Speaker Biographies
Chris Myers Asch is the cofounder of the U.S. Public Service Academy. Before launching the U.S. Public Service Academy in 2006, he taught elementary and middle school for three years in Sunflower, Mississippi, as part of Teach For America/AmeriCorps, and for one year in Taejon, South Korea, with the William J. Fulbright program. He cofounded the Sunflower County Freedom Project in 1998 and served as executive director until 2006. A national finalist for the Advocacy Institute’s Leadership for a Changing World Award 2003, Mr. Asch won the 2007 Eli Segal Award from AmeriCorps Alums and recently became an Echoing Green Fellow. His first book, The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer, will be released in May 2008 by New Press.
Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at AEI. His many books include No Remedy Left Behind (AEI Press, 2007), No Child Left Behind: A Primer (Peter Lang, 2006), Educational Entrepreneurship (Harvard Education Press, 2006), Common Sense School Reform (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Revolution at the Margins (Brookings Institution, 2002), and Spinning Wheels (Brookings Institution, 1998). His work has appeared in outlets including Harvard Educational Review, Urban Affairs Review, Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, Teachers College Record, Education Week, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Next, Educational Leadership, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and National Review. Mr. Hess currently serves on the review board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education, as executive editor of Education Next, and as a member of the research advisory board for the National Center on Educational Accountability. He is a former high school social studies teacher and a former professor of education and government at the University of Virginia.
Philip I. Levy studies international trade and development at AEI. Before joining AEI, he handled international economic issues as a member of the secretary of state’s policy planning staff (2005–2006), as a senior economist for trade at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (2003–2005), and as a faculty member at Yale University (1994–2003). An economist by training, Mr. Levy has experience in many international trade and development policy issues, including free trade agreements, trade with China, antidumping policy, welfare effects of globalization, U.S. foreign assistance policy, and economic development policy.
John Bridgeland is CEO of Civic Enterprises, a public policy firm in Washington, D.C., and vice chairman of Malaria No More, a nonprofit launched at the White House Summit on Malaria. At Civic Enterprises, Mr. Bridgeland authored a Gates Foundation–commissioned report, The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts, which prompted a Time magazine cover story and two Oprah shows on the topic and resulted in more than one hundred organizations embracing a ten-point plan of action. Previously, Mr. Bridgeland has served as director of USA Freedom Corps, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and chief of staff and special counsel to former representative Rob Portman. He served as a teaching fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he offered a seminar on presidential decision-making.
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg is president emeritus and University Professor of Public Service at George Washington University. He served as president of George Washington University from 1988 to 2007. He was previously president of the University of Hartford for eleven years and, before that, dean and vice president of Boston University for eight years. During the Lyndon Johnson administration, he was special assistant to the U.S. Commissioner of Education. Mr. Trachtenberg’s publications in academic and lay journals have received wide acclaim. He has written four books and is the coeditor of The Art of Hiring in America’s Colleges and Universities (Prometheus, 1993). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Robert Tobias is currently the director of public sector executive education at American University. He teaches and administers the Key Executive Leadership MPA and certificate programs that involve over one hundred federal leaders. He is also the director of the Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation at American University. Mr. Tobias was nominated by President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term on the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board. Prior to his work at American University, Mr. Tobias served for thirty-one years with the National Treasury Employees Union and as its president from 1983 to 1999.
View Event Details
