PROJECT REDESIGN - Key Persons
A. G. Newmyer III, known as "Terry," is an active investor and management consultant. He was founder of U. S. Fiduciary Advisors, a network of highly-trained individuals who serve as fiduciaries, and runs the firm's Palm Beach office. For two decades starting in the early 1970's, he was an officer of Newmyer Associates, management consultants in Washington.
Job Titles:
- Finance
- Chief Strategy and Financial Officer
- Principal at Civic Consulting Alliance
Allyson Laackman is a finance and operations professional who has served in senior leadership roles in Federal government, non-profit, political, and private sector organizations throughout her career.
She earned an A.B. in Finance and a Masters of Accountancy Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign before joining Arthur Anderson as a Certified Public Accountant. She later served as the Chief Financial Officer of a publicly-traded capital markets firm.
In 2008, Allyson joined the Obama for America 2008 Presidential Campaign and Obama-Biden Transition Team. She then worked for the Obamas in the White House, where she served for three years as the Chief Financial Officer for the Executive Office of the President. In this role, she was responsible for strategic budgeting, financial management and reporting, travel, and procurement services for the President and his senior policy advisors. Allyson also managed, for a time, the day-to-day operations of the Executive Residence, a national landmark that serves as the First Family's home, event and office space, and a museum. In 2012, she left the White House to serve as First Lady Michelle Obama's Chief of Staff on the 2012 Presidential Re-election Campaign.
Following the election, Allyson became a principal at Civic Consulting Alliance, a Chicago-based non-profit that provides pro bono consulting to the City of Chicago and Cook County. While at Civic, Allyson wrote the City's technology plan, improved I.T. and procurement processes for the County, and helped develop the City's tourism plan. She then joined the Museum of Science and Industry as Vice President of Finance and Administration/Chief Financial Officer.
In 2014 Allyson moved to Burlington, Vermont to join her husband, Don, when he became President of Champlain College. In addition to her involvement at the college, Allyson served as the Executive Director of Burlington Housing Authority, an organization that provides affordable housing to low income residents. She also served on a number of boards during her time in Vermont, and continues on the Executive Committee of the Vermont Community Foundation.
Currently residing in Chicago, Allyson is proud to have joined the team of the NCoC, serving as the Chief Strategy and Financial Officer during this exciting time of expansion of operations and social impact.
Besides her commitment to public service, Allyson is most proud her family, which in addition to her husband Don, who is currently the Chief Program Officer of Heartland Alliance includes her son, Don III, who is works for BEAM, a nonprofit that helps students develop the same joy in advanced math that led him to achieve his PhD in theoretical math; and her daughter, Emily, who is in her final year at Tuck, Dartmouth College's business school. She and Don love to travel and share their lives with two lively goldendoodles.
Job Titles:
- Head of the Public
- Head of the Public Spaces Incubator at New Public
Angelica Quicksey is a civic technologist with a background in public policy and urban planning. Her civic tech career began in 2012 as a ‘public service trainee' with the City of San Francisco. Since then, she has delivered modern public…
Angelica Quicksey is a civic technologist with a background in public policy and urban planning.
Her civic tech career began in 2012 as a ‘public service trainee' with the City of San Francisco. Since then, she has delivered modern public services as a public servant and a consultant, at the local, state, and federal levels.
Angelica has designed products and services that help San Franciscans apply for business permits, Boston city officials procure technology, unemployed Californians understand the status of their unemployment insurance applications, and countless U.S. residents access Medicare and Medicaid. She created a course on technology and innovation in government at the Harvard Kennedy School and helped plan the 2016 Black Policy Conference and 2017 Black in Design Conference. She is currently the Head of the Public Spaces Incubator at New_ Public.
She holds a BA from Claremont McKenna College and two Masters degrees from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Graduate School of Design.
Job Titles:
- Partner at the Law Firm of Pineiro Byrd PLLC
Barry Byrd is a partner at the law firm of Pineiro Byrd PLLC, in Jupiter, Florida, specializing and Board Certified in real estate law. Barry is a graduate of Stetson University and the Stetson College of Law. He has practiced for over 38 years in South Florida.
Barry has served on boards of several publicly traded companies, held leadership positions in numerous community organizations and served as President of the Northern Palm Beaches Chamber of Commerce. He currently is an officer and director of the Abacoa Partnership for Community and MyClinic, and formerly served as an officer and director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County and the Loggerhead Marinelife Center of Juno Beach.
Bob Graham was raised on a cattle and dairy farm in the deep Everglades of what is now Miami-Dade County. He was literally born into Florida politics on November 9, 1936, just a week after his father, Ernest "Cap" Graham, was elected to the Florida Senate as an anti-corruption reformist.
Senator Graham grew up driving tractors, loading manure and raising livestock on a coral-rock homestead located deep within what at the time was a hot, disease-ridden swamp. During heavy rains and hurricanes, the family's house would sometimes flood, forcing them upstairs to avoid the poisonous snakes and other animals that invaded the property.
Graham was a standout student, winning the title of Dade County's "Best All-Around Boy" from the Miami Herald and serving as president of Miami High's student body. At the University of Florida, he was involved in many different clubs and organizations and served as chancellor of the student honor court and president of his fraternity. A political science major, he also won some of the school's most prestigious awards. He was inducted into the University of Florida Hall of Fame (the most prestigious honor at UF) and was a member of the exclusive Florida Blue Key.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Graham returned to his native Miami Lakes and won a seat in the Florida House of Representatives as part of a group of young progressive Democrats sympathetic to civil rights, public education and the environment. The group was known as the Doghouse Democrats, because their liberal credentials often landed them in the doghouse with the conservative Democrats who controlled the state.
Cameron manages the media, design, and communications for the National Conference on Citizenship, the Civic Health Initiatives program, and Pandemic to Prosperity.
Prior to NCoC, he worked as the Associate Marketing Director for Service Year Alliance - an organization working to make a year of paid service a common expectation and opportunity for all young Americans. He also currently serves as the co-founder of a sustainable baseball hat company - Storied Hats - that's been featured in Forbes, ENews, and UsWeekly.
He got his start in community engagement at the Action Research Center at Illinois Wesleyan University, which serves as the hub for university and community engagement by maintaining partnerships with over 40 local non-profits. Cameron also served on the Board of Directors for the West Bloomington Revitalization Project, a grass-roots community development organization in the low-income community of West Bloomington, IL for 3 years. Focusing on small business and economic development, he developed strategies for business retention, expansion, and consumer attraction with local community leaders and business owners. For his service to the community, Cameron was awarded McLean County's 25 Community Leaders under the age of 25, as well as Illinois Wesleyan University's Distinguished Service Award for the class of 2013.
In his free time, Cameron enjoys playing acoustic guitar, biking, and performing stand-up comedy. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Chief Executive Officer at the National Conference
Cameron Hickey is the Chief Executive Officer at the National Conference on Citizenship and the Project Director for Algorithmic Transparency.
He leads an effort to develop methodologies and tools for collecting and analyzing data to increase transparency about how large digital platforms impact society.
Hickey was formerly a research fellow at the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. As a fellow, he investigated the spread of mis- and dis-information on social media through the development of tools to identify and analyze problematic content. Hickey helped lead the Shorenstein Center's Information Disorder Lab which monitored disinformation during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.
Previously, Hickey covered science and technology for the PBS NewsHour and NOVA with correspondent Miles O'Brien. Hickey has won a News and Documentary Emmy Award and a Newhouse Mirror Award for his journalism and was also a Knight Foundation Prototype Grantee for his junk news monitoring tool NewsTracker, and won a 2019 Brown Institute Magic Grant to investigate inauthentic activity on social media. His work has appeared on the PBS NewsHour, NOVA, Bill Moyers, American Experience, WNET, and The New York Times.
Daniel Robert "Bob" Graham has been a public servant for nearly four decades at the local, state and national level, and has become one of the most accomplished politicians in Florida's history. As first a state legislator, then governor and…
Job Titles:
- Co - Director
- Co - Director, New Public
Deepti co-leads New_ Public with Eli Pariser and Talia Stroud. New_ Public is a product studio for healthy digital public spaces: spaces where people can connect one another, build understanding across differences, and work towards shared goals AND are built to maximize plurality, equity and cohesion not financial returns. With the decline of participation in PTAs, neighborhood groups, local newspapers and the increasing time we are all spending online, we believe that these digital public spaces, if built right (in deep proximity with community members and with public incentive structures), are the new building blocks of our democratic society and are partnering with community leaders, designers and engineers to build them.
Previously Deepti was a Director at Facebook (now, Meta) where she focused on community building, cohesion, and incubation: she set up FB's New Product Experimentation team; created the Community Partnerships team to build products (namely, Groups), programs, and partnerships that support community leaders to take their communities to the next level, and led Internet.org across Asia.
Prior to Facebook, she has been working in the fields of social change, community organizing and leadership development for over 14 years of experience across the private, non - profit and public sectors. She founded Haiyya, India's largest community organizing platform; Escuela Nueva India, an education company that serves the urban poor and the Fellows Program at Acumen Fund to build leaders for the social enterprise sector. She started her career as a management consultant and has helped found an executive coaching and leadership development firm.
Deepti is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School and the Wharton Business School and holds a bachelors degree in Psychology. She is a TED Fellow, an Aspen Institute First Movers Fellow and Ideas Scholar, and her work has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, India Today, and in a PBS documentary, The New Recruits.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow
- Senior Fellow at the National Conference
Denice Ross is a Senior Fellow at the National Conference on Citizenship, and a Fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation. Currently, her main focus is on tech and data issues related to the 2020 Census, and she also provides strategic support for the new State Chief Data Officer Network. Denice comes to this work from New America, where she studied climate security and the power of networks to advance progress on big challenges. As a Presidential Innovation Fellow in the Obama administration, she co-founded the White House Police Data Initiative to increase transparency and accountability in the wake of Ferguson and worked with the Department of Energy on crowdsourcing private-sector data to improve community resilience in disaster-impacted areas. Earlier, she served as Director of Enterprise Information for the City of New Orleans, where she established their open data initiative, now recognized as one of the most successful in the country.
Prior to government, Denice co-directed the Data Center, a non-profit data intermediary. After Hurricane Katrina, she collaborated with Brookings to track the city's recovery through the definitive New Orleans Index. She brought a data-driven approach to numerous post-Katrina community planning initiatives and co-founded the first new childcare center after the storm. Denice holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Arizona, where she was a Goldwater Scholar, and lives in the DC area with her spouse and four children.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director
- Co - Director, New Public
Eli Pariser wants to help technology and media serve democracy.
At 23 years old, he was named Executive Director of MoveOn.org, where he led the organization's opposition to the Iraq war, raised over $120 million from small donors, and helped pioneer the practice of online citizen engagement. In 2006 he confounded Avaaz, now the world's largest citizen's organization with over 40 million members in 190 countries.
In 2011, Pariser anticipated the dangers of a hyper-personalized Internet, and introduced the "filter bubble" to the lexicon in his New York Times bestselling book of the same name. Bill Gates, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and other internet luminaries have since expressed concern about the phenomenon, and his TED talk on the topic now has over 4 million views. In 2012, he co-founded Upworthy, a mission-driven media company designed to make civically important ideas popular, with Peter Koechley. Within two years, Upworthy had over 80 million monthly visitors.
Pariser's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and WIRED; he has appeared on World News Tonight, Good Morning America, the Colbert Report, and many other shows; and he speaks internationally about democracy, media and the Internet-including once in an Austrian horse stable with the philosopher Slavoj Zizek. He has a BA from Bard College at Simon's Rock and an honorary doctorate from Dominican University, and sits on the US Programs Board of the Open Society Foundation and the Information and Democracy Commission. He is currently co-director of the Civic Signals project at the National Conference on Citizenship.
He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, filmmaker Gena Konstantinakos, and their two kids.
Gail Leftwich Kitch, a lapsed lawyer with a degree from the University of Chicago was most recently, until retiring the end of 2017, a nonprofit administrator in Washington, DC, where she served as Executive Vice President, Communications and Finance, at The Voter Participation Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit voting rights organization. She was previously Executive Director of By the People, an initiative founded by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions that utilized public television to encourage and support informed non-contentious citizen dialogue around policy issues. Prior to assuming that position, Mrs. Kitch was President of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, the national membership organization of the state affiliates of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Among other activities, she currently serves on the board of the National Conference on Citizenship in Washington, DC. She and her husband Edmund W. Kitch, a professor at the Law School at University of Virginia, live in the Charlottesville area, where she consults on civic engagement projects and is a member of the boards of the Charlottesville Opera and the Ednam Community Association.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Magazine Journalist
Garrett M. Graff is a distinguished magazine journalist and historian and has spent more than a dozen years covering politics, technology, and national security. Today, he serves as the director of the Aspen Institute's cybersecurity and technology program, and is a contributor to WIRED, Longreads, and CNN. He's written for publications from Esquire to the New York Times, and served as the editor of two of Washington's most prestigious magazines, Washingtonian and POLITICO Magazine, which he helped lead to its first National Magazine Award, the industry's highest honor.
Graff is the author of multiple books, including The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House, which examined the role of technology in the 2008 presidential race, and The Threat Matrix: The FBI At War, which traces the history of the FBI's counterterrorism efforts. His most recent book, Raven Rock, about the government's Cold War Doomsday plans, was published in May 2017.
He also is the chair of the board of the National Conference on Citizenship, a congressionally-charted civic engagement group founded by Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
As first a state legislator, then governor and finally a three-term U.S. Senator, Senator Graham has had a role in nearly every major public policy issue in modern Florida's history.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Civic Renewal Team
- Research and
- Research and Evaluation Director
As a member of the Civic Renewal Team, Jeff Coates is responsible for organizational priorities that include conducting research, performing data analysis as part of the Civic Health Index initiative, and evaluation of programs. As Director of Research and Evaluation, Jeff brings to the Civic Renewal team over ten years of social science research and on-the-ground program evaluation experience. His prior experience in disaster relief and long-term recovery has given him the knowledge of various fields including community development, civic engagement, and economic development.
He previously worked at the Knight Foundation as Strategic Initiative Associate from 2010 to 2013, where he managed grants totaling over $20 million including supporting Knight's Soul of the Community project. Jeff performed data analysis and evaluation on grants in the National and Strategic Initiatives Department and participated in multiple panels on placemaking, community development and program evaluation.
Prior to joining Knight, he worked at the Greater New Orleans Disaster Recovery Partnership, where he collaborated with more than 50 nonprofits to develop strategic plans for long-term recovery. In this position, he analyzed data on households served by the Long Term Recovery Organizations and by using spatial data; he created various GIS maps of the households served. Before that, he was a supervisor with the American Red Cross' Hurricane Recovery Program in New Orleans.
He also co-founded the Recovery Action Learning Laboratory (RALLY) Foundation, a New Orleans-based nonprofit that monitored and evaluated post-disaster programs. At Rally, Jeff developed assessment tools, formulated data collection methods, and directed the collection of primary data for the assessment and evaluation of programs implemented in the Gulf region by large-scale international organizations such as Mercy Corps, World Vision, Save the Children and the Department of Justice. He has worked in disaster recovery in Sri Lanka, where he worked with the Government of Sri Lanka in assessing food distribution to internally displaced people following the 2004 Tsunami.
Jeff was also a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Guyana. Jeff earned a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology from the University of Oklahoma and a Master of Public Health from Tulane University in New Orleans.
John moved to Melbourne, Australia at age 18 to complete an internship in Empathetic Marketing, and moved on to complete a degree in philosophy at the University of Melbourne with supplementary studies in psychology and creative writing. John began his work with NCoC as a consultant and helped organize and run the 2019 conference before being offered a full time position; which he was thrilled to accept. In his free time, John enjoys writing poetry and music.
Job Titles:
- Engagement Coordinator, Algorithmic Transparency Institute
Prior to his start at NCoC John was a member of the staff of the Stopping Cyber Suppression program at Common Cause, where he trained volunteer social media monitors to identify democracy disinformation in their online networks and beyond, as…
Joy is Director of Learning and Civic Engagement at East Tennessee State University. Joy collaborates with other campus and community units to develop and implement service-learning, community service, and civic engagement activities in addition to advising Volunteer ETSU and coordinating the implementation of the Alternative Spring Break program. She served as a grant administrator for Volunteer Tennessee in the late 1990's prior to joining East Tennessee State University in 1999.
Joy is dedicated to increasing voting on campuses, and in 2016, ETSU was named Most Improved in voter participation in the Southern Conference.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Project Manager for Algorithmic Transparency at the National Conference
- Project Manager, Algorithmic Transparency Institute
Kaitlyn Dowling is Project Manager for Algorithmic Transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship. Kaitlyn's background in digital communications includes serving as the Senior Editor in the Information Disorder Lab, housed in the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. In this role, she managed a team of researchers investigating and reporting out on political mis- and disinformation spreading on the social web leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Kaitlyn has also worked with a variety of organizations in executing their communications strategies, including Harvard Law School and as Content Director of Women Online, a boutique digital PR and marketing firm. Her clients have included Obama for America 2012, Priorities USA, HSBC, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others. Kaitlyn graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in political science from the University of New Hampshire.
Katie Harbath is a global leader at the intersection of elections, democracy, civic, and tech. She is the founder and CEO of Anchor Change - a civic tech strategies firm focused on developing solutions at the intersection of tech, policy, and business focusing on global issues related to democracy, elections, and civic engagement online. Prior to starting her own firm she was a public policy director at Facebook where, over the course of ten years, she was credited with building out and leading a 30-person global team responsible for managing elections. She also played a significant role in building another team of over 30 people that work to get governments and elected officials around the world - at the local, regional, and national levels - to use Facebook and Instagram as a way to connect and engage with constituents.
This work included managing the global elections strategy across the company by working closely with product teams to develop and deploy civic engagement and election integrity products including political ads transparency features; developing and executing policies around elections; building the teams that support the government, political, and advocacy partners; working with policymakers on shaping the regulation of elections online, and serving as a spokesperson for the company about these issues. Katie was involved in this work in major elections for every country around the globe including the United States, India, Brazil, United Kingdom, European Union, Canada, Philippines, and Mexico.
Prior to Facebook, Katie held senior strategic digital roles at the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, DCI Group and multiple campaigns. Katie is on the boards of the National Conference on Citizenship, Democracy Works and the Center for Journalism Ethics at UW Madison. She was named one of the top 50 people to watch in politics by Politico in 2014 and a Rising Star by Campaigns and Elections magazine in 2009. Katie holds a BA in journalism and political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow
- Senior Fellow at NCoC
Kyla Fullenwider is a Senior Fellow at NCoC and leads our census portfolio of work focusing on what local governments, journalists, leading digital platforms, and the public can do to prepare and participate in this crucial function of our democracy. She is also faculty at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and a Fellow in the Digital Services Collaborative at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation.
She comes to NCoC from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School where she was the in resident Entrepreneurship Fellow. She previously served as the first Chief Innovation Officer of the U.S. Census Bureau, the principal agency of the U.S. Statistical System and part of the Department of Commerce. Kyla also served as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, part of a groundbreaking initiative to modernize the U.S. federal government by bringing top executives, entrepreneurs, technologists, and other innovators to improve federal programs that serve more than 150 million Americans.
She has been Visiting Professor of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the American University of Rome, was founding faculty in the Products of Design department at the School of Visual Arts, and taught in the joint MBA/MA program at Johns Hopkins and the Maryland Institute of Art. She is a Cofounder and board member of Seattle based Imperative and has a diverse portfolio of work at the intersection of civic innovation, entrepreneurship, and social design. Previous work includes co-directing Garden in Transit for the City of New York; developing and serving as the Community Ambassador for the Pepsi Refresh Project and GOOD Magazine; and creating Etsy's first annual Values & Impact report. She has led other programs and initiatives with the City of Los Angeles, the City of Baltimore, the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, UCLA, and the Legacy Foundation as well as a number of federal agencies including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation among others.
Her work has been featured in the NY Times, LA Times, NY Magazine, and Fast Company and in case studies authored by the Harvard School of Business and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. She is also a former Fellow in Social Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She was named a Top 100 Creative Making an Impact by Origin Magazine and a Google Launchpad Mentor. Her writing has been published by Fast Company, Metropolis Magazine, Next City, and the Outpost Journal. She has spoken and lectured at a range of institutions including the Harvard Kennedy School, MIT Media Lab, the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is a native of Louisville, Kentucky and is currently based in Washington D.C.
Dr. Coor is a highly regarded Arizona statesman and esteemed president emeritus of Arizona State University (1990-2002) and the University of Vermont (1976-1989). As president of ASU, Dr. Coor elevated the university's status as a major research institution with high-quality academics and a diverse student body.
Dr. Lattie Coor founded the Center for the Future of Arizona in 2002 with the goal of creating an Arizona in which there are opportunities and quality of life for all citizens, now and in the future. Under his direction,…
Job Titles:
- Chief
- Grants Officer
- Research Analyst
Lisa Matthews is the Chief Grants Officer at NCoC. Prior to this role she serves as Program Director supporting the Board of Directors and staff in advancing the Civic Health Initiative and its Civic Health Index (CHI) program. Additionally, Lisa provides support to the Annual Conference on Citizenship and year round activity designed to advance the NCoC mission of Strengthening Civic Life in America. CHI partnership development is a significant focus of her work. Based on the belief that every person has the ability to help their community and country thrive, Lisa's outreach intends to aid those conducting research in utilizing civic health data as a tool for developing recommendations designed to engage residents in strengthening civic life with the goal of addressing issues of concern in their communities. She understands that collaboration is key to building stronger and more resilient communities. NCoC's Civic Renewal Initiative guides her efforts. As shown by her years of dedicated public service, Lisa's passion is aligned with NCoC's mission to strengthen communities across America.
Prior to coming to NCoC, Lisa served as Program Assistant at the Corporation for National and Community Service where she supported the Research and Evaluation team in advancing the mission of the Corporation by creating a system to manage the volume of evidence-based research reports posted on R&E's Evidence Exchange site. Lisa's primary responsibility with the R&E team was to apply technical requirements to create accessible PDF documents according to section 508 Compliance standards.
In addition to more than 20 years of experience as a research analyst for a nonprofit association, Lisa is a volunteer at the local, state and national levels focused on issues related to empowering individuals with disabilities, capacity building and economic development. Some of her contributions in the community include the launch of a job readiness program, co-founder of a newsletter representing families of loved ones with autism, coordinator for a peer-to-peer fitness program to empower youth with disabilities and organizing fundraising activities to benefit families.
Lisa was recently appointed by Mayor Muriel Bowser to serve as Chair of the DC Developmental Disabilities Council. Additionally, she serves on Quality Trust's Program and Policy Committee and is the DC representative to the Sibling Leadership Network (SLN). Lisa is a member of the DC Autism Society and serves on the National Black MBA Association - DC Chapter (DCBMBAA) Grants Committee.
Job Titles:
- Chief of Staff
- Chief of Staff, New Public
- Strategic Operations Expert
Meagan Mitchell (she/her) is a strategic operations expert, brand-builder, creative systems thinker, and entrepreneur who has spent the last 10 years helping bold visions come to life. Prior to joining New_ Public, Meagan was a co-director at Mobius, overseeing operations and brand in service of the mission to create a more compassionate and just future with technology. She comes from a background in creative project management, as a senior program manager at SYPartners, a transformation strategy and design consultancy based in San Francisco and New York, and as a project director at IDW, an independent creative studio in Oakland. She is a mom to two wonderful kids and lives in Oakland.
Job Titles:
- Program Manager
- Creative Project Manager
- Program Manager, Public Spaces Incubator at New Public
Meghan Welsch (she/her) is a creative project manager, community builder, and empathetic leader whose passion lies in finding unique ways to bring people together. Having spent the last 15 years working at the intersections of technology x film and storytelling x impact, Meghan brings a variety of experience from work at Exposure Labs, the impact and production company behind films Chasing Ice, Chasing Coral, The Game Changers, and The Social Dilemma; Tugg Inc., a crowdsourcing platform for theatrical movie screenings and distribution; Festival Genius, a scheduling platform for film festivals; and B-Side Entertainment, the first of its kind in-home distribution platform. Meghan currently serves as the Program Manager for the Public Spaces Incubator at New_Public, and in her free time enjoys spending time outside and connecting with friends in her home of Austin, TX.
Michael Weiser was elected chairman of the National Conference on Citizenship in January, 2008.
An investor and writer, Mr. Weiser is a frequent commentator on issues relating to finance, citizenship and community-building for The Washington Times, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, The Street.com and other media. Mr. Weiser serves as a general partner of Lowell Associates, LP, a private investment partnership.
In May, 2019, Mr. Weiser was elected a director of the Office of New Americans (ONA) of Miami-Dade County. ONA is Miami's contribution to the Cities of Citizenship organization, which works to encourage new Americans to become naturalized citizens and supports them as they make their way through the citizenship process.
A former financial journalist and communications consultant, Mr. Weiser received a Bachelors of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri. He resides in New York City and Miami, FL with his wife, Julie Greiner Weiser.
Job Titles:
- Head of Community Experiences, New Public
Paul Mendoza (he/him) takes hybrid creative teams to the top. Specializing in organizational culture, digital operations, and social media content for nonprofits and higher education, Paul's recent projects include the AIGA Design Conference, the AIGA Portfolio Festival, and TEDxUCLA. He…
Job Titles:
- Trustee of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies
- Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Knight Foundation
Paula Ellis, a former Knight Foundation officer, senior publishing executive and journalist, has long been a leader in journalism innovation and community engagement. She has decades- long experience in the for-profit, nonprofit and government sectors.
As vice president for strategic initiatives at Knight Foundation, Ellis shaped the "informed and engaged" strategy; shifted the evaluation focus and launched a series of initiatives that would become signature efforts.
Ellis began her career as a journalist at several metropolitan newspapers. In 1980, she joined Knight Ridder Inc. where she worked for 26 years rising through the ranks as an editor, publisher and vice president/operations of the Fortune 500 firm she helped sell in 2006. Known for innovation and collaboration, Ellis often was tapped to lead key strategic efforts. A respected national journalist, she also delivered operational excellence. The Sun News in Myrtle Beach was Knight-Ridder's top performing news organization for five of the seven years she led it.
Ellis is a trustee of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and a senior associate at the Kettering Foundation. She is president of Paula Ellis Strategies, LLC and is the lead author of a recently-published journalism textbook entitled "News for US: Citizen-Centered Journalism. See paulaellis.com.
Ellis earned a bachelor's degree in government and politics at the University of Maryland, where she was editor of the student daily recognized as the nation's best the year she led it. She graduated from Northwestern University with a master's degree in journalism and has been an adjunct faculty member at several universities.
Phil Duncan serves on the Falls Church, Virginia, City Council and is President of Civicatalyst Communications, a consulting firm focusing on civic participation and education. A native of East Tennessee, Phil is a graduate of Davidson College, where he edited the student newspaper. He worked at The Charlotte Observer and The Knoxville News Sentinel, then for twenty years at Congressional Quarterly as a politics reporter and editor. He served four years as Executive Director of NCoC. Prior to his 2012 election to City Council, Phil was a founding Board member of the Falls Church Education Foundation, chairman of the City Schools' Business in Education Partnership, and vice chairman of the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce, receiving its "Pillar of the Community" award in 2001. Phil is President of the Duncan Educational Fund, Inc., which assists exceptional students in Scott County, Tenn., where his grandmother was a longtime teacher. He and his wife Leslie have a daughter and a son.
Job Titles:
- Head of
- Head of Community Initiatives, New Public
Ravon Ruffin (she/they) is a strategist, educator, and community designer who focuses on public engagements with art, the internet, and archives to build sustainable ecosystems. Her work reconsiders place and space to more equitably tend to community IRL and URL, and to support artists and organizations for social good in their capacities to be in/with their communities. Ravon is the CEO and co-founder of the creative studio and arts incubator Brown Art Ink. She is primarily based in the Bronx, on unceded Siwanoy land, with her partner and two dogs, Jake and Winslow.
Job Titles:
- Community Builder and Strategist
- Partnerships Manager, New Public
- Product
Sam Liebeskind (he/him) is a community builder and strategist, with a focus on bringing new ideas to life. Before joining New Public, Sam helped create the community-chat platform Geneva and spent time at Wolff Olins and Gin Lane working on research & design projects with a variety of nonprofits, cultural organizations, and startups. Sam graduated from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied the Biological Basis of Behavior.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Project Manager, Algorithmic Transparency Institute
- Senior Project Manager at the Algorithmic Transparency Institute
Stacey Meadows is the Senior Project Manager at the Algorithmic Transparency Institute. She manages the development and delivery of current projects where the goal is to bring greater transparency to the digital platforms that impact our shared civic discourse. Stacey comes from a decade of non-profit donor relations experience supporting some of the nation's leading organizations. Most recently, she managed a communications program to scale a hyper-local initiative leveraging community-led programs to improve vaccine access and accurate information. In 2017 she received her Master of Arts in communication from Johns Hopkins University.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director
- Co - Director, New Public
- Director of the Center for Media Engagement
Talia Stroud (she/her) is the founding and current director of the Center for Media Engagement and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research on the media's role in a democracy, including her book Niche News (Oxford University Press), has received numerous prestigious awards from major communication and political science academic organizations. She earned her Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006.
Job Titles:
- Program Manager
- Program Manager of the Census Quality Reinforcement Task Force at the National Conference
- Program Manager, Census Quality Reinforcement Task Force
Taylor is the Program Manager of the Census Quality Reinforcement Task Force at the National Conference on Citizenship, where she focuses on 2020 Census issues such as data quality, and the use of census data for redistricting and federal funding. Prior to NCoC, Taylor worked at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation and co-authored the website USApportionment.org, which was the go-to resource for census watchers and journalists in the lead up to the release of the 2020 Census data for congressional apportionment. Taylor is a graduate of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University where she received her BS in International Politics.