Economic development strategies provide jobs and income for local communities.  Heritage sites are the most sustainable form of local economic development, because unlike factories or corporate headquarters, they are rooted in the place and cannot be moved elsewhere.

Having worked on the Weishan Heritage Valley and written several articles and papers on heritage development in Asia, Dr. Michael began working as a member of the Senior Advisory Panel of the Global Heritage Fund in 2008.  He became Chair of the Senior Advisory Panel in 2011 and then began a three-year term Executive Director in 2012, promoting heritage development in low-income areas around the world.  Dr. Michael continues to promote sustainable heritage development for the San Antonio Missions, inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2015.  Dr. Michael has taught World Heritage Management at the University of Texas at San Antonio since 2021 and served a Fulbright at EAN Universidad EAN in Bogotá, Colombia in 2022.

“Preservation is a process whereby a community determines what elements of its past it wants to bring into the future, and how” states Michael, who has provided keynote lectures on the topic of People, Places and the Preservation Process to state conferences in Missouri, Colorado, Texas, Wisconsin and the national conference in Canada.