N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Secretary Linda Carlisle announces the appointment of Dr. Kevin Cherry to deputy secretary for the Cultural Resources Office of Archives and History, effective Oct. 16. He succeeds Jeffrey Crow, who retired Sept. 1, after more than 38 years with the department.
Currently Cherry serves as senior program officer at the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, D.C., and coordinates the nation’s largest competitive grant program for libraries and archives. Cherry has several North Carolina connections. He has served as a consultant for special collections for the State Library of North Carolina. He also created one of the largest cultural heritage repositories ever undertaken in North Carolina – the N.C. Exploring Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO) project. He has worked in Rowan County, at UNC-Chapel Hill, and taught at East Carolina University.
“I am thrilled to join the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources,” said Cherry, a North Carolina native. “I am a passionate advocate for protecting North Carolina’s historic assets, collaborating within the department and state government, and pursuing new ways of telling our stories and creating engagement. I consider this to be the position of a lifetime.”