Peter B. Edelman
Professor of Law, Georgetown University

Peter Edelman is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and poverty law.  A member of the faculty since 1982, he has served in all three branches of government.  He took leave during President Clinton’s first term to serve as Counselor to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and then as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

Professor Edelman has been Associate Dean of the Law Center, Director of the New York State Division for Youth, and Vice President of the University of Massachusetts.  He was a Legislative Assistant to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and was Issues Director for Sen. Edward Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1980.  Prior to working for Robert Kennedy, he was a Law Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg and before that to Judge Henry J. Friendly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  He also worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as Special Assistant to Assistant Attorney General John Douglas in the Civil Division, and was a partner in the law firm of Foley & Lardner.

Mr. Edelman’s book, Searching for America’s Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope, is available in paperback from the Georgetown University Press. He has written extensively on poverty, constitutional law, and children and youth.  His article in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done,” received the Harry Chapin Media Award. With Harry Holzer and the late Paul Offner, he recently co-authored Reconnecting Disconnected Young Men, published by Urban Institute Press.  

Professor Edelman has chaired and been a board member of numerous organizations and foundations.  He is chair of the recently created District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission, and is currently board president of the New Israel Fund and board chair of the National Center for Youth Law.  In addition, he is a board member of the Public Welfare Foundation, the Center for Law and Social Policy, the American Progress Action Fund, and a number of other nonprofit organizations. He is currently a member of the American Bar Association Presidential Task Force on Access to Justice.

Mr. Edelman has been a United States-Japan Leadership Program Fellow, was the J. Skelly Wright Memorial Fellow at Yale Law School, and has received numerous honors and awards for his work, including the William J. Brennan, Jr. Award from the D.C. Bar in 2005.  He grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Rebecca M. Blank
Dean and Henry Carter Adams Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan

Rebecca M. Blank is Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Henry Carter Adams Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, and Professor of Economics. She is also the co-director of the National Poverty Center at the Ford School, funded by HHS to promote poverty-related research. Prior to coming to Michigan, she served as a Member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1997-1999. She has been a Professor of Economics at Northwestern University, and served as the first Director of the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. Professor Blank's research has focused on the interaction between the macroeconomy, government anti-poverty programs, and the behavior and well-being of low-income families.

Her book, It Takes A Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty, was published by Princeton University Press in 1997 and won the Richard A. Lester Prize for the Outstanding Book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations. Her more recent work includes the book Finding Jobs: Work and Welfare Reform (jointly edited with David Card, 2000, Russell Sage Press), The New World of Welfare (jointly edited with Ron Haskins, 2001, Brookings Press), and Is the Market Moral? (co-authored with William McGurn, 2003, Brookings Press).

Linda Chavez-Thompson
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President

Linda Chavez-Thompson was elected executive vice president of the AFL-CIO at the federation’s 1995 convention and was re-elected to a new four-year term in 2005. She is the first person to hold the post of AFL-CIO executive vice president, and she is the first person of color to be elected to one of the federation’s three highest offices.

A native of Lubbock, Texas, Chavez-Thompson is a second-generation American of Mexican descent. She brings to her work 35 years of experience in the labor movement, beginning in 1967 with her first work for the Laborers’ local union in Lubbock. She went on to serve in a variety of posts with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in San Antonio, Texas, and became an international vice president in 1988, a post she held until 1996. She also served from 1986-1996 as a national vice president of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, AFL-CIO. In 1993, Chavez-Thompson was elected and served a two-year term as one of 31 vice presidents on the Executive Council of the national AFL-CIO.

As executive vice president of the federation, Chavez-Thompson represents the labor movement as a member of the board for several national organizations, including the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. She also serves as a member of the Board of Governors for the United Way of America, and as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. In 2001, she was elected president of ORIT, the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers, which is the Western Hemispheric arm of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

Reverend Dr. Floyd H. Flake
President, Wilberforce University

Former U.S. Congressman, the Reverend Dr. Floyd H. Flake is the senior pastor of the more than 20,000 member Greater Allen A. M. E. Cathedral of New York in Jamaica, Queens, and President of Wilberforce University in Ohio.  During his 30-year pastorate, Allen has become one of the nation’s foremost Christian churches and development corporations. The church and its subsidiary corporations operate with an annual budget of over $34 million. The church also owns expansive commercial and residential developments, a 700-student private school founded by Flake and his wife Elaine, and various commercial and social service enterprises, which has placed it among the nation’s most productive religious and urban development institutions.  The corporations, church administrative offices, schools, and ministries comprise one of the Borough of Queens’ largest private sector employers.

Flake served 11 years in the U.S. Congress, and was a member of the Banking and Finance, and The Small Business Committees. He established a reputation for bipartisan, innovative legislative initiatives to revitalize urban commercial and residential communities. Most notably, the Community Development Financial Institutions Act of 1993 contained provisions named the Bank Enterprise Act (BEA), authored by Rep. Flake, which provided incentives for financial institutions to make market-oriented investments in destabilized urban and rural economies. These BEA provisions along with the Community Development Fund Initiative (CDFI) continue to yield millions of dollars worth of direct and secondary investment for residential and commercial growth.  It also provides needed Federal Insurance relief for banks, and increased private sector capital flow in communities with declining economic fortunes.  The BEA has directly affected the volume of residential mortgage and commercial lending in grossly under-invested locales.  

In Congress, Flake also concentrated on garnering federal resources and projects for his community. He won two regional facilities: The Federal Drug Administration (F.D.A.) and the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.), at a cost of over $280 million, which generated more than 2,000 jobs while also upgrading the stability and the aesthetics of the District. He prevailed upon the Clinton administration to fund the nation’s first One Stop Small Business Capital Center (Jamaica Business Resource Center J.B.R.C.) which is the model for additional centers that are now operating in the Federal Empowerment Zones and provides technical assistance and loans to small businesses.  He also authored legislation to fund the expansion of JFK Airport and build the rail link from the plane to the train, which connects JFK to Jamaica and Penn Stations. This has helped to further development of the downtown Jamaica area.

The Greater Allen Cathedral’s operations are a national paradigm of church-centered, faith-based, public/private community educational and economic development. Further, Allen’s administrative structure, efficiency, and development efforts have increasingly attracted international and national recognition in print and electronic media.  He and the church have been profiled on CNN, CBS, BET, C-Span, PBS, and in Time, Black Enterprise, Ebony, The New York Times, Readers Digest and The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. He is a proponent of quality education and market-oriented community and economic development through speeches and lectures in corporate settings, policy forums, seminaries and divinity schools, and countless other forums. He is an international lecturer and speaker and teaches at the Harvard Divinity School’s Annual Summer Leadership Institute. Under the Reverend Flake’s leadership, and true to its Christian doctrine of self-help and communal responsibility, Allen Church has provided resources and guidance for innumerable faith-based and secular institutions.  Its net assets are valued at over $100 million.

Dr. Flake earned a Doctor of Ministry Degree (D.Min.) from the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio and holds a B.A. from Wilberforce University with additional studies at Payne Theological Seminary and Northeastern University School of Business.  He also has numerous honorary degrees including: Boston University, Fisk University, Lincoln University (PA), and Cheney State (PA).  

Before assuming the pastorate of Allen Church, Reverend Flake served in various capacities at Boston University; Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center, Interim Dean of the Chapel, and Dean of Students. This followed successful stints as Associate Dean of Students at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and Marketing Analyst for the Xerox Corporation.

Flake serves as a member of the following boards:  The President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education; The Fannie Mae Foundation; The Princeton Review; The New York City Investment Fund Civic Capital Corporation; The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Advisory Committee on Banking Policy; and the Bank of America National Advisory Board.  Flake is also a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Social and Economic Policy, an Adjunct Fellow on the Advisory Board of The Brookings Institute Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, and a member of The NYC 2012 Olympic Committee. He is also a former columnist for The New York Post.

Rev. Flake authored a best-selling book, The Way of the Bootstrapper: Nine Action Steps for Achieving Your Dreams. He and his wife, Elaine, co-authored the book, Practical Virtues: Everyday Values and Devotions for African American Families, published by Harper Collins.  His latest book the African American Church Management Handbook, published by Judson Press was released in December 2005.

The Flakes are the parents of four children.

Wizipan Garriott

Wizipan Garriott was born and raised on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He is an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota (Rosebud Sioux). Mr. Garriott graduated from the St. Francis Indian School and received his B.A. in America Studies from Yale in 2003. Upon graduation, Garriott accepted a position in the office of former U.S. Senate Minority Leader, Tom Daschle, working on economic development, education, housing, and Native American issues.  

After leaving Capital Hill, Garriott worked in government relations for Olsson, Frank and Weeda, P.C., representing tribes and organizations on a variety of issues.  Garriott is also the lead cofounder and President of the Board of Directors of the He Sapa Leadership Academy, a tribally chartered private college preparatory school for Native Americans.  In its developmental stages, the Academy will offer high quality, culturally appropriate educational opportunities to Native Americans nationwide. Currently, Mr. Garriott is attending the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.

Maude Hurd
National President, ACORN Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

Maude Hurd has been the National President of ACORN since 1990, and a member of Boston ACORN’s Dorchester United since 1982, serving as its co-chair. In her role as ACORN National President, an elected, non-paying position, Hurd has both led local and national campaigns to win justice for low-income families, and developed and mentored hundreds of grassroots community leaders. Hurd lives in Dorchester, Mass., where she works as a substance-abuse prevention specialist at The Medical Foundation. Under Maude Hurd’s leadership, ACORN has become a critical force in campaigns for economic and racial justice across the country, and has grown to over 200,000 member families in 100 cities.

Charles E. M. Kolb
President, Committee for Economic Development

Charles Kolb is President of the Committee for Economic Development (CED) with offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. CED is an independent, nonpartisan organization of 250 business and education leaders dedicated to economic and social policy research and the implementation of its recommendations by the public and private sectors. He has held this position since September 1997.

Prior to joining CED, he served as General Counsel and Secretary of United Way of America from 1992 to 1997. During nearly ten years of government service he held several senior-level positions. He served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy at the White House from 1990-1992. At the White House, he worked on several domestic issues involving economic, education, legal, and regulatory matters. From 1983-1990, he held three other government positions: Assistant General Counsel, Office of Management and Budget (1983-1986); Deputy General Counsel for Regulations and Legislation, U.S. Department of Education (1986-1988); and Deputy Under Secretary for Planning, Budget and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Education (1988-1990).

Prior to government service, he practiced law at two Washington, D.C. law firms: Covington & Burling and Foreman & Dyess. He also was a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Joseph H. Young in Baltimore, Maryland.

He received his undergraduate degree at Princeton University and did graduate work at Balliol College, Oxford University, from which he received a Master’s Degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He holds a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Virginia Journal of International Law.  He is also the author of a book on policymaking in the Bush White House and numerous law review and op-ed articles.

He lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife Ingrid and their daughter, Charlotte Amanda.

Meizhu Lui
Executive Director, United for a Fair Economy

Meizhu Lui is the Executive Director of United for a Fair Economy, a national non-profit organization that sees America's current economic problem not as poverty per se, but as the growing divide between the very wealthy and the rest of us. It calls national attention to this growing gap, and to the persistent racial economic divide. Through publicity and popular education workshops for grassroots activists, UFE is providing analyses and frameworks that can unite diverse groups and build a movement for economic justice.

Lui calls herself a “troublemaker.” She was a Boston City Hospital food service worker and rank and file union activist in AFSCME for nearly 20 years. She became the first Asian to be elected president of a local union in Massachusetts. Lui next became an organizer for Health Care For All, building a multi-ethnic coalition that challenged local hospitals to earn their tax-free status by working closely with their inner city neighbors to improve community health, winning the nation’s first hospital community benefit guidelines.

Lui is currently a Trustee of the Hyams Foundation in Boston, MA, and a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. She received the Randolph-Rustin Award for the Education of African-American Workers from the Labor Studies Program at the University of Mass-Boston, and the “Whistleblower” award from Rosie’s Place (a homeless shelter).  Her work has been recognized by numerous other organizations including the YWCA, the Big Sister Association of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Senior Action Council, the Union of Minority Neighborhoods, and the Immigrant Workers Resource Center.

Recent articles have appeared in the Wealth Inequality Reader, published by Dollars & Sense in 2004, and Inequality Matters:  The Growing Economic Divide in America and its Poisonous Consequences, The New Press, 2005. She is a co-author of The Color of Wealth, which will be published by The New Press in 2006.

Alice M. Rivlin
Senior Fellow and Director, Great Washington Research Program, Metropolitan Policy, Brookings Institution

Alice M. Rivlin is a Visiting Professor at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. She is the Director of the Greater Washington Research Program at Brookings.  Before returning to Brookings, Ms. Rivlin served as Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board from 1996 to 1999. She was Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget from 1994 to 1996, and Deputy Director (1993-94). She also chaired the District of Columbia Financial Management Assistance Authority (1998-2001).

Ms. Rivlin was the founding Director of the Congressional Budget Office (1975-1983). She was director of the Economic Studies Program at Brookings (1983-1987).  She also served at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (1968-69).

Ms. Rivlin received a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, taught at Harvard, George Mason, and The New School Universities, has served on the Boards of Directors of several corporations, and as President of the American Economic Association.  She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of BearingPoint, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Washington Post Company.

She is a frequent contributor to newspapers, television, and radio, and has written numerous books.  Her books include Systematic Thinking for Social Action (l971), Reviving the American Dream (1992), and Beyond the Dot.coms (with Robert Litan, 2001).  She is co-editor (with Isabel Sawhill) of Restoring Fiscal Sanity: How to Balance the Budget (2004), Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2005: Meeting the Long-Run Challenges, and (with Litan) of The Economic Payoff from the Internet Revolution (2001).

Ms. Rivlin was born in 1931 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Bloomington, Indiana.  She received a B.A. in economics from Bryn Mawr College in 1952; and a Ph.D. from Radcliffe College (Harvard University) in economics in 1958.  She is married to economist Sidney G. Winter, who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.  She has three children and four grandchildren.

Barbara J. Robles
Associate Professor, Arizona State University

Interests: Latino Family and Community Financial Needs and Behaviors, Asset Building Policies, and Latino/a Entrepreneurship, Family Economic Security: Linking the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) with community-based organizations/agencies providing direct asset building programs to Latino family and communities

Sample Publications: The Color of Wealth: The Story of the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide (Book, New Pres, Forthcoming Spring 2006); "Latina Microenterprises and the U.S.-Mexico Border Economy," (2002) Estey Center Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, Vol. 3, No.2, pp. 307-327; "An Asset Approach to Educational Diversity Policies: Exporting Democracy," (2004) Aztlan: International Journal of Chicano Studies Research, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 185-197; "Emergent Entrepreneurs: Latina-Owned Businesses in the Borderlands," (2004) Texas Business Review; "Wealth Creation in Latino Communities: Latino Families, Community Assets and Cultural Capital," (book chapter) in Wealth Accumulation in Communities of Color, (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming Spring 2006); Funded Research Southwest Border Financial Behaviors and Needs Survey, five-year project funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, State Farm Foundations, Kauffman Foundation, and the Filene Research Institute (Credit Union Research Institute); Service Learning and Leadership Programs for Latino First Generation University Attending Students funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inter-University Program for Latino Research, State Farm Foundations, Filene Research Institute, and National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB)

Robert Solow
Professor Emeritus, MIT

Robert M. Solow was born in 1924 in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his academic degrees at Harvard University from which he graduated with a Ph.D in Economics in 1951. Professor Solow is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he has been a Professor of Economics since 1949. He taught macroeconomics and other subjects to undergraduate and graduate students until January 1996.

Professor Solow received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1987 for his theory of growth.  He was also awarded the National Medal of Science in 1999.  For a number of years he served as member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and was Chairman of that Board for three years. He is currently a member of the National Sciences Board. He is past president of the American Economics Association and the Econometric Society, as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy.

A few of the books for which he is most noted include Capital Theory and the Rate of Return (1963); Growth Theory: an Exposition (1970); Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge (1989, with M. Dertouzos, R. Lester, and the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity); The Labor Market as a Social Institution (1990); and A Critical Essay on Modern Macroeconomic Theory (1995, with F. Hahn).

Dorothy Stoneman
Founder and President, YouthBuild USA

Dorothy Stoneman is founder and president of YouthBuild USA, the national nonprofit intermediary and support center for over 200 YouthBuild programs, and a leader in advocating for youth engagement in civil society. She is chairman of the YouthBuild Coalition, with over 1,000 member organizations in 43 states, Washington D.C., and the Virgin Islands.

After joining the Civil Rights movement in 1964, and prior to starting YouthBuild USA in 1988, she lived and worked for 24 years in Harlem. She was first a teacher and then director of a community-based day care center, elementary school, community development housing corporation, community service program, and a youth employment and leadership development program. She was director for 10 years of the first YouthBuild program, based in East Harlem. She has built grassroots coalitions that have succeeded in obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars of city, state, and federal funds for community-based organizations to implement programs for youth and community development in low-income neighborhoods.

Stoneman has a bachelor’s degree in history and science from Harvard University and a master’s degree in early childhood education and a doctorate of humane letters from Bank Street College of Education. She is a 1996 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and was selected in 2000 by the Independent Sector as that year’s recipient of the annual John Gardner leadership award. She has received other awards from The Children’s Defense Fund, City Year, Youth Service America, Parent Magazine, and the Institute for Applied Youth Development Research.

She serves as chairman of the board of directors of Youth Action Program and Homes in East Harlem, the original YouthBuild program. She served as co-chair of the first two years of the Ford Foundation Leaders for a Changing World selection committee and has been a member of the board of directors of Stand for Children. She has served on the board of advisors of the Forum for Youth Investment convened by Karen Pitman, the Harvard Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement convened by Professor Robert Putnam, the Levitan Youth Policy Network convened at Johns Hopkins University by Marion Pines, the international fellows of the Applied Developmental Science Institute at Tufts University chaired by Richard Lerner, and the steering committee for the Movement to Leave No Child Behind led by Marian Wright Edelman.

She is the author or editor of numerous practical handbooks regarding how to run independent community schools, parent-controlled day care centers, leadership development programs for youth, and YouthBuild programs.

Wellington E. Webb
Former Mayor of Denver

Wellington Webb spent 12 years as the leader of Denver's Mile High City, and helped drag it out of the economic doldrums of 1991 to an investment of $7 billion in infrastructure when he left office in 2003.

In October 2003, he founded Webb Group International. The firm works with businesses and cities on economic development projects, public relations, and other consulting areas. His clients include UnitedHealthcare; Forest City Enterprises of Cleveland, Ohio; the National Education Association of Washington, D.C.; SMG of Philadelphia; Faulkner USA of Austin, Texas; and the cities of Macon, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama.

He is the managing director of Webb Development Group, a mixed-use real estate development firm, and board member of Alliance Development Partners Incorporated, a real estate development firm.

Wellington Webb serves on the board of directors of Maximus Corporation and the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce. He also serves on the advisory board for U.S. Bank and the National Home Buyers Assistance Corporation. He is a member of the Denver Rotary, a 33rd Degree Mason and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi and Sigma Pi Phi fraternities.

As mayor, he oversaw the completion of $4 billion Denver International Airport and redevelopment of the former Stapleton Airport into a thriving residential and business area. He also helped convince voters to approve a $300 million addition to the Colorado Convention Center, which opened December 2004, and pushed through difficult negotiations for a nearby privately-publicly funded hotel.

Among his goals was the redevelopment of the industrial Central Platte Valley near downtown Denver. The area once littered by abandoned rail lines now boasts a privately-funded Pepsi Center (professional basketball, hockey, and entertainment venue), relocation of Six Flags Elitch Gardens (amusement park), a community garden, and acres of city parks along the South Platte River. He also pushed for the successful transformation of lower downtown into a vital business and residential area anchored by the professional baseball park, Coors Field. In addition, he ensured that Denver's professional athletic teams—the Denver Broncos, the Denver Nuggets, and Colorado Avalanche—signed agreements to play in the city for at least 25 years and relocate to venues within the downtown area.

His social agenda included convincing the city to create Denver Health Medical Authority in 1997, which eliminated a cash deficit of $39 million. The mayor led the campaign for nearly $290 million in voter-approved bonds for improvements to the hospital and property. He also added more than 2,000 acres of new parks and open space to the city—the largest addition of park land by any mayor in Denver's history. Voters also approved $96 million for neighborhood and park improvements and $125 million for a major expansion of the Denver Art Museum and improvements to the Denver Zoo.

The city also took advantage of good economic times to invest in a new $200 million city office building, which citizens pushed to be named after the mayor, and a $16 million African American research library—the only such facility west of the Mississippi River. His negotiating skills included getting two new airline routes to serve Denver: British Airways and Lufthansa German Airlines. He looked to stimulate Denver's economy by opening foreign trade offices in London, England and Shanghai, China, and leading U.S. Conference of Mayors missions to Africa and Colorado trade missions to China and Japan.

Denver is the only city to be cited for five consecutive years as "One of the Top American Cities" in Fortune Magazine's annual "Best Cities" survey. The city also was named "One of the Top Three Cities for Sound Fiscal Management" by City and State Magazine; "One of the Top American Cities" by Money Magazine; and ''Top City for Entrepreneurs'' by Entrepreneur Magazine.

As a statesman, Webb hosted Pope John Paul II and nearly 200,000 people worldwide for World Youth Day in 1993. Four years later, he welcomed President Clinton and eight world leaders at the Denver Summit of the Eight, the annual local economic summit. His numerous recognitions include the U.S. Conference of Mayors highest honor, the Distinguished Public Service award in 2003; The Americans for the Arts 2001 Government Leadership in the Arts; The National Wildlife Federation's 1999 Achievement Award; The National Trust for Historic Preservation's ''Outstanding Achievement in Public Policy'' award; and by the country of France, the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (Chevalier of the Legion Honor) in 1999.

Prior to being elected mayor, he was served in the Colorado State Legislature; was appointed a Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Jimmy Carter; was appointed Executive Director of Colorado's Department of Regulatory Agencies under Gov. Richard Lamm; and was elected Denver's city Auditor. Wellington Webb is married to Wilma J. Webb and they have four children: Keith, Stephanie, Anthony, and Allen.

John Podesta
President and CEO

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, has written a book and 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.

Cassandra Q. Butts
Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy

Cassandra Q. Butts is Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy. Prior to joining The Center for American Progress, she was a senior advisor to Rep. Richard A. Gephardt and volunteered as the policy director on his 2004 presidential campaign. Cassandra coordinated the formulation of policy on Rep. Gephardt's presidential campaign that included a universal health care plan and economic development proposals. In her seven years of work for Rep. Gephardt during his tenure as the House Democratic Leader, Cassandra was a principal adviser on matters involving the judiciary, financial services, and information technology. She provided counsel and strategic advice to the Democratic Leader on a range of major proposals that came before the U.S. Congress including the 1998 presidential impeachment and legislation related to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, including the drafting of the groundbreaking September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. In July 2000, she also served as an international election observer to the Zimbabwe parliamentary elections.

Prior to her service with Rep. Gephardt, Cassandra was an Assistant Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, where she worked on civil rights policy and litigated voting rights and school desegregation cases. She also served as Legislative Counsel to Sen. Harris L. Wofford of Pennsylvania. Cassandra is a recipient of the Georgetown Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship and the Stennis Congressional Staff Fellowship. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mark Greenberg
Executive Director, Task Force on Poverty

Mark H. Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Task Force on Poverty for the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan progressive policy research and educational institute in Washington, D.C. Over the course of this year, CAP’s Poverty Task Force is charged with developing recommendations for addressing poverty in the United States.

Mr. Greenberg is directing the Task Force while on leave from the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), where he is the Director of Policy. CLASP is a national nonprofit organization addressing issues of family poverty through research, policy analysis, technical assistance, and advocacy.  Since coming to CLASP in 1988, Mr. Greenberg has focused on issues relating to federal and state welfare reform efforts; employment, training, and workforce issues affecting low income families; child care and early education policy; and public benefits issues.

Mr. Greenberg has written extensively about a broad range of low-income policy issues.  He authored or coauthored articles discussing the U.S. welfare reform experience for the American Prospect Magazine, the Brookings Review, and the Future of Children Journal.  These and numerous other publications and legislative testimony can be accessed at www.clasp.org. Mr. Greenberg also frequently provides technical assistance to state and local governments regarding requirements and options under the U.S. welfare, workforce, and child care legislation.

In 1997-98, Mr. Greenberg participated in the Atlantic Fellowship Programme, and was based at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of York in the United Kingdom. He collaborated with colleagues at the University of York on the development of a Comparative Social Security Policy module for a Masters in Public Policy and Management course for the UK eUniversities programme. In 2003, he authored an overview of recent developments in lone parent employment in the United States for the UK Department for Work and Pensions. Mr. Greenberg served on the Board of Directors of the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, a United Nations-affiliated intergovernmental organization in Vienna from 1998-2004. 

Prior to coming to CLASP, Mr. Greenberg worked at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in Florida and the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Los Angeles, California.  Mr. Greenberg is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Elisa Minoff
Research Associate

Elisa Minoff is a Research Associate for the Task Force on Poverty at the Center for American Progress. Prior to joining the Center she worked at the Center for Law and Social Policy on issues relating to workforce development and welfare reform. While at CLASP she examined the UK's commitment to end child poverty and worked with U.S. and UK policymakers to understand the lessons from that commitment. She also researched employment retention and provided technical assistance on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Elisa previously served as a Research Fellow at the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities and worked in community development in Trenton, NJ. She graduated with highest honors from Princeton University, with a B.A. in history.