Leni Preston has worked in the field of historic site stewardship for over thirty years at sites that include Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia and Tudor Place Historic House Museum and Garden, Washington, DC. In 1998, she established her consulting firm, Preston & Associates, which specializes in strategic and interpretive planning and for historic sites, historical organizations, and museums, and training on governance issues, as the means to achieving organizational stability and sustainability.

In addition to her consulting work, Leni is a frequent presenter at museum conferences and she has served as an instructor for the National Preservation Institute. There, she developed the holistic approach to historic site stewardship and with an interdisciplinary team of instructors presented the seminar, "Holistic Stewardship of the Historic Site" at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 2001 and 2002. As an outgrowth of the seminar, she gained funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to develop a pilot project to survey historic sites. The project's purpose was to gather data that the profession could use to address systemic problems at historic sites, many of which are reflected in the question, "are there too many historic house museums and are you one of them?"

Ms. Preston has been an advisor to the Coolidge Foundation since 2001. She worked with the trustees and staff to write the Strategic Plan 2001-2006.