Steve Brigham Email & Phone Number

Metro Washington Dc

I recently published the book, It's Never Been a Level Playing Field: Overcoming 8 Racial Myths to Even the Field.

Washington D.C. Metro Area

I founded PEA (https://www.publicengagementassociates.com/) with two close colleagues in early 2014. I am the lead consultant on many of our citizen/stakeholder engagement projects. In the past 5 years, I have facilitated projects with a strong racial equity focus: • Small Business Anti-Displacement Network: PEA facilitated an 18-month process to ensure that disadvantaged business owners, workers, and residents across the country benefit from new neighborhood investments in financial health, wealth, and long-term stability, organizing 50 network meetings across more than 20 metro regions. • Thrive Montgomery 2050, Montgomery County, MD is a new countywide plan that guides growth & development in the county over 30 years. Our team worked with residents to evaluate a near-final plan draft from a racial equity and social justice lens. We led engagement efforts, leveraging focus group input from targeted communities (primarily BIPOC and low-to-moderate income households) while expanding input with a county-wide survey. With NspireGreen (lead consultant), we presented recommendations to the County Council, which passed the plan in 2022.• Purple Line Corridor Coalition: Since 2018, Steve has supported the Coalition in: launching a governance system; facilitating annual meetings; leading resident/stakeholder engagement for housing and small business support action plans; & leading its workforce development plan. Steve authored “Ensuring a More Inclusive and Equitable Workforce Recovery in the Post-Pandemic Era” to guide the plan. • Montgomery County Public Schools: PEA worked with WXY Studios to organize 2 dozen community meetings (3,000 people) for the school district’s District-Wide Boundary Analysis to help further the system's objectives of facilitating equitable & optimal outcomes in facility use, student diversity within schools, & student proximity to schools. The Board of Education uses the analysis when deciding future school boundary changes.

I served as President of AmericaSpeaks from mid 2013-2014 as the organization began its wind down after a tremendous 18 year history. During this time, I led nearly all of the citizen and stakeholder engagement projects, including for Creating Community Solutions for Mental Health, Council of Governments, Fix the Debt, Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and Comeback America. I presided over the final close-down of operations in the fall of 2013.

AmericaSpeaks was a national nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging citizens in public decision-making that I served as COO for from 2001-2013.• With authentic leadership, strong fiscal oversight and budget management led the organization from infancy to a recognized leader in the industry within 10 years.• Developed and executed organizational strategy, directed the growth from 2 FTEs and 4 consultants to 14 FTEs and 30+ consultants; grew annual budget from $1 MM to $5+ MM.• Oversaw day‐to‐day operations to ensure compliance with organizational goals.• Moved the organization from one project per year to more than 100 high-visibility public participation and leadership projects over 10 years. • Helped develop and implement innovative programs at the local, regional, state, national, and international levels that produce meaningful action and change. • Designed citizen engagement initiatives that have engaged more than 170,000 citizens to date, and built credibility with policy makers, the media, key stakeholders and the public.• Delivered dozens of successful 21st Century Town Meeting and 21st Century Summit projects on a wide range of policy and planning issues.

Kaludis Consulting Group is a boutique consulting firm, based in Washington, DC, that focuses exclusively on the higher education sector. During my tenure there, I managed year-long strategic planning processes with several colleges and universities leading to a new, 5-year direction for each institution in the midst of challenging academic or fiscal times.

GDSS was a management consulting firm (now known as Touchstone Consulting) delivering group decision technologies and processes to the federal sector. In my time there, I: • Redesigned a grant-making process for the World Bank for more efficient funds distribution. • Designed and directed an executive leadership conference for 300 leaders of the General Services Administration (GSA).• Facilitated planning and decision-making sessions for a wide range of federal and education clients using cutting edge, proprietary groupware.

The American Association of Higher Education was a national nonprofit association dedicated to reform in higher education. During my five years there, I:• Launched a 5-year, national project to promote best practices in Total Quality Management (TQM) in higher education. • Established a national quality network to serve the ongoing learning and training needs of 100+ university quality practitioners. • Edited two books on TQM now considered critical guides for hundreds of campuses. • Launched innovative, annual 5-day program for 25 college leadership teams to collaborate on strategic, campus-wide initiatives, completing in 5 days what typically took 6+ months on campus.

B.A., Geography, Environmental Affairs

Activities and Societies: Phi Beta Kappa

Masters Of Applied Behavioral Sciences, Organization Development

Graduate Certificate, Management Of Innovation And Technology