Citizen Engagement and Political Civility with Dr. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer

May 21, 2014

The 2014 Bruce and Lis Welch Community Dialogue featured Dr. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, Executive Director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, founder of AmericaSpeaks, and one of the foremost citizen engagement practitioners in North America. Dr. Lukensmeyer presented a public lecture on May 21 titled Citizen Engagement and Political Civility

Dr. Lukensmeyer also worked directly with 67 prominent citizen engagement practitioners from British Columbia at the May 22 workshop, Bringing Citizen Voices to the Table: Infrastructure Needs in a Democracy. Workshop participants worked collaboratively to evaluate the province’s citizen engagement infrastructure and explore ways to strengthen the influence of citizen voices on policy decisions at all levels of government in the region. The output was a set of new, original research about the health of citizen engagement in British Columbia.

About Dr. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer

Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer is the Executive Director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse and founder of AmericaSpeaks. Under Carolyn’s leadership, AmericaSpeaks has earned a national reputation as a leader in the field of deliberative democracy and democratic renewal. The organization has successfully applied its 21st Century Town Meeting® to a number of health care-related topics, including, state-wide health care reform in California and Maine, and the national childhood obesity epidemic. Prior to founding AmericaSpeaks, Carolyn served as Consultant to the White House Chief of Staff from November 1993 through June 1994, as the Deputy Project Director for Management of the National Performance Review (NPR), Vice President Al Gore's reinventing government task force, and as Chief of Staff to Governor Richard F. Celeste of Ohio from 1986 to 1991. She also led her own successful organizational development and management consulting firm for 14 years. In this capacity, she worked with public and private sector organizations on four continents.

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Read About the Workshop Findings:

  • May 21, 2014

    May 21, 2014

    Bringing Citizen Voices to the Table brought together 67 prominent citizen engagement practitioners from British Columbia to evaluate the province’s citizen engagement infrastructure and explore ways to strengthen the influence of citizen voices on policy decisions at all levels of government in the region.

ABOUT THE BRUCE AND LIS WELCH COMMUNITY DIALOGUE

Exploring critical community issues through dialogue, this annual programming engages the community at large with the academic community to explore innovative approaches to local issues through cross-sectoral dialogue.