Poverty and the Recession in North Carolina: Challenges and Opportunities
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UNC CENTER ON POVERTY, WORK AND OPPORTUNITY Poverty and the Recession in North Carolina: Challenges and Opportunities Speaker Biographies Andrea Bazán, Triangle Community Foundation Andrea Bazán is president of the Triangle Community Foundation, where she guides the strategic vision of the twenty-four-year-old foundation and oversees the stewardship of approximately $140 million in assets housed in nearly 700 charitable funds. Previously, Bazán served as the first executive director for El Pueblo, a North Carolina advocacy and public policy organization. In addition, she was the first Latina lobbyist at the North Carolina General Assembly and has had a career in public health, both at the state level with the N.C. Office of Minority Health and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, and in academia at the Department of Maternal and Child Health, UNC School of Public Health. One of a handful of Latina heads of philanthropic foundations in the country, Bazán is a frequent speaker at local, state and national meetings, and she has served as a mentor to many young students. She is a member of the Leadership Council of Hispanics in Philanthropy, based in San Francisco, and the co-chair of the CEO Network of the Council of Foundations in Washington, D.C. As of June 2008, Bazán began a three year term as chair of the board of directors for the National Council of La Raza, which she has served on since 2002. She also sits on the boards of the National Immigration Forum, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina and Wachovia Bank in Raleigh. Bazán holds a master’s degree in social work and a master’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Born in Boston, she grew up in Argentina and spent her high school and college years in New Orleans. Alan Berube, Brookings Institution Alan Berube is a senior fellow and research director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. His areas of expertise include urban demographics, tax and banking policies for low-income families and communities, and comparative social policy and demographics in the United States and the United Kingdom. Berube is the author of numerous Brookings publications on the Earned Income Tax Credit and related tax benefits for low-income workers. He oversees the Metro Program’s Living Cities Census Series, for which he has authored several papers and edited two volumes of the Redefining Urban and Suburban America series. Prior to joining Brookings in February 2001, Alan was a policy advisor in the Office of Community Development Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, where he authored a joint Treasury and Department of Housing and Urban Development study on predatory lending, Poverty and the Recession in North Carolina April 9, 2009 and developed the First Accounts program to support the development of low-cost bank accounts for unbanked consumers. Prior to that, he was a research assistant at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and a consultant to government clients at Andersen Consulting. Alan holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and a B.S. in chemical engineering from Stanford University. He held an Atlantic Fellowship in Public Policy in 2004, when he completed research on housing and neighborhoods at the United Kingdom Treasury and the London School of Economics. N. Yolanda Burwell, North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center, Inc. N. Yolanda Burwell is a senior fellow with N.C. Rural Economic Development Center where she looks at barriers to and incentives in economic opportunities. Prior to this position, she taught social work for 25 years in undergraduate programs in Louisiana and North Carolina. Her research interests and publications are on social welfare history in African American communities and early female leaders and organizations. She has been a scholar-in-residence at five schools/departments of social work to speak on social work history and African American contributions. In addition to research and teaching, she has conducted numerous successful trainings and consultancies on team-working, cultural competence, conflict resolution and communication. Burwell received her Ph.D. from Cornell University. She was awarded her master’s degree from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and her bachelor’s degree in social work from North Carolina A&T State University. David Dodson, MDC, Inc. Since joining MDC in 1987, David Dodson has directed major projects to strengthen public schools and community colleges, address rural economic decline, create new philanthropic structures, and build multiracial leadership for civic change in the Carolinas, the Deep South, and Appalachia. He frequently speaks around the country on creating equity and opportunity for low-wealth communities and has advised major philanthropic foundations on strategies to address poverty. Dodson is co-author of several MDC publications including Disconnected Youth in the Research Triangle Region: An Ominous Problem Hidden in Plain Sight for The North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, State of the South 2007: Philanthropy as the South’s ‘Passing Gear,’ and An Action Agenda to Spur Economic Success: A Report to the Distressed Areas Task Force of the South Carolina Council on Competitiveness. He is a member of the boards of The Mary Reynolds Babcock and the The Hitachi Foundations, and the Center for Law and Social Policy. Prior to joining MDC he served as executive director of the Cummins Engine Foundation and director of corporate responsibility for Cummins Engine Company in Columbus, Indiana. 2 of 10 Poverty and the Recession in North Carolina April 9, 2009 Cynthia “Mil” Duncan, Carsey Institute and University of New Hampshire Cynthia “Mil” Duncan returned to the University of New Hampshire in the spring of 2004 as founding director of the Carsey Institute. Widely recognized for her research on rural poverty and changing rural communities, Duncan was a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire for eleven years before leaving to become director of the Ford Foundation’s Community and Resource Development Unit in 2000. At the Ford Foundation, she was responsible for a team of national and international leaders in the community development, youth, and environmental fields. Duncan was the associate director of the Rural Economic Policy Program at the Aspen Institute prior to her former work at the University. In 1999, Duncan published Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America, which received the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best book in Community and Urban Sociology. Duncan is the author of numerous book chapters and refereed articles. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in sociology and is a recipient of the University of Kentucky Department of Sociology Thomas R. Ford Distinguished Alumni Award. She has a B.A. from Stanford University. Chris Estes, North Carolina Housing Coalition Chris joined the Housing Coalition as its executive director in September 2003 with a variety of experiences related to low-income communities and affordable housing. The North Carolina Housing Coalition is a private, non-profit membership organization working for decent, affordable housing that promotes self-determination and stable communities for low- and moderate-income North Carolinians. Prior to the Coalition, Estes completed a master’s degree in social work and a master’s degree in city and regional planning, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He works closely with the Coalition’s partners on its legislative agenda and in promoting the Campaign for Housing Carolina initiative across the state. He hopes to broaden the membership of the Coalition while increasing its impact on the production of affordable housing and improving the quality of life of low-income communities. In his free time he enjoys spending time with his wife, Cherie and stepson, Wilson, as well as cycling, backpacking, and listening to live music. Chris Fitzsimon, N.C. Policy Watch Chris Fitzsimon is the founder and director of N.C. Policy Watch, a progressive public policy think tank that is a special project of the N.C. Justice Center and the A.J. Fletcher Foundation. He writes the daily Fitzsimon File, delivers a daily radio commentary that is broadcast statewide on the North Carolina News Network, and hosts “News and Views,” a weekly radio news magazine that also airs on the network stations. Prior to N.C. Policy Watch, Fitzsimon served as the spokesman of the Campaign to Protect America’s Lands, a national, nonpartisan advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. 3 of 10 Poverty and the Recession in North Carolina April 9, 2009 Before heading to Washington, Fitzsimon was the founder and for nine years the executive director of the Common Sense Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. Common Sense is a nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy foundation whose mission is to expand the policy debate in North Carolina to include the views and voices of those traditionally locked out of that debate. He is also a frequent speaker across North Carolina on government and politics. Fitzsimon has been quoted in scores of national publications including The New York Times, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, and Columbia Journalism Review. Fitzsimon was an award-winning television news reporter for nine years, including four years at North Carolina Public Television and three years at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, where he covered government and politics. Fitzsimon, has a B.A. in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ferrel Guillory, UNC Program on Public Life and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Ferrel Guillory founded the UNC Program on Public Life in 1997 to build bridges between the academic resources at UNC-Chapel Hill and the governmental, journalism and civic leaders of North Carolina and the South.