Conference on the Organizational Climate of Congress The University of Maryland College Park, Maryland October 24-25, 2019 Participant Biographies Keith Allred became the Executive Director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse on January 1. He was recruited to lead NICD because he had recently launched CommonSense American, a new organization that brings Republicans, Democrats, and Independents together from across the country to find and champion solutions with broad support. Impressed by the successful five-year state pilot, leadership invited Keith to make NICD the platform for CommonSense American and to integrate it with NICD’s other programs to revive civility and enhance problem solving across the partisan divide. The Common Interest, the state-level pilot organization, operated in Idaho from 2005 – 2009. Its major legislative achievements led the Idaho Democratic Party to make the unusual move of asking him, as an independent, to be their nominee for Governor in 2010. Prior to returning home to pilot the citizens’ group, Keith became the first professor of negotiation and conflict resolution hired by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He started his academic career as a professor at Columbia. Keith has also served in a variety of business leadership roles. Most recently, he was a partner at the Cicero Group, ranked the 12th best boutique management consulting firm in the world by Vault.com. Prior to Cicero, he served as COO of Health Catalyst. Keith’s leadership there played a critical role in attracting a major investment by Sequoia Capital. He is a member of the Board of Directors for Midas Gold, which trades on the Toronto Exchange (TSX: MAX). Keith earned a PhD in Organizational Behavior from UCLA and BA in American History from Stanford. A fifth-generation Idahoan who grew up working summers on the family cattle ranch, Keith finished eighth in the world standings of the National Cutting Horse Association in 2017 after competing in the World Finals in Fort Worth. He and Christine are the proud parents of Anna (16), Dan (14), and Cate (11). The kids are still deciding if they’ve forgiven their parents for moving them from Idaho to DC this summer. David C. Barker is Professor of Government and Director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies (CCPS) at American University. He is the author or coauthor of three books (Rushed to Judgment, Representing Red and Blue, and One Nation, Two Realities ) and dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles in outlets such as the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, and Public Opinion 1 Quarterly, among others. He has served as principal investigator on over 50 externally funded research projects, totaling more than $16 million. His current research program seeks to understand the variance in orientations toward compromise or obstinacy among both citizens and legislators. In a previous life, he founded and directed two public opinion research centers in California. He has also held visiting professorships at Science Po in Paris, the University of Glasgow, and the University of Sydney. The Hon. Charles Boustany, Jr. (R-LA, 2005-2017) Vice President, FMC Boustany is a partner at Capitol Counsel LLC, where he focuses on health care, tax, and trade issues. Boustany joined Capitol Counsel at the beginning of 2017 after over a decade of service in the U.S. House of Representatives. He served Louisiana’s 7th district from 2005-2013 and the 3rd district from 2013-2017, following the elimination of Louisiana’s 7th district. During his 12 years in Congress, he served on the House Ways and Means Committee and was Chairman of the Subcommittee on Tax Policy. Rep. Boustany was a co-founder of the Friends of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, co-founder of the House Doctors Caucus, and a co-chair of the bipartisan US-China Working Group. Casey Burgat researches and writes about congressional capacity and ways to make the First Branch of government work better. Previously, he worked at the Congressional Research Service, where he served in the Executive Branch Operations and the Congress & Judiciary sections. There, he was responsible for responding to congressional requests about federal rulemaking, issues of congressional reform, the president’s role in federal budgeting, federal advisory committees and congressional staffing. Casey is a graduate of Arizona State University, with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He also holds a master’s in political management from George Washington University and received his doctorate in government and politics from the University of Maryland, College Park, where his dissertation focused on the impacts of congressional staff. James M. Curry is an associate professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah, and co-director of the Utah Chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network. His research focuses on U.S. politics and policymaking, especially the U.S. Congress. Specifically, he analyzes how contemporary legislative processes and institutions affect legislative politics, with a particular focus on the role of parties and leaders in the U.S. Congress. Jim's book, Legislating in the Dark (2015, University of Chicago Press), examines how congressional leaders leverage their unique access to legislative information and 2 resources to encourage their rank-and-file to support leadership decisions, and how rank-and-file members of Congress are often in the dark as the legislative process unfolds. Legislating in the Dark was selected as the recipient of the 2016 Alan Rosenthal Prize. Jim received his Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland in 2011, and previously worked on Capitol Hill in the offices of Congressman Daniel Lipinski and the House Appropriations Committee. Rellie Derfler-Rozin is an Associate Professor of Management & Organization at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. She received her PhD in Organizational Behavior from London Business School. She studies how the social context impacts employees' decision-making. She examines situations in which people in organizational settings behave in ways that end up counter to their own goal, because of innate social needs, such as the need to belong or the need for social status. As such, she applies psychological theories to critical organizational challenges (e.g., how organizations should design their selection practices or structure employees' jobs) to seek solutions that improve employees' lives in the workplace and organizations' success. She uses a multi-method approach, combining field surveys, field experiments, laboratory experiments and archival data analysis. Most of her research revolves around two specific areas: behavioral ethics and selection decisions and biases. Marcus W. Dickson is Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Wayne State University in Detroit. Dr. Dickson’s research interests focus on leadership, especially in a cross-cultural context, and he served as Co-Principal Investigator on Project GLOBE, the largest cross-cultural study of leadership conducted to date. His work has appeared in major research outlets, including Journal of Applied Psychology, The Leadership Quarterly, Advances in Global Leadership, Sex Roles, and Applied Psychology: An International Review, among others, and has been cited over 10,000 times. An active consultant, Dr. Dickson has recently focused (with colleagues) on a long-term project addressing systemic race and gender discrimination in a municipality, working to develop appropriate selection systems, and training staff there to do the same. Dr. Dickson and his wife, Heather, have one son, Michael. When not working on teaching, research, or consulting, Dr. Dickson can usually be found either playing or researching 19th-century baseball. 3 The Honorable Donna Edwards (D-MD, 2008-2017) Elected in a special election in June 2008, Ms. Edwards became Maryland’s first African American woman in Congress, serving 5 terms. In Congress, she served on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Committee on Standards and Official Conduct, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, and the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, serving as the lead Democrat on the Subcommittee on Space. In her last term, Congresswoman Edwards was a member of the Democratic leadership team as co-chair of the House Democrat’s Steering and Policy Committee. She also served in the leadership of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. These days Congresswoman Edwards spends her time working in the issues that consumed her passion in Congress and offering occasional political commentary The Hon. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT, 2013-2019) The Hon. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT, 2013-2019) Elizabeth Esty served as the U.S. Representative for Connecticut’s 5th congressional district covering central and northwest Connecticut from 2013 to 2019. Prior to serving in the House of Representatives, she served in the Connecticut House of Representatives, representing the 103rd Assembly District, which consisted of Cheshire and parts of Hamden and Wallingford. She has also served two terms on the Cheshire Town Council. Congresswoman Esty was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as rural Minnesota. She earned a B. A. in Government from Harvard College in 1981 and a J. D. from Yale Law School in 1985. She also studied International Relations at L'Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris for a year on a Rotary International Graduate Scholarship. Esty has been a law clerk for a federal judge, a Supreme Court lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP in Washington, D.C., a professor at American University, and a medical policy researcher at Yale. While in Congress, she served on the Committees on Veterans’ Affairs, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Science Space and Technology. She also served as Vice Chair of the US House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force and as co- chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus's infrastructure Task Force, and was an active participant in the Aspen Congressional Program.