A North Huntingdon native who was the national archivist until she was removed by President Donald Trump in February has found a new role leading an initiative that will explore lessons in leadership from American presidents.

Colleen Shogan, who led the National Archives and Records Administration from May 2023 until she was removed Feb. 7, is head of In Pursuit, which intends to publish 70 short essays that will look back into American history for relevant and accessible lessons.

Shogan, 50, was the first woman to hold the position of national archivist.

“l loved being the archivist of the United States,” said the Norwin High School graduate. She spoke with TribLive on Friday in Pittsburgh.

Everything that happens in the government, domestically and internationally, generates records. The National Archives is their final landing spot.

Among those are the nation’s precious founding documents, including the original Constitution and Declaration of Independence. The collection also includes military personnel files that allow veterans to get benefits, employment and tax records, maps, drawings, photographs, electronic records and more.

The National Archives piqued Trump’s ire after it alerted the Department of Justice about potential problems with Trump’s handling of classified documents in early 2022. That set in motion an investigation that led to a dramatic FBI search of Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, which culminated in him becoming the first former president charged with federal crimes.

Shogan wasn’t in the post at that time. David Ferriero, who had been appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, announced in January 2022 that he’d be retiring effective that April.

Shogan was nominated by President Joe Biden in August 2022, just days before the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. But she was not confirmed until May of the following year, after a monthslong partisan battle over the agency’s role in the documents investigation.

The national archivist can be removed from office by the president, who can choose a successor who is then confirmed by the Senate, so Trump’s decision to remove Shogan is not unusual.

Trump announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would serve as the acting archivist, while former Nixon Foundation President Jim Byron, on leave from the foundation, is handling the agency’s day-to-day business as a senior adviser.

New challenge for Shogan

Having Shogan lead In Pursuit “was like the perfect fit,” said John Bridgeland, CEO and founder of More Perfect, the umbrella organization for In Pursuit. He said he knew Shogan when she was the national archivist and he approached her about leading the initiative.

Shogan took the challenge fresh off her dismissal from the National Archives. She said she had planned to enjoy a few months off work but limited that to a weeklong beach vacation. She started working for More Perfect in March and worked from March until September putting together the framework for In Pursuit.

“She was smart and effective. She was both a historian and an academic. She was very action-oriented,” said Bridgeland, whose More Perfect is a bipartisan alliance of 37 presidential centers, the National Archives Foundation and more than 100 other organizations.

Bridgeland was the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council in President George W. Bush’s first term in the early 2000s.

Shogan, who holds a doctorate in American Politics from Yale University, joined More Perfect as a senior adviser and was announced as the CEO of In Pursuit on Sept. 17, Constitution Day.

“Quite frankly, I was concerned, even when I was the archivist, that as we were planning for the 250th anniversary of the United States, there hadn’t been an ambitious history-based civics project that presented itself,” Shogan said. “This was the opportunity to build it. That was basically a hole that needed to be filled.”

Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association based in Washington, D.C., said Shogan demonstrated a commitment to ensuring the public’s ability to access and learn from the records that document our shared history and to addressing the challenges of archival work in a digital age.

Forty-three of the 45 presidents are to be the subject of essays. Shogan said. Biden will not be the focus of an essay because his term is too recent, and Trump is in office.

“Each essay should be about a lesson that we can learn from this person’s leadership. Just one lesson that you can distill down to one sentence that is relevant and accessible to all Americans … that we can learn from this person’s public leadership,” Shogan said.

The essays will be released on Substack, an online publishing platform, and will be free, Shogan said. More information about who the authors wrote about can be found at inpursuit.org.

A second phase of the project continues into 2027, with offerings for students in kindergarten through 12th grade and curriculum for college classes.

“(In Pursuit) will share values, ideas and norms that can inform a more perfect union,” Bridgeland said.

‘No indication’ of change to come

Before serving as national archivist, Shogan had been working for more than 10 years at the Library of Congress as an assistant deputy librarian for collections and services. She also was the deputy director of the Congressional Research Service.

She had been director of the David M. Rubenstein Center for White House History and was senior vice president of the White House Historical Association.

Nine months removed from the post, Shogan said she remains in the dark about the reasoning. She said she knows no more than the short social media notice the night she was dismissed from her position. It was the first time she heard she was being dismissed.

In Trump’s first term, Shogan said, she had a good relationship with first lady Melania Trump.

“I had been in discussions with her office on how we might work together as she became first lady again,” Shogan said. “Those conversations were going quite well.

“There was no indication there would be any change in leadership. I certainly thought if he was going to replace me, that … perhaps there would be a conversation about it before it happened,” to see if they could work together.

“There was none of that, so it was surprising,” Shogan said.

She said the archives will continue to be challenged by the amount of digital information being generated every day.

“The biggest single problem facing the National Archives is how to manage the deluge of digital records that will be coming to the National Archives’ way in the future,” Shogan said.

“We’re not talking just millions of digital records, but in the billions and then eventually in the trillions.”

Even though the National Archives has a catalog in which it provides access to more than 400 million digitized records, “it is a mere drop in the bucket” of what lies ahead. The archives has to determine how it is going to provide access to all of the digitized records that will be coming its way, Shogan said.

“There is no system in place, no technology system in place … to enable the transfer of those records from federal agencies … to create a space for archivists to work with the records and make sense of them,” Shogan said.

She said she was working on a plan to build a complex system to digitize those records. It would have taken several years and cost between $100 million and $150 million.

“That is what I was starting to get my head around,” Shogan said. “That is what really needs to be done.”

The Associated Press contributed.

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