Greg Werkheiser’s mission is connecting the lessons of our past to the leadership of our future. He believes this is achieved by protecting, conveying, and applying wisdom gleaned from history and diverse cultures to solve modern challenges and build a better society. To realize this goal, Greg has pursued professions in three fields: cultural heritage and civil rights law, augmented reality technology, and leadership education. 

Greg is co-founder and CEO of technology company ARtGlass. Over the last decade, ARtGlass has become the global leader in bringing wearable (on transparent smartglasses) augmented reality (AR) to heritage tourism. ARtGlass’s software and services help cultural sites deploy exciting and educational storytelling experiences with 3D digital content layered over visitors’ real-world view. ARtGlass was the first company to scale wearable AR experiences to millions of site visitors, and the first to deploy long-form tours in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. 

Greg is also Founding Partner of Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC, the world’s premier law firm in its field. For fourteen years CHP has helped clients protect special places, objects, and practices, including artifacts, artworks, architecture, landscapes, and traditions.  Greg and his colleagues have secured numerous landmark victories, particularly for the protection of Indigenous and Black heritage and civil rights. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic. He provided the legal strategy that led to the removal of the United States’ most visible Confederate monuments. For his work protecting history and culture, Greg was awarded the 2023 Simons Medal of Excellence, previously awarded to King Charles III.

Additionally, over two decades Greg pioneered influential new methods of leadership education. He established institutes that invented new pedagogies for preparing emerging leaders of positive social change across public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Greg’s programs have nurtured tens of thousands of students, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recognized him as one of America’s top civic educators.

Early in his career, Greg crafted speeches for prominent public officials, including President and First Lady Bill and Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to France Pamela Harriman, and U.S. Senate candidate Mark Warner.

Greg graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law and the College of William and Mary, where he was elected student body president, led statewide advocacy that defeated proposed state cuts to public higher education, and cofounded the campus chapter of the NAACP. Raised in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania, Greg’s access to college was made possible thanks, in part, to a virtual stranger who helped fund his tuition in return for Greg’s pledge to continue the cycle of generosity.

Greg’s family calls Richmond, Virginia home. His hobbies include adventurous travel, creative writing, pun-making (black belt), befriending wild crows, and tinkering with his 1941 Harley Davidson.