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June 20, PANEL 1: Enhancing Civic Education and Developing an Ethos of Service

Alhassan Susso, New York Teacher, 2019 Teacher of  the Year

Alhassan teaches History in New York’s Bronx. He himself has overcome many obstacles to succeed in life and in his profession: an immigrant from West Africa, he had a rare eye disease in youth which left him nearly blind. Following the early death of his sister as an indirect result of her being unable to emigrate to the US and receive medical treatment, Alhassan wanted to become an immigration lawyer, but he was persuaded that he could make more of a

difference by empowering people as a teacher. He knows that having the right opportunities often makes the difference between success and failure.

To motivate and equip his students to succeed, Alhassan has created the Inspiring Teens program. This relationship-based approach is designed to help teens build the skills to thrive academically, socially, professionally and economically. The program is built on five essential skills: Mindset, Vision, Setting, Interpersonal Communications, Leadership, and Financial Management. Each period starts with upbeat positive music, and employs the central concept of a Well-Rounded Student – consisting of eloquent speaking, purposeful reading, persuasive writing, and critical thinking. The program has resulted in a boost to standardized exam results from 29% to 69% in one year with a pass rate of over 90%. 100% of the students who took the program for credit graduated and went to college, and for the last three years Alhassan has been the “Most Admired and Inspirational Teacher” in his school.

Caleb Hanna, West Virginia state legislator (19 y/o)

Caleb Hanna is a Republican member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, representing District 44. Hanna was elected to the office on November 6, 2018. He made education one of his main campaign priorities.

While fulfilling his official duties, Mr. Hanna will remain enrolled at West Virginia State University. The campus, where he lives in a dorm, is conveniently located near Charleston, the state capital, but even so, he will be taking his courses online during the legislative session.

His legislative focus will be on education. He wants to create an elective course that introduces technical education in middle schools. “There are a lot of good-paying, high-skill jobs out there that don’t require a four-year degree,” said Mr. Hanna, an economics major. “We need to focus more on teaching kids about the opportunities in those fields.”

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Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg is the director of The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life . She manages CIRCLE’s expansive portfolio of initiatives and products, such as

original research, resources for educators and public audience, on a wide range of topics related to civic learning and civic life. With a background in positive youth development and social-emotional learning, and interest in diverse and marginalized youth, she sees research as a powerful tool to address educational inequity.

Kei was a lead author on important papers and reports, such as The Republic is (Still) at Risk – and Civics is Part of the Solution (with Peter Levine); The Future of Civic Education (in NASBE Magazine); Taking the Lead: How Educators Can Help Close the Gender Leadership Gap (with the National Education Association and the American Association of University Women); and All Together Now:        Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement   .   She has published extensively in various peer-reviewed journals and written book chapters; her full curriculum vitae can be found here.

As a leading expert on civic education, learning, and engagement, Kei’s analysis and commentary are frequently featured in major outlets such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, C-SPAN, Channel 1, and NBC News. Kei hsa been a recipient of a Jobs for The Future Distinguished Fellowship for Student-Centered Learning (2016-2018), and serves on the National Board of Generation Citizen, Democracy Works, and the Leadership Council for Nonprofit VOTE. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship and the Voter Study Advisory Council. She earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Loyola University, with an emphasis on child and adolescent development and positive youth development.

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Michael Rebell, Executive Director, The Campaign for Educational Equity and Professor of Law and Educational Practice at Teachers College, Columbia University

Michael A. Rebell is an experienced litigator, administrator, researcher, and scholar in the field of education law. He is the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity and Professor of Law and Educational Practice at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Campaign seeks to promote equity and excellence in education and to overcome the gap in educational access and achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged students throughout the United States.

Previously, Mr. Rebell was the co-founder, executive director and counsel for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. In CFE v. State of New York, the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, declared that all children are entitled under the state Constitution to the “opportunity for a sound basic education,” and it ordered the State of New York to reform its education finance system to meet these constitutional requirements. Currently, he is counsel for plaintiffs in NYSER v. State of New York, a statewide follow up to the CFE case that seeks full funding, in accordance with the CFE decree, and permanent structures to ensure that the constitutional right to the opportunity for a sound basic education is fully implemented for all students throughout New York State Mr. Rebell has also litigated numerous major class action lawsuits, including Jose P. v. Mills, which involved a plaintiff class of 160,000 students with disabilities. He also served as a court-appointed special master in the Boston special education case, Allen v. Parks.

Mr. Rebell is the author or co-author of five books, and dozens of articles on issues of law and education. Among his most recent works are Courts and Kids: Pursuing Educational Equity Through the State Courts (U. Chicago Press, 2009); Moving Every Child Ahead: From NCLB Hype to Meaningful Educational Opportunity (Teachers College Press, 2008) (with Jessica R. Wolff), The Right to Comprehensive Educational Opportunity, 47 Harvard Civil Rts-Civil Lib. L. Rev. 49 (2012), and Safeguarding the Right to a Sound Basic Education in Times of Fiscal Constraint, 75 Alb. L. Rev. 1855 (2012). He was a member of the National Commission on Equity and Excellence in Education and a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s New New York Education Reform Commission.

In addition to his research and litigation activities, Mr. Rebell is a frequent lecturer and consultant on education law. He is also currently adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and previously was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and for many years, a Visiting Lecturer at the Yale Law School. Mr. Rebell is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.

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Arne Duncan, former U.S. secretary of education

Arne Duncan was named U.S. secretary of education by President Barack Obama and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Jan. 20, 2009. Duncan served in this position until December 2015. Prior to his appointment, Duncan served as the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools from June 2001 through December 2008, becoming the longest-serving big-city education superintendent in the country.

Before joining the Chicago Public Schools, Duncan ran the Ariel Education Initiative (1992–1998), a nonprofit focused on advancing

educational opportunities in economically disadvantaged areas. He has served on the boards of the Ariel Education Initiative, Chicago Cares, the Children's Center, the Golden Apple Foundation, the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, Jobs for America's Graduates, Junior Achievement, the Dean's Advisory Board of the Kellogg School of Management, the National Association of Basketball Coaches Foundation, Renaissance Schools Fund, Scholarship Chicago and the South Side YMCA. He has also served on the Board of Overseers for Harvard College, the Visiting Committees for Harvard University's Graduate School of Education and the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration.

From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia, where he worked with children who were wards of the state. Duncan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1987. He is married to Karen Duncan and has two children, Clare and Ryan.

June 20, PANEL 2: Service Registration Models Panel (working title)

Nancy Ann Berryhill, acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration

On January 23, 2017, Nancy A. Berryhill became the Acting Commissioner of Social Security, with responsibility for overseeing one of the nation’s largest and most important domestic programs. With a $12 billion budget and almost 64,000 employees serving in more than 1,500 offices across the country and around the world, plus 16,000 State employees making disability determinations, the Social Security Administration issues more than $960 billion in payments to nearly 66 million people each year.

Previously, Ms. Berryhill served as the Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Social Security’s largest component, where she successfully implemented many expanded service delivery options for the public. Prior to that position, Ms. Berryhill served two years as the agency’s Regional Commissioner for the Chicago Region and five years as Regional Commissioner for the Denver Region. In Denver, she developed numerous innovative, mission-focused

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initiatives such as video service delivery, use of webinar technology, and the creation of the first American Indian outreach guide.

Ms. Berryhill began her Social Security career as a GS-2 student employee. In her 40 years at the agency, she has held many frontline positions, including Claims Clerk, Service Representative, Claims Representative, Operations Supervisor, District Manager, and Area Director for the State of Illinois.

Ms. Berryhill has received numerous agency awards, including the Commissioner’s Citation, the agency’s highest recognition. In 2010, she received the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Executive, and in 2015, she received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive, the highest honor awarded career executives in the Federal Government. Her work and achievements consistently demonstrate professional excellence, exceptional leadership, integrity, and commitment to public service.

A native of Chicago, Illinois, Ms. Berryhill obtained her degree in Computer Science at the Control Data Institute in Chicago. She is a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

John Valverde is the CEO of YouthBuild USA, Inc.

John Valverde is the CEO of YouthBuild USA, Inc. He joined YouthBuild in 2017 after decades of work as an advocate for creating access to opportunity and removing barriers for formerly incarcerated and low-income people.

John began working with imprisoned individuals in 1992 to ensure access to HIV/AIDS counseling, high school

equivalency instruction, alternatives to violence programs, and college education. In 1998, he co-founded Hudson Link for Higher Education, the first privately funded accredited college program in New York’s prisons.

As a steady and persistent advocate for creating access, John has worked with city, state, and federal agencies to develop and operate proven job readiness and placement programs.

John is a graduate of Aspen Institute’s Sector Skills Academy. He holds a Master of Professional Studies in Urban Ministry from the New York Theological Seminary and a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science from Mercy College.

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Christine Jolls, Yale Law School

Christine Jolls is the Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor at Yale Law School. She is also the Director of the Law and Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Previously she served as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of the United States, received her J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and earned her Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T., where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and earned her undergraduate degree at Stanford University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her second year and won the Robert M. Golden Medal. Prior to

college Professor Jolls was named one of two United States Presidential Scholars from the state of California. Her research and teaching concentrate in the areas of employment law, behavioral law and economics, government administration, and consumer protection. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 Dakota Wood, Senior Research Fellow, Defense Programs, Center for National Defense, Davis Institute for National Security  and Foreign Policy

Dakota L. Wood, who served America for two decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, is the Senior Research Fellow for Defense Programs at The Heritage Foundation.

Wood’s research and writing at The Heritage Foundation focus on programs, capabilities, operational concepts, and strategies of the

U.S. Department of Defense and military services to assess their utility in ensuring the United States has the ability to protect and promote its critical national security interests.

Wood grew up in Claremore, OK and graduated in 1985 from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor of science degree in oceanography. He was named a distinguished graduate for his work in earning a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the College of Naval Command and Staff, U.S. Naval War College. He was also recognized for meritorious distinction by the Marine Corps’ School of Advanced Warfighting.

In his service as a Marine, Dakota participated in the planning and execution of operations around the world to include Operation Enduring Freedom following the attacks of 9/11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom to depose Saddam Hussein. Dakota culminated his career conducting studies on military, technology, economic and political matters for senior officials at the highest levels of the Marine Corps and the Defense Department.

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Wood retired from the U.S. Marine Corps as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2005, having enjoyed a 20-year career during which he served with a variety of operational units and in various high-level staff assignments. His operational experiences included a number of contingencies ranging from the evacuation of American citizens from countries in crisis to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.His professional and personal travel took him to over thirty countries on five continents and transit through most of the world’s oceans and seas, experiences that included multiple deployments to Asia and the Mediterranean region, NATO support operations in the Balkans, and contingency operations in W. Africa.

Then-Major Wood was a lead operational/logistics planner for U.S. Central Command during the initial operational response to the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, as well as numerous plans that included non-combatant evacuation operations and WMD counter-proliferation plans as well as logistics support for the bed-down of special operations forces in Central/Southwest Asia in the early phases of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Recruited by-name in late 2002, he was deployed to augment and lead operational analysis and logistics planning and execution efforts in support of Marine Corps combat forces for the invasion phase of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.Mr. Wood also served as a strategic analyst for the Commandant of the Marine Corps and, later, while assigned to the Office of Net Assessment, the Secretary of Defense’s internal “think tank,” where he participated in a range of comparative analyses of military, technological, political, economic, and other factors governing the relative military capabilities of nations, with a specific focus on identifying emerging or potential threats and opportunities for the United States.

Following retirement in 2005, Mr. Wood helped to organize and operationalize the National Biosurveillance Integration System, a Department of Homeland Security effort intended to provide national leadership with the earliest indications of a potential biological threat to the United States.

From 2006 to 2011, Mr. Wood served as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments where he organized or materially contributed to numerous seminar-style wargames conducted for various Department of Defense sponsors as well as authoring papers on a diverse array of topics that included: conventional operations against a nuclear-armed adversary; US response options to the imminent failure of a large state; the operational challenges of a protracted global irregular warfare (IW) campaign; the many implications of the proliferation of advanced technologies and weapons; evolving security challenges within the Western Hemisphere; and the development of transformation strategies to improve the ability of the US military to protect the US and its interests.

Most recently, Mr. Wood served as the Strategist for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Special Operations Command. In this capacity, Mr. Wood was responsible for advising the Commander on strategic level guidance, policies, and operational concepts effecting the future employment of MARSOC forces, personally facilitated the development of a new concept for the integration of operational capabilities of special operations forces and forward-deployed conventional forces,

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and helped shape MARSOC’s understanding and explanation of the utility of Marine Corps special operations forces in support of national security interests.

Mr. Wood has been a frequent contributor to the news media, having been consulted on a wide range of national security and defense matters by a number of national and international outlets. He has also provided expert testimony to the U.S. Congress and has been consulted by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), Congressional Research Service (CRS), and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Wood and his wife, Dixie, have three grown children.

 Saurabh Bhargava, Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon

Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Saurabh was an Adjunct Faculty at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, and a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Outside of research, Saurabh battles a mild caffeine addiction, has an unyielding appetite for film, and spends his time reading and wagering on politics, consuming all forms of pop culture and (Minnesota based) sports, and watching reality television -- for research, of course.

Saurabh studies topics at the intersection of Economics and Psychology (Behavioral Economics) with a particular focus on questions with relevance to public policy. Recent projects have examined whether consumers are able to make sensible health insurance choices, why eligible individuals fail to claim social benefits such as the EITC, factors that influence job search and wage expectations of the unemployed, the role of insurance incentives and their complexity on safe driving, how perceptual biases influence speed dating and judicial sentencing, and the social and economic factors that determine happiness. This research has been covered by national media including the NY Times, NPR, Bloomberg, New York Magazine, CNBC, Marginal Revolution, and Freakonomics.com.