CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE DEMOCRACY - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Operations
Mike Tedesco has spent his career in local economic development and public administration. Hehas administered approximately $500 million in local public/private partnerships throughout the nation. Prior to becoming Vice President ofOperations for CCD, he spent six years with the Spokane Tribe of Indians, three of which as the tribe's chief administrator, whereby he accomplished everything from winning aPresidential Promise Zone designation, to successfully influencing state andfederal legislation, to constructing a $60 million gaming facility. As a local civic executive, he has led the revitalization efforts of two former Rustbelt cities,managed local special districts, and set an isolated Colorado mountain town onthe path toward becoming a full-fledged resort community. Along the way he also managed to publish a book on urban planning and economic development that is routinely utilized in college classrooms.
Job Titles:
- Director, Special Projects
- Founder and CEO of the Institute for Youth
Paul is the Founder and CEO of the Institute for Youth in Policy, a nonpartisan NGO building the world's largest network of civic change-makers. Alongside running the Institute, he has been in senior leadership at multiple national political campaigns, is Founding Partner of a design agency, and is majoring in Organizational Development, Computer Science, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University as a Crescere Aude Scholar.
Paul Kramer is a passionate advocate for policy and civic engagement, having made significant strides in these fields from a young age. His early career included prominent roles in a Presidential campaign and a local Congressional campaign, where he quickly rose from intern to senior-level positions. His dedication to youth engagement saw him launch the Institute for Youth in Policy as CEO, which became a nonpartisan platform for young minds to voice opinions and engage in thoughtful discourse. Under his leadership, the Institute produced thousands of pages of policy content, trained over 500 fellows, and received over 8 million site views.
Paul's efforts with the Institute have led to partnerships with prestigious organizations like the College Board and universities such as Harvard and Stanford. Currently, Paul serves as the Director of Special Projects and Analytics at the Center for Collaborative Democracy. Here, he uses his experience to guide major projects and initiatives, contributing significantly to the Center's work from angles of policy, design, and computer science. His unique perspective, fueled by his academic pursuits in Organizational Development and Data Science at Vanderbilt University, continues to drive his contributions to the Center and beyond.
Richard has worked at the intersection of sustainable business, public policy and advocacy for thirty-five plus years. Over the years, he has helped establish several influential domestic and international organizations that have improved the quality of life in America and across the world. His experience involves coordinating United Nations programs, co-owning a solar energy firm, consulting to private companies on sustainable development issues, teaching at several colleges, and working in a leadership role in the public sector as well as with several national NGO's on sustainable economy and workplace, voting rights, democracy, clean energy and environmental issues. His career has spanned the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. He earned a Master's in Public Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Raised outside of Washington, D.C, Richard has resided in Denver for 22 years.
Sol Erdman founded the Center for Collaborative Democracy to develop innovative tools for reaching constructive agreements on long-festering political controversies. CCD is currently focused on launching the Grand Bargain Project, which will bring together the men and women whom the American people would most trust to solve our country's economic problems. The project's goals are to develop a combination of economic reforms that will restore our country's fiscal health and promote broad prosperity, and then win wide public support for the plan.
Erdman's expertise on resolving ideological conflict emerged at midlife, when he attended the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law school and did cutting edge research with two of the program's founders. Erdman's articles on how to bridge seemingly irreconcilable differences have appeared in Barrons, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the National Civic Review, State Government News, Roll Call and the Los Angeles Times.
Erdman's first career was at Oppenheimer & Company, a New York investment firm where he rose to senior vice president and head of options arbitrage. He has a BA in theoretical mathematics from Cornell and an MBA from Harvard.
Travis has spent the last three decades working at the intersection of sustainability and finance as a business builder, innovative operator and impact investor in both for-profit and nonprofit early stage business and social enterprise. His belief in business and transformative projects as a catalyst for positive change has led to involvement in over a dozen startups, with a focus on climate, cleantech and regenerative ag to address numerous societal issues.