country.  Rosie is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was honored as one of USA Today’s Women of the Century. 

John Dichtl became AASLH President & CEO in 2015. Prior to that he was the executive director of the National Council on Public History (NCPH) for nine years, and worked for the Organization of American Historians for fourteen years as deputy director and in several other roles. John received his MA and PhD in early American history from Indiana University, and from 2006 to 2015 was an adjunct faculty member of the history department at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Before graduate school he worked for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He is a 2004 graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration (now History Leadership Institute), a program that stems from an AASLH partnership with the Indiana Historical Society and other organizations. John helped to found the History Relevance Campaign, the International Federation for Public History, and is active in the National Coalition for History.