Saturday 25 March 2023
A. Lawrence Chickering is co-founder and co-executive editor of The Transpartisan Review. He has helped establish several public policy organizations. In 1985, he co-founded (with Nicolas Ardito-Barletta) the International Center for Economic Growth, which worked with economic policy organizations in more than 100 countries to promote economic and social reform. In 1999, he founded Educate Girls Globally, which works in India and will soon expand to Africa and the Middle East. In 1993, he published Beyond Left and Right. In 2008, he and James Turner co-authored Voice of the People: The Transpartisan Imperative in American Life. Chickering’s other transpartisan publications include The Silent Revolution (1991, co-edited with Mohamed Salahdine) and Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security (2006, co-authored with I. Coleman, P.E. Haley, and E. Vargas-Baron).
James S. Turner, founding partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Swankin & Turner, is co-founder and co-executive editor of The Transpartisan Review. As one of the original Nader’s Raiders, he directed the project and wrote the report, The Chemical Feast: The Ralph Nader Study Group Report on Food Protection and the Food and Drug Administration. He has served as Board Chair of Citizens for Health and Voice for HOPE (Healers Of Planet Earth). He has appeared before every major consumer regulatory agency, including the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Consumer Product Safety Commission and Federal Trade Commission, as well as the Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health. He considers himself a progressive Democrat.
Co-founder and longtime creative director of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, Andy Fluke has developed strategic plans, designed events, and led creative projects for a wide variety of programs within the civic engagement community including NCDD’s national conferences, the recent revival of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, and TTR’s own Transpartisan Voice project. Editor of the forthcoming Field Guide to Grassroots Engagement, he oversees the editorial strategy of The Transpartisan Review. He can be contacted at editor@transpartisanreview.org.
Ralph Benko, nominated as nonprofit blogger of the year in 2014 by the National Bloggers Club, is the author of The Websters’ Dictionary: How to use the Web to transform the world which was awarded the “Trophée du choix des Internauts” in the World e-Democracy Awards 2010 from the World e-Democracy Forum, Paris, France, chosen by world vote from among “the 10 who are changing the world of Politics and the Internet.” He serves as an advisor to and editor of the Lehrman Institute’s thegoldstandardnow.org and senior advisor to the American Principles Project. He is an internationally published weekly columnist writing about politics and policy.
Joan Blades, founding partner of Living Room Conversations, is the co-founder of MomsRising.org & MoveOn.org as well as co-author of The Custom-Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where and How to Work and Boost the Bottom Line & The Motherhood Manifesto. Trained as an attorney/mediator, 10 years as a software entrepreneur and always a nature lover, she is also an artist, mother and true believer in the power of citizens & our need to rebuild respectful civil discourse and embrace our core shared values.
Clare Lockhart is Director and co-Founder of the Institute for State Effectiveness (ISE), which seeks to address the challenge of accountability and governance through a system-building approach across governments, markets and citizens. She served in Afghanistan as an adviser to the UN during the Bonn Process and to the Afghan Government from 2001 to 2005, and has worked in several countries across Europe, Asia and Africa. She is co-author with Ashraf Ghani of Fixing Failed States and contributes to the media on issues of security, peace-building and development.
Michael Murphy is Co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Esalen Institute, and directs the Institute’s think tank operations through its Center for Theory & Research (CTR). His latest nonfiction work is God and the Evolving Universe, co-authored with James Redfield and Sylvia Timbers. Other nonfiction work includes The Life We Are Given, a book about transformative practice, co-authored with George Leonard, The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation, co-authored with Steve Donovan, and The Future of the Body, a study of human nature’s capacities for transformation. He speaks at conferences and other events, and consults on organizational change.
A social entrepreneur, Michael is a leading expert in the field of transpartisan public policy. He has successfully convened policy initiatives in the areas of transparency, privacy, defense, foreign policy and national security. He is also the Program Director and Master Coach for SEALFIT’s Unbeatable Mind Academy a world-class leadership and personal development training program created by Navy SEALs. A licensed psychotherapist, Michael has completed his Masters Degree in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology at John F. Kennedy University. He is certified in Spiral Dynamics and Wade Mindsets.
Saafir Rabb leads the Interculture team as CEO, providing clients with culturally competent business solutions. Initiating his career at the intersection of community development and social enterprise, his work has improved results for efforts ranging from business development and job creation, to drug treatment and affordable housing. A former consultant to President Obama’s transition team for public diplomacy, Saafir is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, and a board member of Educate Girls Globally.
Founder, President and CEO of San Francisco-based Future 500, Bill Shireman helps the world’s largest companies and most impassioned environmental activists stop battling each other and find common ground. Breaking through the traditional left-right divide, Shireman’s books and studies show how we can protect the earth, promote freedom, and increase prosperity at the same time – provided the raging ideologues on both the right and the left just open their eyes and minds.
John Steiner is a networker, catalyst, creative consultant, occasional philanthropist and venture capital investor — all with his wife and partner, Margo King. He was a founding board member of Search for Common Ground and at one point board chair of CDR Associates; founding member and early leader of the Threshold Foundation (aka Donuts); and a founding member of the Social Venture Network. Working with Mediators Foundation, he is deeply engaged in helping to take the transpartisan movement to scale by mapping and convening this field.
Michael Strong is an experienced creator of innovative, personalized high-end schools and CEO and Chief Visionary Officer of StartupLearning.me, a program that helps parents who are not happy with their child’s existing educational options to personalized their child’s educational experience. He is also the Co-Founder of KoSchool & Incubator, an integrated college prep/entrepreneurial incubator for students ages 11-19.