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Mission and Purpose
Heritage Business International helps cultural heritage organizations increase their value, sustainability, and impact in a global marketplace. We help your organization become stronger by providing:
- capacity building to make your organization more efficient, sustainable, and profitable;
- business education and training for heritage professionals;
- industry data, market intelligence, strategic analyses, economic contexts, and forward-looking forecasts to allow for quantitative strategic decision making;
- economic analyses for organizational and project feasibility; and
- litigation support for attorneys.
Our premise is simple: the stronger your business, the greater your chance of achieving your heritage goals. We bring heritage-specific business expertise to
- compliance consulting (CRM) firms,
- preservation non-profits,
- tourism companies,
- architectural firms,
- heritage attractions,
- educational institutions,
- heritage media companies, and
- museums/archives/repositories.
Increase your organization’s value, sustainability, and heritage impact!
How we are Different
- We are a L3C social enterprise venture with a mission to strengthen heritage organizations, not to maximize our profits.
- We have M.B.A. and heritage degrees. We understand your heritage goals and have the business tools to help you reach them. We also have years of experience as executives and managers for heritage organizations.
- Discounts! We tie our rates to your revenue so even small organizations can benefit from our services.
- Confidentiality. We won’t work with you without a non-disclosure agreement and don’t disclose the names of our clients without their permission.
- We only work for organizations in the heritage industry. We are heritage business consultants not generic business consultants who will work for anyone.
- We don’t take every client. We only work for organizations that are truly committed to sustained business change and improvement. We work hard for our clients and want to make sure our efforts are invested in organizations where our partnership will result in a larger and more sustainable heritage impact.
Team
Christopher holds both a Ph.D. in anthropology and an M.B.A. in business administration. He is a DMI Certified Digital Marketing Professional and AMA Professional Certified Marketer-Digital Marketing. He has held senior and executive positions, including Chief Executive Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Vice President, Regional Manager, and Office Director, for leading heritage and environmental firms. Like many, though, his start in the heritage industry was as a laboratory and field technician.
Christopher believes that professional service is an important part of practice. He has served his profession as the President of the American Cultural Resources Association, President of the Register of Professional Archaeologists, Treasurer of the Society for American Archaeology, Editor of Advances in Archaeological Practice: A Journal of the Society for American Archaeology, and Treasurer of Archaeology Southwest. Since he returned to school to complete his M.B.A., his passion has been bringing better business practices to the heritage industry.
Christopher D. Dore
Business, Law, & Policy ConsultantLourdes is currently finishing her bachelor's degree in archeology at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán in Mexico along with her thesis about the archeology of the body among the Maya culture. She is a native Spanish speaker with more than 10 years of continuous English learning. Her interests are gender and sexuality in prehispanic cultures, and she is looking forward to a master's degree in the upcoming years.
Lourdes Erguera
Business Research AssistantDr. John R. Welch provides field and archival research and expert testifying witness services in archaeology, Native American land use, and cultural resource/heritage management. Dr. Welch’s trial, evidence preparation, and consultation experience centers on compliance with federal cultural resource protection statutes, Native American boarding schools, and the identification, assessment, and valuation of damage resulting from violations of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act and related laws. Dr. Welch served for more than a decade as the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the White Mountain Apache and is a professor of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Dr. Welch’s current research, outreach, and expert work is based in Tucson, Arizona.
John R. Welch
Law & Policy ConsultantKatie Portman is a Registered Professional Archaeologist and a recent graduate of the University of Arizona with a Master's degree in Anthropology. She is a trained dendrochronologist with a specialization in geospatial analysis, and she has field experience in Canada, Ireland, Greece, and across the southwestern U.S. Her research interests include human-environment interaction, Indigenous histories, and heritage conservation. Katie lives in Tucson with her fiancé and a pit bull mix named Sandy.
Katie Portman
Law & Policy Research AssociateOrganization
Heritage Business International is organized as an L3C corporation in Vermont, United States. An L3C is a low-profit, social enterprise venture that has a stated goal of performing a socially beneficial purpose, not maximizing profits.
Definition of the Heritage Industry
The heritage industry is comprised of a variety of for-profit, non-profit, and low-profit organizations in the following sectors.
- Compliance Services. Consulting services done by cultural resource management firms for environmental compliance.
- Non-compliance Services. Services, consultation, and activities not specifically tied to complying with environmental and cultural resource laws.
- Tourism. Travel and travel-related tourism to visit heritage resources, areas, and attractions (but not the operation of museums and attractions).
- Media. Magazines, television, software, and books focused on heritage and heritage content.
- Research & Education. Organizations focused on conducting heritage research and professional training for students and professionals.
- Attractions. The management and operation of specific heritage attractions including museums (but not the travel/tourism to an attraction).
- Design & Construction. Architectural design and construction focused specifically on the renovation and restoration of heritage resources.
- Manufacturing. The production of products such as reproduction architectural elements, reproduction artifacts, plaques, toys, etc.
Employment
Do you have an M.B.A., a master’s degree in a heritage discipline, and heritage work experience? If you do, we certainly want to hear from you! We sometimes have full-time positions available and often have part-time and project-based work for which we need help. Even if you are not currently available or aren’t looking for employment, we would still love to know who you are. Please contact us.