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This page has been updated. Please refer to http://www.demos.org/page76.cfm.
The Public Works team has not taken on defending the importance of government merely because we enjoy tackling difficult causes. No, we're doing this work because we believe that renewing a broadly-shared understanding of the importance of the public sector in our country is absolutely vital for nearly every public interest agenda-from environmentalism and civil rights to equal access to health care and economic opportunity for all Americans.
In our previous jobs we all worked in one way or another to reform state policies and programs to benefit low-income families and communities. In these roles, even when we found recognition of problems, potential solutions met with resistance often because they required public support for a government role. Sure, we had successes, we won some battles, we even secured funding for some important programs, and we turned back funding cuts in others. But these occasional successes were in the face of a steady loss in broad support for the public sector's role in addressing problems. And as long as we were losing in this larger debate, we could never make meaningful progress on more widespread and systemic solutions.
Our colleagues around the country who worked on behalf of consumers, the environment, and the disadvantaged often found the same was true for them. They might win on individual policy initiatives or funding proposals, but they continued to meet the same broader resistance we did, facing a public that believes government is the problem, not the problem-solver.
Each of us has come to Public Works believing we can change this. We hope to join with public interest colleagues, community leaders, academics and public officials to rebuild support for the public sector and address the prevalent suspicion and disdain for government that undermines all our efforts. We seek to work with anyone who is interested in changing American's negative perception of government. We hope to create a new sense of shared possibilities that can remind us of a time when people believed in government, when they believed that government could send a man to the moon and find a cure for polio. We come to this work believing that supporting the mission and values of government and holding it accountable to its own best purposes is a first step in restoring our country to a place where the public interest is the paramount interest.
Dianne Stewart, Program Director
Michael Lipsky, Senior Program Director
Patrick Bresette, Associate Program Director
Marcia Kinsey, Program Associate
Dianne Stewart
Director, Public Works: the Demos Center for the Public Sector
Dianne came to Demos in 2003 to help build Public Works: the Demos Center for the Public Sector. Dianne has 20 years of experience inside state government, in the private sector and in a state-level policy NGO working on issues of governance, particularly as they affect low-income families. As the founder and Director of the Office of Governmental Affairs at the Texas Department of Human Services and the 11-year Executive Director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, Ms. Stewart has worked from within and from without in efforts to improve the operations and decision-making of state government.
Michael Lipsky
Senior Program Director, Public Works: the Demos Center for the Public Sector
Michael came to Demos from the Ford Foundation where he worked for 12 years, most recently as Senior Program Officer in the Peace and Social Justice program. Responsible for the foundation's portfolio on "government performance and accountability," he helped assemble the State Fiscal Analysis Initiative, a national network of organizations devoted to budget transparency and accountability, and International Budget Project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Prior to Ford, Michael taught political science at the University of Wisconsin, and, for 21 years, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His best-known books are Protest in City Politics, Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of Contracting (with S.R. Smith), and the award-winning Street-Level Bureaucracy. He holds degrees from Oberlin College and Princeton University.
Patrick Bresette
Associate Program Director, Public Works: the Demos Center for the Public Sector
Patrick is responsible for taking the work of the program out to the states and partner organizations and seeking ways to imbed the lessons learned and strategies developed into the everyday work of the many stakeholders for an effective public sector. Patrick comes to the project after thirteen years as Associate Director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities and before that as a legislative aide in the Texas House of Representatives. He brings with him a broad understanding of how to work with and within the public sector for positive social change. His years of work leading the policy team at CPPP, spearheading the organization's legislative initiatives, and leading diverse coalitions of partner organizations situate him well for his outreach and partnership development efforts with this initiative. Patrick has an MPA from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a BFA in Sculpture from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University.
Marcia Kinsey
Program Associate, Public Works: the Demos Center for the Public Sector
Marcia joined Demos in September of 2003, providing research support. Marcia most recently served the United States government as a diplomat in Belize in Central America. Prior to her stint in the U.S. Foreign Service, Marcia worked for seven and a half years as a public policy analyst for the Texas-based Center for Public Policy Priorities. There, she researched policy issues affecting low-income Texans including the Texas state budget; low-income programs such as welfare, food stamps, child care, transportation and child protective services; hunger; and poverty. Marcia has a bachelor's degree in Economics from St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas.
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