We bring public policy experts to the Steamboat community.

America’s Public Lands – A Look Back and Ahead

John D. Leshy is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Hastings College of Law, and was formerly solicitor of the Interior Department, counsel to the chair of the Natural Resources Committee, an attorney-advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council and a litigator in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Considering the political history of America’s 600 million acres of public lands, he’ll look at how Congress and the executive might respond to numerous challenges, especially those related to climate change and the ongoing decline in biodiversity. 

Prospects for U.S. National Security, Defense Strategy and Policy

Ambassador Eric Edelman served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Clinton and Bush Administrations and was Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs. He has been Chief of Staff to Deputy Secretary of State, special assistant to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and special assistant to Secretary of State George Shultz. His other assignments include the State Department Operations Center, Prague, Moscow and Tel Aviv, where he was a member of the U.S. Middle East Delegation to the West Bank/Gaza Autonomy Talks.

Thinking Differently About Race and Public Policy

Camille Busette, PhD is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies and Director of the Race, Prosperity and Inclusion Initiative at the Brookings Institution.  She has dedicated her career to expanding financial opportunities for low-income populations. Her work has centered primarily on systemic racism, the importance of social relationships to economic mobility and equity in healthcare. She also focuses on local and state government policy priorities.  Prior to joining Brookings, Camille was an executive at the World Bank, where she led the World Bank’s financial inclusion innovation arm.

Teaching Democracy: Civics and Civility in the Classroom and Beyond

Originally from the South Side of Chicago, Deval Patrick came to Massachusetts at the age of 14, when he was awarded a scholarship to Milton Academy through the Boston-based organization A Better Chance. After Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal appellate judge and then launched a career as an attorney and business executive, becoming a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a partner at two Boston law firms and a senior executive at two Fortune 50 companies.

The Foreign Intelligence Threat to the U.S.:  Russia, China and Other Bad Actors

James Bruce, Ph.D., is a former senior executive officer at CIA, an adjunct researcher and former Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown and Florida Atlantic Universities. He also taught as an adjunct at Columbia and American Universities and as a full-time faculty member at the National War College.

The Future of Public Health: Why We Should All Be Concerned

Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations. An epidemiologist by training, her work focuses on global health security, with a focus on pandemic preparedness, outbreak detection and response, health systems as they relate to global health security, biosurveillance, and infectious disease diagnostics.

Fiscal Sanity in an Insane World

Maya MacGuineas is the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Her areas of expertise include budget, tax and economic policy. As a leading budget expert and a political independent, she has worked closely with members of both parties and serves as a trusted resource on Capitol Hill. She testifies regularly before Congress and oversees a number of the Committee’s projects, including the grassroots coalition Fix the Debt, the Fiscal Institute and FixUS. Her most recent area of focus is on the future of the economy, technology and capitalism.