Betsy Merritt

Betsy Merritt serves as Deputy General Counsel for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where she just celebrated her 38th anniversary on May 1, 2022. During that time, she has been passionately committed to enforcing laws protecting historic properties. She has been actively involved in hundreds of precedent-setting historic preservation cases over the years, in federal and state courts around the country. But she has an even stronger interest in using administrative advocacy to persuade agencies to make more preservation-sensitive decisions in the first place.

Locally, Betsy has lived in Cleveland Park and Woodley Park since 1982, and has been a property owner since 1989 in the historic Woodley Park Towers condominium on Devonshire Place, NW. She was actively involved in researching and supporting the successful nomination for the Woodley Park Historic District, designated in 1990. Betsy has also previously served on the board of the DC Preservation League.

She is a native of Seattle, Washington, and graduated from Mills College and Harvard Law School.