Director Of Government And Public Affairs
Current• Developed and led successful legislative campaign to secure introduction and enactment of the Wounded Warriors Federal Leave Act, creating disabled veteran leave for new hires in the federal government. Drafted legislative language, talking points, Dear Colleagues, grassroots letters, and other advocacy materials. The law helped more than 45,000 disabled veteran federal employees in its first five years. • Led two successful efforts to extend coverage of the Wounded Warriors Federal Leave Act to disabled veterans in agencies not covered by the original legislation. • Created successful advocacy strategy, met with bipartisan members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, and committee staff, to repeal the 2014 DOD Joint Travel Regulation policy on long-term TDY per diems.• Led the association’s outreach and grassroots efforts to successfully lobby Congress to include the Administrative Leave Act in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.• Compose written and oral testimony for Congressional hearings to promote FMA’s policy interests, and provide spokesperson training.• Serve as on-the-record spokesman, media liaison, and guest expert with local and national, print, online, radio and television media. Appeared 25+ times on Federal News Network (Washington, DC: AM1500).• Compose and edit speeches, press releases, op-eds, articles, talking points, and other written materials to support the association's mission. Work has been published in The Washington Post, Government Executive, Federal News Radio, Federal Times, and The Public Manager. • Write a feature column in FMA’s quarterly magazine, The Federal Manager, distributed to all FMA members and all congressional offices, and a monthly “Hear it from FMA” column for FEDManager.com, sent to more than 50,000 federal managers across the country.
