Amy B. Dean is is the principal of ABD Ventures, LLC, a consulting firm that works with social change organizations to develop new and innovative organizing strategies that link advocacy and public policy reforms. She is also a social entrepreneur, author, and progressive activist, with roots in the American labor movement, where she served for almost twenty years. She is coauthor, with David B. Reynolds, of A New, New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement, a Century Foundation Book (Cornell University Press, 2009). From 1993 to 2003, she served as president and CEO of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, the fifteenth largest regional labor federation in the country, representing more ninety unions and 110,000 members, and was the youngest person and first woman to lead a major labor federation of the AFL-CIO. During that time, she established Working Partnerships USA (WPUSA), a nonprofit organization that connected sound economic research with strong community organizing. Under her leadership, WPUSA’s milestone accomplishments included the nation’s first universal health care insurance for children regardless of immigration status, the enactment of San Jose’s first living wage ordinance governing public contracts, and the development of one of the nation’s first proposed community benefits ordinances, which ties the expenditure of public funds and public subsidies to measurable community benefits. In 2005, she founded Building Partnerships USA (BPUSA), a national organization dedicated to increasing civic and political participation to strengthen democracy and advance social and economic justice at the regional level.
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Patrick Radden Keefe is a fellow with expertise in intelligence and international security; impact of globalization and new technologies on cross-border security threats; and the privatization of intelligence and homeland security.
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