Fellow and Project Lead at the National Academy of Public Administration (Congressionally-chartered professional association)

I knew I wanted a career in public service after growing up with a father in the Navy. Thus, it’s no surprise that I began my career after college working for the Navy here in Washington as a computer programmer. I got “Potomac fever” during high school when my family moved to D.C., and I remember what a tense time it was in D.C. during the anti-war movement and the riots following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King.

After serving the Navy as a civilian, I did federal consulting for a few years before embarking on a 25-year career at the Government Accountability Office. During my time with GAO, I directed programs in public health and health financing, accounting and financial management. I also helped GAO restart its recruiting and hiring and set up exciting new internships and new hire programs as GAO recovered from a 40% cut in staff size in the mid-90s.

Since retiring from GAO in 2005, I served as a Senior Strategic Advisor for the Partnership for Public Service, where I led the Call to Serve program to build bridges for effective recruiting and hiring between federal agencies and universities, and led numerous studies leading to reports on improving the civil service system, and helping agencies improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

I now serve as a Fellow and Project Lead for the National Academy of Public Administration, where with the National Academies of Sciences I lead a 5-year Congressionally-mandated study of DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

My extensive career in public service demonstrates the various ways in which we can serve our country. My advice to those starting out in the field is to not be too concerned about going up a ladder in a specific way, and to use networking for friendship-building and as a way to learn about different aspects of public administration.

I welcome the opportunity to network with fellow public administrators. You may contact me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sally-sarah-jaggar-0a89a6a/

I founded BL Insights to help public-serving institutions become more effective identifying, achieving, and communicating their strategic value. Before coming to Washington, DC, I was a career scientist and educator at Yale University, so I bring a scientific approach to my work. I became interested in public administration through local government. In Connecticut, I served on my town’s Inland Wetlands Commission for 12 years.

My interest in public administration grew when I was awarded a Science & Technology Policy Fellowship by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. During the fellowship, I spent three months at the Performance Improvement Council working with federal agencies on the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Education Cross-Agency Priority Goal, part of the president’s management agenda.

Later, I spent a year at the National Institute of Justice—the research and evaluation arm of the Department of Justice—leading an effort in strategic planning and evaluation. My current project involves working with criminal justice stakeholders to develop a strategic framework that will facilitate the application of science to improve criminal justice, analogous to the framework by which science informs other practical disciplines, such as medicine.

My career has been an exciting journey, motivated by my desire to bring about positive change. I began by studying the nervous system of fruit flies and teaching students. My interest in serving the public led me to became active in local politics and volunteering on a government commission. My move to public policy in Washington, DC, was a natural progression to merge my scientific, educational, and analytical interests with public service.

I welcome the opportunity to network with my fellow public administrators. You may contact me at LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blinsights

I am the Research Associate at the Council for a Strong America, a national, bipartisan, nonprofit compromised of five member organizations that focus on ensuring our children are citizen-ready.  I serve as the research point of contact for our early childhood education, K-1 2 and higher education, focusing on the skills gap, Common Core, testing, after school, teacher effectiveness, school finance, charter school, and career and technical education.

I welcome the opportunity to network with my fellow public administrators. You may contact me at paceved2@gmail.com and my LinkedIN at: www.linkedin.com/in/paulaacevedo.

I am Cherie McClam Brown, an experienced senior management and program analyst with 14 years in the Federal civil service and 10+ years of nonprofit and private sector experience. I possesses a wealth of knowledge and experience in management consulting and organization development, capacity building, strategic planning, and program management.

In 2002, I started my Federal career in the Office of Governmentwide Policy at the U.S. General Services Administration. In 2007, I continued her journey with the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affair’s Office of Passport Services. In August 2010, I joined the Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing, and Innovation, the arm of the Under Secretary for Management.

An “Excellence in Government” Fellow (class of 2010), I participated on varied efforts focused on continuous quality improvement, and performance measurements initiatives. I served as Chief of Quality Coordination (QC) Partnerships and Outreach, and engaged with stakeholders and Quality Teams at U.S. posts across the Bureau of African Affairs on matters of the Collaborative Management Initiatives (CMI)– a quality management system designed to deliver efficient, cost-effective, and high-quality services to federal customers under the International Cooperative Administrative Support Services (ICASS). She completed recent past assignments about CMI at the following locations:  U.S. Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia; Durban and Johannesburg, South Africa; Garmisch and Frankfurt, Germany; and Bogota, Columbia.

As a certified FAC-COR Level III Contracting Officer Representative, my current portfolio involves oversight for environmental (i.e., air quality and energy) and labor contracts totaling more than $10 million dollars in total obligations.

When not in the office, I actively participate as an ordained member of the ministerial staff at the First Apostolic Faith Church (Baltimore, Maryland) and the Fellowship Bible Way Church (Washington, DC).  I concurrently chair the Alexandria Project Discovery Board, an organization that prepares and motivates low income and first generation college-eligible students to access opportunities in higher education.

I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the George Washington University, and a Master of Public Administration degree from the School of Public Affairs at American University.

For 11 years, I have shared a beautiful life and continues to embrace all that life has to offer with my best friend and husband, Patrick G. Brown, an accomplished musician and educator in Baltimore, Maryland.

You may contact me at BrownCM1@state.gov.

I am Rodney Follin, Business Manager for the Prince William Health District.  As an agency of the Virginia Department of Health, my organization serves as the “local health department” for Prince William County and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park in Northern Virginia.  I have served in this capacity for the last six years.  I lead and oversee all administrative services for the district including budget and financial management, human resources, facilities and records management, information technology, vital records, and clinic administrative support services.

Prior to my present position, I served as a senior management and budget analyst for the Prince William County Office of Management and Budget, where I was employed for 24 years and functioned as a human services management and policy expert.  That experience prepared me well for many of my management responsibilities today.  I have spent my entire career in local and now State government here in Northern Virginia, where I was born and raised.  In fact, I started my public service career as a teenager working on a roadside litter pickup crew, protecting the environment of Fairfax County.  It certainly has been an interesting journey from there.

My professional passion is resource allocation and budget management, which are the most gratifying uses of my problem solving skills.  I will always be a “budget guy” and I enjoy applying those abilities in the ongoing development of my organization and the challenges it faces.  Under ever tighter fiscal conditions, we are continuing to transition from traditional client-based services to innovative population-based services to most effectively accomplish our mission of “promoting optimum wellness, preventing illness, responding to emergencies, and protecting the environment and health of our residents.”  For more information about the Prince William Health District please visit us athttp://www.vdh.virginia.gov/LHD/PrinceWilliam/.

When not serving the public, I like to hike in the mountains and play organized softball.  My softball team has played together for the last 28 years.  I encourage everyone to pursue work-life balance throughout their professional careers.

I can be contacted atrodney.follin@vdh.virginia.gov.

As a CountyStat Analyst in the Office of the Montgomery County Executive and a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, I help public administrators use data to solve problems and deliver results for residents. This work builds from two formative experiences earlier in my career: working on IT strategies with federal agencies at the start of the Obama administration’s Open Data Initiative and then studying the emergence of “smart city” innovations at the World Bank, as leading cities began to leverage data from sensors, connected citizens, and “big data” information systems to help make smarter decisions.

My experience of working with cities across the world at the World Bank led to a new appreciation for local government—and an awareness that, in this time of partisan gridlock, government innovation increasingly takes place at the local level. This led me to Montgomery County, where data informs everything that we do. For instance, to promote accountability, we annually assess the performance of all County departments through over 400 data-driven performance measures shared via online dashboards. To ensure customer service excellence, we use open data on citizen service requests to track the responsiveness of County departments in real-time.

Importantly, we also use data as a platform for collaborative problem solving. For instance, the CountyStat team mapped out pedestrian collisions to identify hotspots and target the activities of engineers, police officers, and public information officers; assessed community data to identify demand for English language training and potential gaps in coverage across 25+ service providers; and translated troves of community and government databases into actionable insights to help shape the County’s upcoming senior strategy in partnership with a dozen County departments and a multitude of community partners.

More and more local governments, regionally and nationally, are similarly recognizing the power of data and implementing data-driven programs like CountyStat. Together, we are jointly giving rise to a new profession within public administration—the “government data scientist”—as we use data and analytics to tackle public problems and improve the performance of government.

Dennis can be contacted at dlinders@umd.edu and dennislinders.com. He also invites you to read his “smart city” chapter in the recently published World Bank – World Development Report 2016, available at bit.ly/wdr-smartcities.