Common Good Speaker and Panelist Biographies

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Keynote
President William J. Clinton

Morning Address
Hon. Kendrick B. Meek (D-FL), 17th Congressional District

Plenary Panel
Introduction
John Halpin, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Moderator
E.J. Dionne, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution; Professor, Georgetown University; Columnist, The Washington Post

Panelists
Anna Burger, Secretary-Treasurer, Service Employees International Union, CLC
Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson, North American President, World Council of Churches
Neal Katyal, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center and lead counsel in the US Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Michael Kazin, Professor of History, Georgetown University and author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan
Hon. Thomas Pérez, Councilmember, Montgomery County, Maryland and Associate Professor of Law, University of Maryland
Bruce Reed, President, Democratic Leadership Council
Gayle Smith, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Additonal Special Remarks

John D. Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress
Dr. John J. DeGioia, President, Georgetown University
Melody C. Barnes, Executive Vice President for Policy, Center for American Progress

President William Jefferson Clinton

William Jefferson Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. As a delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, he met President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. The encounter led him to enter a life of public service. Clinton graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and shortly thereafter entered politics in Arkansas.

He was defeated in his campaign for Congress in Arkansas's Third District in 1974. The next year he married Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. In 1980, Chelsea, their only child, was born. Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until his 1992 bid for the Presidency of the United States.

Elected President of the United States in 1992, and again in 1996, President Clinton was the first Democratic president to be awarded a second term in six decades. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. President Clinton’s core values of building community, creating opportunity, and demanding responsibility resulted in unprecedented progress for America, including moving the nation from record deficits to record surpluses; the creation of over 22 million jobs—more than any other administration; low levels of unemployment, poverty and crime; and the highest homeownership and college enrollment rates in history. His accomplishments as president include increasing investment in education, providing tax relief for working families, helping millions of Americans move from welfare to work, expanding access to technology, encouraging investment in underserved communities, protecting the environment, countering the threat of terrorism and promoting peace and strengthening democracy around the world. His Administration’s economic policies fostered the largest peacetime economic expansion in history. President Clinton previously served as the Governor of Arkansas, chairman of the National Governors’ Association and Attorney General of Arkansas. As former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, he is one of the original architects and leading advocates of the Third Way movement.

The Clinton Foundation and its Work

After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the William J. Clinton Foundation with the mission to strengthen the capacity of people in the United States and throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence. To achieve this, the Clinton Foundation is focused on four critical areas: health security, with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS; economic empowerment; leadership development and citizen service; and racial, ethnic and religious reconciliation. The Clinton Presidential Center, located in Little Rock, Arkansas, is comprised of the Library, the archives, Clinton Foundation offices and the Clinton School of Public Service.

Following the 2002 Barcelona AIDS Conference, President Clinton began the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) to assist countries in implementing large-scale, integrated, care, treatment and prevention programs that will turn the tide on the epidemic. It partners with countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia to develop operational business plans to scale-up care and treatment. CHAI works with individual governments and provides them with technical assistance, human and financial resources, and know-how from the sharing of the best practices across projects. The ultimate objective in each of these countries is to scale up public health systems to ensure broad access to high-quality care and treatment. The Initiative’s long-term goal is to develop replicable models for the scale-up of integrated programs in resource-poor settings. CHAI is currently bringing life-saving care and treatment to over a quarter of a million people around the world.

In September 2005, President Clinton hosted the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). CGI is a non-partisan catalyst for action, bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges. The inaugural meeting brought together 35 current and 10 former heads of state along with hundreds of other leaders from governments, the business community, and NGOs who contributed to innovative solutions to alleviate poverty, promote effective governance, reconcile religious conflicts, and protect the environment. Nearly 300 commitments were made to improve the lives of people living on 6 continents, with private corporations and non-profit organizations pledging almost 70% of all commitments, which are valued in excess of $2.5 billion.

In the United States, President Clinton also works through the Clinton Foundation Urban Enterprise Initiative to help small businesses acquire the tools they need to compete in the ever-changing urban marketplace. He also works along with the American Heart Association on the Alliance for a Healthier Generation to combat childhood obesity and reverse this deadly trend facing American children.

Following Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, President Clinton and former President Bush led a nationwide fundraising effort and established the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to assist survivors in the rebuilding effort. This campaign was the second collaboration for the former presidents, the first being their work on relief and recovery following the Indian Ocean tsunami. President Clinton also serves as Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, as appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2005.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution; Professor, Georgetown University; Columnist, The Washington Post

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. excels in defining for readers the strengths and weaknesses of competing political philosophies. His analysis of American politics and trends of public sentiment is recognized as among the best in the business. He believes America is about to enter a new progressive era, a period of reform in government and renewed civic activism in our communities.

Dionne spent fourteen years with the New York Times, reporting on state and local government, national politics, and from around the world, including stints in Paris, Rome, and Beirut. The Los Angeles Times praised his coverage of the Vatican as the best in two decades.

In 1990, Dionne joined the Washington Post as a reporter, covering national politics. His best-selling book, Why Americans Hate Politics (Simon & Schuster), was published in 1991. The book, which Newsday called “a classic in American political history,” won the Los Angeles Times book prize, and was a National Book Award nominee.

Dionne began his op-ed column for the Post in 1993, and it is syndicated to more than ninety other newspapers. He has been a regular commentator on politics on television and radio. His second book, They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (Simon & Schuster), was published in February 1996. Dionne’s third book Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge (Simon & Schuster) was published May 2004.

He is the editor of Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (Brookings Press, 1998), and What's God Got to Do with the American Experiment (Brookings Press, 2000), co-edited with John DiIulio, Jr. Dionne co-edited Bush v. Gore (Brookings Press, 2000) with William Kristol, Sacred Places, Civic Purposes: Should Government Help Faith-Based Charity? with Ming Hsu Chen (Brookings Press, 2001), and United We Serve: National Service and the Future of Citizenship with Kayla Meltzer Drogosz and Robert E. Litan (Brookings Press 2003). He is the series co-editor to the Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion and Public Life, which includes the recent publication: One Electorate Under God?: A Dialogue on Religion and American Politics (Brookings Press, 2004). He is a regular political analyst on National Public Radio.

Dionne grew up in Fall River, Mass. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Harvard University in 1973 and received his doctorate from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 1994-95, he was a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. In May 1996, Dionne joined the Brookings Institution as a senior fellow in the Governance Studies Program, then known as Governmental Studies. Dionne began teaching at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute as University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture in the fall of 2003.

He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Mary and their three children, James, Julia and Margot.

Anna Burger, International Secretary-Treasurer, SEIU CLC

Already a top-ranking officer at the nation's largest and fastest growing union, Anna Burger was hailed by Gannett as arguably “the most influential woman in the U.S. labor movement” following her recent election as chair of the Change to Win Coalition, an innovative new alliance of major unions representing six million workers devoted to creating large scale and joint strategic organizing campaigns.

Since Burger’s election as Secretary-Treasurer of the Service Employees International Union in 2001, nearly half a million workers have joined with the 1.8 million-member SEIU. Focused on uniting workers in three sectors to improve their lives and the services they provide, SEIU is the largest health care union, including hospitals, nursing homes, and home care; the largest property services union, including building cleaning and security; and the second largest public employee union.

A longtime political strategist and campaign coordinator, Burger directs SEIU’s political and field operations, including its unprecedented 2004 election program—the largest mobilization by any single organization in the history of U.S. politics. During this cycle, SEIU raised more member dollars than any other union, making SEIU’s PAC the largest in the labor movement.

She also played a major role in bringing about the historic 1998 merger with District 1199 New York—an affiliation that solidified SEIU as the leading union of health care workers in North America. Today, SEIU represents nearly 900,000 nurses, doctors, and other caregivers.

In a dramatic departure from past practice in the labor movement, SEIU now spends half its annual budget to help more workers unite in the union, gain a voice on the job and improve our communities. By training thousands of member volunteers to help organize movement-oriented drives such as Justice for Janitors, building service workers nationwide are winning health care coverage, better pay and dignity in the workplace. And under SEIU’s banner of Invisible No More, hundreds of thousands of home-care workers are earning living wages and paid time off.

Breaking with tradition is nothing new for Burger; in the 1980s as a young activist, she played a significant role in SEIU’s recognition of women’s choice as a key issue for health care workers. Throughout her career, she has worked to ensure that SEIU’s commitment to helping women, immigrants, and people of color move into leadership positions is a reality. SEIU today is the most diverse union in America, with a leadership that reflects the strength of that diversity – over half of SEIU members are represented by local unions led by women or people of color.

Burger began her career in 1972 as a Pennsylvania state caseworker and union activist in SEIU Local 668. She rose through the ranks to become its first female full-time president before moving on to run the state’s political field operations and to become SEIU’s national director of field operations. She has been an active delegate to the Democratic National Convention since 1984 and has worked on the party’s platform. She resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Earl F. Gohl, Jr. Their daughter, Erin Burger Gohl, attends Smith College.

Neal Katyal, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center and lead counsel in the US Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

Neal Katyal, a Professor at Georgetown University Law School, recently won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in the United States Supreme Court, a case that challenged the policy of military trials at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba. On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court sided with him by a 5-3 vote, finding that President Bush's tribunals violated the constitutional separation of powers, domestic military law, and international law. As former Solicitor General and Duke law professor Walter Dellinger put it "Hamdan is simply the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law ever. Ever." The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse wrote it was "a historic event, a defining moment in the ever-shifting balance of power among branches of government that ranked with the court's order to President Richard M. Nixon in 1974 to turn over the Watergate tapes, or with the court's rejection of President Harry S. Truman's seizing of the nation's steel mills." The Washington Post called it "a huge victory for fundamental American values -- and one that will dramatically aid in putting the war against terrorism on a sound legal basis."

Katyal is a dynamic speaker who represented uniformed men and women in the Armed Services who challenged the Guantanamo policy. An expert in national security law, the American Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the role of the President and Congress post 9-11, Katyal forged a worldwide coalition of support for his challenge to the Guantanamo policy, including 422 members of the European and British Parliaments and several former Generals and Admirals of the United States Armed Forces, all of whom have publicly supported his work. An expert in matters of constitutional law, particularly the role of the President and Congress in time of war and theories of constitutional interpretation, Katyal has embraced his theoretical work as the platform for practical consequences in the federal courts.

Katyal's second set of interests lies in crime, and particularly computer crime. He has written and spoke widely about the need to shift to a model of crime prevention, instead of crime prosecution after the fact. Employing a diversity of techniques derived from urban planning, architecture, economics, sociology, and psychology, Katyal has pioneered innovative ways to prevent criminal activity.

Katyal previously served as National Security Adviser in the U.S. Justice Department and was commissioned by President Clinton to write a report on the need for more legal pro bono work. He also served as Vice President Al Gore's co-counsel in the Supreme Court election dispute of 2000, and represented the Deans of most major private law schools in the University of Michigan affirmative-action case that the Supreme Court decided last year. (Katyal has written widely on affirmative action as well.)

Katyal clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer as well as Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals. He attended Dartmouth College and Yale Law School. His Articles have appeared in virtually every major law review and newspaper in America. Katyal recently won the 2004 National Law Journal pro bono award for his Guantanamo work.

Katyal has appeared on every major American nightly news program, as well as in other venues, such as the Colbert Report.

Michael Kazin, Professor of History, Georgetown University and author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan

Michael Kazin is a Professor in the Department of History at Georgetown University. He is an expert in U.S. politics and social movements, 19th and 20th centuries and is currently working on a history of the American left, to be published by Knopf. His most recent book is "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan."

Prior to his position at Georgetown, Kazin served as Assistant Professor to Professor of History at the American University. In 1996, he served as John Adams Chair in American Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He also served as Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University and as adjunct professor at San Francisco State University, University of California at Santa Cruz, and San Francisco City College.

Kazin has received the following academic honors: Guggenheim Fellowship, 2004; Senior Faculty Research Fellowship, Georgetown University, 2002-3; Research Fellowship, The Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, 1998-9; Fellowship for University Teachers, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1998-9; Distinguished Lecturer in History and American Studies, Fulbright Program, Japan, July-August, 1997; John Adams Chair in American Studies, Distinguished Lectureship, Fulbright Program, Spring 1996; Senior Fellowship, Commonwealth Center, College of William and Mary, 1990-91; Post-Doctoral Fellowship, National Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institution), 1988-9; and the Herbert Gutman Award (for best book in American history published by University of Illinois Press), 1988.

He has written: A Godly Hero, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (co-author, Maurice Isserman), Oxford University Press, 1999 (paperback, 2000). Second edition, 2003. Named one of best books of 2000 by Washington Post; The Populist Persuasion: An American History, Basic Books, 1995 (paperback, 1996). Revised paperback edition, Cornell University Press, 1998; and Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era, University of Illinois Press, 1987 (paperback, 1989).

Hon. Kendrick B. Meek (D-FL), 17th Congressional District

Congressman Kendrick B. Meek, who is in his second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, was first elected to public office at the age of 27.

He currently serves on the House Armed Services Committee, which overseas the largest agency budget in Congress and has responsibility for all U.S. land, sea, air, space defense programs and operations. He has been outspoken in his support for U.S. troops and in making sure those in Iraq and Afghanistan have the equipment they need.

Congressman Meek also serves on the House Committee on Homeland Security, where he is the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Management, Integration and Oversight. This subcommittee has jurisdiction over the administration and operation of the Department of Homeland Security's airport and seaport security programs; customs operations; assistance to state and local governments, and first responders; and immigration inspections, detention and enforcement policies and procedures. Meek is one of the youngest Ranking Members of any committee in the 109th Congress.

Meek is the current Chair of the Board of Directors of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit, public policy, research and educational institute founded by members of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1976.

An experienced legislator who served eight years in the Florida House and Senate, Meek was elected to Congress in 2002 from Florida’s 17th Congressional District, which includes Northern Miami-Dade and Southern Broward Counties.

In 2002, Congressman Meek launched a citizen initiative to reduce class sizes in Florida’s overcrowded public schools. As Chairman of Florida’s Coalition to Reduce Class Size, Congressman Meek spearheaded a petition drive that collected more than 500,000 signatures. He guided the amendment through two opposition efforts in the Florida Supreme Court as well as a well-funded campaign of scare tactics designed to kill it at the ballot box. In the end, the measure was approved when more than 2.5 million Florida citizens voted for it.

Before his service in elected office, Congressman Meek was a captain in the Florida Highway Patrol and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Criminology from Florida A&M University.

Congressman Meek is a native of Miami, Florida. He is married to the former Leslie Dixon of Brooklyn, New York and they have two children, Lauren and Kendrick Jr. Congressman Meek is the son of former Congresswoman Carrie P. Meek.

Hon. Thomas Pérez, Councilmember, Montgomery County, Maryland and Associate Professor of Law, University of Maryland

Councilmember, Montgomery, MD County Council Thomas Perez was elected to the Montgomery County Council on November 5, 2002, by the residents of Takoma Park, Wheaton, Kensington, and parts of Silver Spring, Maryland.

Councilmember Perez serves on the Council's Transportation and Environment Committee, where he is lead Councilmember on the Environment, and on the Health and Human Services Committee.

A graduate of Brown University, Harvard Law School, and the John F.
Kennedy School of Government, Councilmember Perez began his career as an entry-level attorney in the United States Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division and rose through the ranks to become Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. As a federal prosecutor for six years, he successfully prosecuted white supremacists in Texas who went on a fatal, racially-motivated crime spree against African Americans.
He also worked on combating racial profiling and closing the achievement gap at the elementary, secondary, and higher education levels.

As a senior aide to Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, he co-drafted the bill to respond to the church arson epidemic of 1996 and drafted the original hate crimes bill later passed by the United States Senate. During the last two years of the Clinton administration, Councilmember Perez was Director of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Donna Shalala, leading a 225-person agency with a $28 million budget.

After resigning his position with the change in administration, Councilmember Perez became an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Clinical Law programs at the University of Maryland School of Law.
He is a member of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, a non-partisan commission of national health care policy experts concerned with enhancing access to health care for vulnerable people.

In the community, Councilmember Perez was President of the Board of Directors of Casa of Maryland, Maryland's largest community-based organization serving and empowering the low-income Latino community. He served as technical advisor to the Washington Business Group on Health and to the County's Latino Health Initiative. A first generation Dominican-American, Tom and his wife Ann Marie, who works as a public interest lawyer, live in Takoma Park with their three children, Amalia, Susana, and Rafael.

Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson, North American President, World Council of Churches

The Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson serves as the President of the North American Region of the World Council of Churches. She is a much sought-after national speaker and consultant and is currently working as an interim minister of Beecher Memorial United Church of Christ in New Orleans, LA. She served formerly as the Executive Minister for Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ and as one of the five officers of the denomination.

The Rev. Dr. Jackson also formerly served as the Executive Director of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice and prior to that as the Executive Associate to the President of the 1.4 million member denomination. She has extensive experience in the non-profit and government worlds, having served for three years as the director of the Bishop Tutu Southern African Refugee Scholarship Fund, where she also was the Archbishop’s representative in the U.S. She was also on the staff of New York Governor Hugh Carey and on the communications staff of the National Urban League. She has been an activist on behalf of civil rights, women’s rights and human rights issues around the world for more than three decades.

Born and raised in Washington, D.C., the Rev. Dr. Jackson lived for nearly 20 years in New York City. She relocated to the Tampa, FL area in 2005, after living for fifteen years in Cleveland, OH. She is a graduate of Wilson College in Chambersburg, PA and holds master’s degrees from the Columbia University School of Journalism and Union Theological Seminary and received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Defiance College in 1994. She is married to Dr. Franklyn Jackson, a retired school administrator.

Bruce Reed, President, Democratic Leadership Council

Bruce Reed is president of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the national organization that launched the New Democratic movement. He is co-author with Rahm Emanuel of the new book, The Plan: Big Ideas for America.

Mr. Reed writes a daily political column for Slate and currently serves as Editor in Chief of Blueprint, the DLC's bimonthly journal, where he writes a regular column. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The Economist, and The Washington Monthly.

Before returning to the DLC in January 2001, Mr. Reed served for eight years in the Clinton-Gore White House. As President Clinton's chief domestic policy advisor and director of the Domestic Policy Council, he developed and oversaw the administration's agenda on welfare reform, crime, education, tobacco, and other domestic issues. He helped write the landmark 1996 welfare reform law, create the 100,000 police program, and enact the President's education agenda.

In 1992, Mr. Reed served as deputy campaign manager for policy of the Clinton-Gore campaign, supervising development of the domestic, economic, and foreign policy agenda. He served as policy director of the DLC from 1990 to 1991, when Clinton was DLC chairman. He also was founding editor of the DLC magazine, The New Democrat. From 1985 to 1989, he served as chief speechwriter for Senator Al Gore.

Mr. Reed, 46, is a native of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and a graduate of Princeton and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Gayle Smith, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Gayle Smith has spent much of her career in international affairs in the field. Smith served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1998-2001, and as Senior Advisor to the Administrator and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1994-1998. In 1999, she won the National Security Council's Samuel Nelson Drew Award for Distinguished Contribution in Pursuit of Global Peace for her role in the successful negotiation of a peace agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Smith was based in Africa for almost 20 years as a journalist covering military, economic and political affairs for the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Globe & Mail, London Observer and Financial Times. Smith has also consulted for a wide range of NGOs, foundations and governmental organizations including UNICEF, the World Bank, Dutch Interchurch Aid, Norwegian Church Relief, and the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. She won the World Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council and the World Hunger Year Award in 1991.

Smith is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as a member of the Commission on Capital Flows, the Commission on Weak States and National Security and the Council on Foreign Relation's Africa Task Force. She is a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, where she co-authored The Other War: Global Poverty and the Millennium Challenge Account. In 2005, she served as Director of the Global Poverty track of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Dr. John J. DeGioia, President, Georgetown University

For nearly a quarter century, John J. DeGioia has helped to define and strengthen Georgetown University as a premier institution for education and research. Since graduating from the University in 1979, he has served both as a senior administrator and as a faculty member. On July 1, 2001, he became Georgetown's 48th president.

University Leadership

As president, Dr. DeGioia is deeply committed to sustaining academic excellence at Georgetown. He has helped to recruit intellectual leaders to the faculty and secured substantial funding for scholarly research and academic programs.

Under Dr. DeGioia's leadership, the University completed in December 2003 the largest fund-raising effort in University history, the Third Century Campaign. The $1 billion capital campaign benefited Georgetown's Main, Medical, and Law Center campuses to secure endowment funds for curriculum and faculty support, increase student financial aid, and build and renovate facilities. In 2002-2003, Dr. DeGioia oversaw the largest expansion of campus facilities, with the Southwest Quadrangle - a one million square-foot complex of student housing; study, seminar and music rooms; and a new Jesuit Community - at the forefront.

Dr. DeGioia addresses broader issues in higher education as a board member of the American Council on Education, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the Campus Compact, and as an executive committee member of the Council on Competitiveness. He is chair of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education and serves on the Business-Higher Education Forum.

Institutional Priorities

To prepare young people for leadership roles in the global community, Dr. DeGioia has expanded opportunities for intercultural and interreligious dialogue, welcomed world leaders to campus, and convened international conferences to address challenging issues. He is a member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and Chair of its Education Committee and he represents Georgetown at the World Economic Forum and on the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. DeGioia has enhanced Georgetown's relationship with the many political, cultural, corporate, and economic resources of Washington, D.C. He serves on the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Federal City Council. Dr. DeGioia is also a strong supporter of Georgetown's social justice initiatives that seek to improve opportunities for Washington's underserved neighborhoods.

As the first lay president of a Jesuit university, Dr. DeGioia places special emphasis on sustaining and strengthening Georgetown's Catholic and Jesuit identity and its responsibility to serve as a voice and an instrument for justice. He has also been a strong advocate for inter-religious dialogue. He is a member of the Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to serving the sick and the poor.

Academic, Professional, and Personal

Dr. DeGioia is a Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from Georgetown University in 1979 and his PhD in Philosophy from the University in 1995. He has most recently taught "Ethics and Global Development," "Human Rights: A Culture in Crisis," and a seminar on "Ways of Knowing.

Prior to his appointment as president, Dr. DeGioia held a variety of senior administrative positions at Georgetown, including senior vice president, responsible for university-wide operations, and dean of student affairs. In 2004, he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Academia from the Sons of Italy.

Dr. DeGioia was raised in Orange, Connecticut, and Hanford, California. He and his wife, Theresa Miller DeGioia, a Georgetown alumna, and their son, John Thomas, live in Washington, D.C.

John Halpin, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

John Halpin is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress focusing on progressive theory, strategy and opinion analysis. His current research and writing is focused on developing and communicating a progressive public philosophy centered on the common good.

Halpin also serves as a Senior Advisor to American Progress helping to guide the Center’s choices of where to invest its own programmatic resources and assisting John Podesta in making recommendations to the nonprofit progressive community and its donors as they seek to focus their efforts toward more effective investments. Halpin has been with American Progress since 2003, serving as the Director of Research and a communications advisor.

Prior to joining American Progress, Halpin was as a Senior Associate at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, providing strategic guidance and opinion research for political campaigns and issue organizations. In this capacity, he managed quantitative and qualitative research for the Gore-Lieberman 2000 campaign, the British Labour Party, the Austrian Social Democrats, and a range of congressional, state legislative, and initiative campaigns in the U.S as well as organizational efforts for SEIU, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, Justice at Stake, and the Open Society Institute. Halpin received his B.A. from Georgetown University and his M.A. in American politics and political theory from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Halpin lives in Baltimore, MD with his wife Jamie and their two children, John Francis and Ella.

John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress

John Podesta is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for American Progress. Podesta served as Chief of Staff to President William J. Clinton from October 1998 until January 2001, where he was responsible for directing, managing, and overseeing all policy development, daily operations, Congressional relations, and staff activities of the White House. He coordinated the work of cabinet agencies with a particular emphasis on the development of federal budget and tax policy, and served in the President's Cabinet and as a Principal on the National Security Council. A frequent guest of Sunday morning news programs, Podesta is known for his straight talk, acerbic wit, and fierce defense of the Clinton Administration – which he also served from 1997 to 1998 as both an Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff. Earlier, from January 1993 to 1995, he was Assistant to the President, Staff Secretary and a senior policy adviser on government information, privacy, telecommunications security and regulatory policy.

Podesta is currently a Visiting Professor of Law on the faculty of the Georgetown University Law Center, a position he also held from January 1995 to 1997. He has taught courses on technology policy, congressional investigations, legislation, copyright and public interest law. Podesta is considered one of Washington's leading experts in technology policy, and has written a book, several articles and lectured extensively in these areas.

Podesta has held a number of positions on Capitol Hill including: Counselor to Democratic Leader Senator Thomas A. Daschle (1995-1996); Chief Counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee (1987-1988); Chief Minority Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittees on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks; Security and Terrorism; and Regulatory Reform; and Counsel on the Majority Staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee (1979-1981). In addition, in 1988, Podesta founded with his brother Tony, Podesta Associates, Inc., a Washington, D.C. government relations and public affairs firm.

A Chicago native, Podesta worked as a trial attorney in the Department of Justice's Honors Program in the Land and Natural Resources Division (1976-1977), and as a Special Assistant to the Director of ACTION, the federal volunteer agency, (1978-1979). He has served as a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and the United States Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy.

Podesta is a 1976 graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, and a 1971 graduate of Knox College.

Melody Barnes, Executive Vice President for Policy, Center for American Progress

Melody Barnes is the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress where she coordinates and helps to integrate all of the Center's policy work, from the policy departments, fellows, and the Center's network of outside policy experts.

From December 1995 until March 2003, Ms. Barnes served as chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. As Senator Kennedy's chief counsel, she shaped civil rights, women's health and reproductive rights, commercial law, and religious liberties laws, as well as executive branch and judicial appointments. Ms. Barnes' experience also includes an appointment as Director of Legislative Affairs for the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and serving as assistant counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. During her tenure with the Subcommittee, she worked closely with Members of Congress and their staffs to pass the Voting Rights Improvement Act of 1992, which was signed into law.

Ms. Barnes began her career as an attorney with Shearman & Sterling in New York City and is a member of both the New York State Bar Association and the District of Columbia Bar Association. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of The Constitution Project, EMILY's List, The Maya Angelou Public Charter School, and The Moriah Fund. She received her law degree from the University of Michigan and her bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she graduated with honors in history.