Advisory Board
PBP's Advisory Board provides additional expertise and support. See full bios at the bottom of the page.
Patricia Jerido
Leadership Matters Consulting
New York City
Sandeep Kandhari
Legal Aid Society
New York City
Al Solis
San Francisco
Giovanni Allegretti
Centre of Social Studies at the University of Coimbra | Coimbra, Portugal
Giovanni is an architect, planner and and senior researcher at the Centre of Social Studies, at the University of Coimbra. Since 1997, his main research topics are Participatory Budgets and citizens’ participation to urban planning, issues on which he published several articles, essays and books in different languages, served as a consultant for projects of the Council of Europe, the World Bank, UN-Habitat, and United Cities and Local Governments. He teaches at Coimbra’s School of Economics, co-directing the interdisciplinary Ph.D. “Democracy in the XXI century” and coordinating the PEOPLES’ Observatory on Participation, Innovation and Local Powers. For 2014-2019 he has been appointed by the Italian Parliament as co-chair of the Independent Authority for the Guarantee and Promotion of Participation of the Tuscany Region, which includes the management of an annual fund to promote participatory culture at the local level. He coordinates the international Project “EMPATIA: Enabling Multichannel Participation Through ICT Adaptations,” which has developed a comprehensive tech platform for PB, funded by the European Commission.
Sal Asaro
Queens College, CUNY | New York City
Sal joined the PB process at Queens College, CUNY during the first cycle’s vote week in 2016, and has been the most active member since then. He has led the process at Queens College for the past two years and has helped it survive many administrative roadblocks. Sal is a Master’s Student in biology at Queens College, studying plant behavior and evolution.
David Beasley
Auburn Seminar | New York City
David Beasley leads Auburn Seminary’s use of digital tools to deepen connections to, with, and among leaders in the multifaith movement for justice. They are most interested in the way that relationships can exist across distance and difference in digital spaces. David leads online growth by finding new ways to provide tools to train, support, and nourish leaders in service of the broader movement for justice. Before joining Auburn, David was a member of the senior leadership team and responsible for communications and marketing at the Participatory Budgeting Project, a nonprofit startup that is changing the way government works by giving people direct control over how their taxes are spent in their communities. David builds communications programs that serve as megaphones for experts. At Safe Horizon, they supported survivors of violence, including Miss America Kazantsev, to use personal stories that survivors would be seen as more full humans. At Scenarios USA, David learned that if you want to have better sexual health curriculum in high school, the best thing to do is center the voices of high school students.
Alina Chatterjee
Scadding Court Community Centre | Toronto
Alina is Senior Director of Redevelopment and Innovations at Scadding Court Community Centre in Toronto. She has extensive experience in the community sector with a strong background in equity work, fundraising and program development. Some of her past work includes senior management positions with United Way Toronto and York Region, Toronto Community Housing, the City of Toronto, and she also served as Executive Assistant to City Councilor Kristyn Wong-Tam. While at Toronto Community Housing, Alina managed the housing authority’s participatory budgeting process, the first housing process in North America. With a BA from the University of Toronto in international relations, she has been a volunteer member of several non-profit Boards, from Social Planning Toronto, Council of Agencies Serving South Asians to Urban Alliance on Race Relations. Alina currently sits on the Board of Drum Arts Canada in addition to PBP.
Shymaine Davis, CPA
Baltimore, MD
Shymaine brings over 20 years of financial management experience dedicated to the government and nonprofit environment. She served as an adjunct professor with Baltimore City Community College and Howard Community College throughout her accounting career. Then she recognized her passion of educating youth on career and job readiness, financial literacy and entrepreneurship. As an advocate of community schools, she works with Harford Business Center, which collaborates with community organizations to support youth with workforce development, job placement, training support, monitoring and evaluation. Shymaine is the Treasurer for the Woodholme Elementary School PTA, member on Neighborhood United, Treasurer for Friendly Loving Organization (FLO) and member of Cristata Cares. She first got involved with PBP as part of the Planning Committee for PB in Baltimore.
Karen Dolan
Institute for Policy Studies | Washington D.C.
Karen is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, where she has worked since 1996. She holds an M.A. With Highest Distinction in Philosophy and Social Policy from the American University in Washington DC. At IPS she directs the Cities for Progress and Cities for Peaceprojects, which link community-led organizations with policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels. Her work focuses on local democracy/empowerment, peace, anti-poverty and economic equality. She helped pilot participatory budgeting in Chicago’s 49th Ward, the first municipal participatory budgeting process in the US. She is currently collaborating with NY-Times Best-Selling Author Barbara Ehrenreich to tell the stories of the millions of Americans affected by the Great Recession. Karen regularly appears in print and broadcast media, and some of her publications include: Battered By Storm: How The Safety Net Is Failing Americans and How to Fix It; Our Communities are Not for Sale; Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of War in Iraq, Unleash Democracy in Mandate for Change, and Foreign Policy Goes Local. She also serves on the boards of The Backbone Campaign, The Liberty Tree Foundation, and the Jobs With Justice Worker Rights Board.
Joanna Duarte Laudon
City of Toronto | Toronto
Joanna is a Senior Policy and Research Officer at the City of Toronto. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto who completed her Master’s degree at York University in urban planning. She has researched and facilitated public participation programs in Venezuela and her hometown of Toronto. In 2009 and 2010 she co-facilitated two participatory evaluations of Toronto Community Housing’s PB process, working with a team of public housing tenants and staff to research and improve the process. Joanna has also worked with community organizations such as Barrio Nuevo, Manifesto Community Projects, and the Hispanic Development Council.
Michael Freedman-Schnapp
Forsyth Street | New York City
Michael is a Vice President at Forsyth Street, a financial advisory firm. He works in all of the firm’s practice areas, with particular emphasis on advising clients in the areas of impact investment, community development, and clean energy finance. Prior to Forsyth, Michael served the New York City Council for five years, most recently as the Director of the Policy & Innovation Division. In this position, he directed the expansion of Participatory Budgeting to over half of New York City, the compilation of the Council’s platform to combat climate change, and the drafting of landmark legislation reforming the Council’s rules to make the body more democratic, effective, and transparent. Prior to that, he served as Director of Policy of the Office of Council Member Brad Lander, where among other efforts, he helped plan and launch what became the largest Participatory Budgeting process in North America. Michael is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service where he teaches a course on Participatory Policymaking. Michael holds a Master of Urban Planning from the NYU Wagner School and a B.A. in Archaeology from the University of Virginia.
Alexandra Flynn
University of Toronto | Toronto
Alex is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto (Scarborough) where she teaches and researches in the areas of property law and urban governance. Her current project focuses on the role of communities and neighborhoods in city governance. She is also involved in a long-term project examining the relationship between Indigenous and municipal governments in planning decisions. Alex has over ten years of experience as a lawyer and senior policy official, most recently at the City of Toronto where she focused on intergovernmental relations. Prior to that, she represented First Nations on land use, contract, transactional and treaty issues. Alex is also a fierce advocate of access to justice and broadening civic engagement, including broadening the use of participatory budgeting. When not working, you can find her hiking, cycling and camping with her family, including two young sons.
Jez Hall
PB Partners | Lancaster, UK
Jez is a member of PB Partners, and he was a long-time associate of the UK based PB Unit.He has worked on promoting Participatory Budgeting (PB) in England, Scotland and Wales since August 2000. As well as his work establishing the PB Unit, supporting the early English pilots and advising local authorities, he is now focusing on a new project of PB with children and young people as a way to develop citizenship skills and create new opportunities for personal empowerment. Jez was previously employed by Lancaster University Management School as a social enterprise business analyst. Between 2005 and 2007 he was a non-executive director of Central Manchester Primary Care Trust, with oversight of community engagement and children services. Jez also spent 10 years working for a community architecture charity advising community groups on project development, community organizing and community led regeneration. In 2009 he established Shared Future CIC, a not for profit company specializing in supporting Social Enterprise.
Sandy Heierbacher
National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation | Boston
Sandy is the director of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD), which brings together people and groups across the US who actively practice, promote and study inclusive, high quality conversations. Sandy has consulted for such organizations as the Corporation for National Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Kettering Foundation in the areas of intergroup dialogue, public participation and deliberative democracy. Sandy has an M.A. in International Management from SIT Graduate Institute.
Gabriel Hetland
University at Albany | Albany, NY
Gabriel is assistant professor of Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) at University at Albany, SUNY. He completed his PhD in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation examined participatory budgeting in Venezuela and Bolivia, looking at the similarities and differences in how PB is implemented in municipalities run by Left and Right parties. He has also conducted research on PB in Vallejo, CA, and is a member of the Research Advisory Board for PB Vallejo. Gabriel has written about PB, social movements, and politics in Latin America and the US for The Nation, NACLA, CounterPunch, Dollars and Sense, and ZNET and his work appears in several edited volumes on Latin America, social movements, and the Occupy movement.
Isaac Jabola-Carolus
City University of New York | New York City
Isaac is a PhD student at the City University of New York. From 2012 to 2014, he served as a PBP Project Assistant, supporting PB processes in New York City and Boston. Prior to joining PBP, he worked with the New York Hotel Trades Council and the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center. A graduate of Brown University with a degree in Development Studies, he has also researched and written about participatory democracy in social movements.
Patricia Jerido
Leadership Matters Consulting | New York City
Patricia Jerido is the Principal Consultant at Leadership Matters Consulting providing executive coaching, strategy, training, and facilitation to organizations committed to making the world better. Patricia is a trained M.S.W., social worker, and has over 25 years experience in social justice work. She has worked as an advocate, board member, coach, community organizer, fundraiser, funder, individual and group work counselor, strategist, and trainer. Patricia served as a budget delegate in the PB process during its inauguration in NYC in 2011. Since then, she has remained active as a District 39 Committee member and as a representative on the Citywide PB Committee.
Sandeep Kandhari
Legal Aid Society | New York City
Sandeep is committed to increasing civic engagement in historically underrepresented communities. After graduating from NYU Law School in 2006, he has been practicing as a juvenile defense attorney and is now working to expand the reach of public defenders' work in New York City. Sandeep developed a Community Partnership Project with The Legal Aid Society where he went to schools all over NYC to teach kids their rights and how to combat racism. He sees PB as a vital tool to spark civic interest in our kids. Sandeep cherishes his work as an advocate fighting against systemic racism and biases in our criminal and civil justice systems. When he's not talking about systemic racism, Sandeep will be more than happy to chat about basketball.
Alexander Kolokotronis
Yale University | New Haven, CT
Alexander is a PhD student in political science at Yale University, where he is an active member of UNITE-HERE Local 33, the union of graduate employees. His research focuses on participatory democracy and workers’ self-management. He is the Founder and Board Director of Student Organization for Democratic Alternatives (SODA). With SODA he has coordinated or assisted in the implementation of four PB processes at City University of New York. As Student Coordinator of NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives and Worker Cooperative Development Assistant at Make the Road New York (MRNY), he advocated for passage and subsequent enhancement of the Worker Cooperative Development Initiative (WCBDI) and aided in the development of worker cooperatives.
Rachel Laforest
Retail Action Project | New York City
Rachel directs the Retail Action Project, a member-based organization with the mission of building worker power, elevating industry standards, and promoting family-sustaining jobs. She was previously the Executive Director of the Right to the City Alliance, and she spent eight years working with progressive labor, directing the Organizing and Public Policy departments of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 and Actors Equity Association (AEA). Rachel organized and led multiple mobilizations of thousands of TWU members to City Hall and the state government; conducted extensive research and designed education and training in public policy for union members and officers; and was a lead coordinator for TWU during the 2005 New York City transit strike, after which the union leadership was jailed. Prior to her career with TWU and AEA, Rachel served as Lead Organizer/Co-Campaign Director for Jobs with Justice/ New York, building community-labor solidarity and joint action and co-coordinating the campaign that won an increase of $2 per hour in the minimum wage for New York State. Rachel holds a BA from Hunter College/CUNY in Political Science (Black & Puerto Rican Studies) and Education. She has served on the Steering Committee for Participatory Budgeting in New York City.
Stephen Lafume
City of Boston | Boston
Stephen Lafume started his work with participatory budgeting as a 15 year old youth participant in Boston's Youth Lead the Change (YLC) process PB process. Since then he has assisted in coordinating 4 additional cycles of Boston's YLC process. Stephen started his civic engagement journey advocating for youth jobs at the Massachusetts state house when he was 12 years old with his local youth council. Since then he has worked with Boston Mayors Youth Council to advocate for the city's youth to city staff. Stephen is also an entrepreneur and a dedicated manga reader.
Steve Larosiliere
Stoked | Chicago
In 2005, Steve founded Stoked, a mentoring organization with the purpose of promoting personal development, academic achievement, and healthy living to underserved youth through action sports culture. Prior to founding Stoked, Steve worked at Mentoring USA as a mentor recruiter where he advocated for foster care youth by presenting the benefits of mentoring to corporations and government officials. He holds a BA in History from Stony Brook University and an MPA from Baruch College School of Public Affairs.
Matt Leighninger
Public Agenda | Hamilton, ON
Matt is Director of Public Engagement at Public Agenda, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps diverse leaders and citizens navigate divisive, complex issues and work together to find solutions. Public Agenda coordinates local research and evaluation for Participatory Budgeting in North America. Before joining Public Agenda Matt served as the Executive Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC), an alliance of the major organizations and leading scholars working in the field of deliberation and public engagement. Matt is a Senior Associate for Everyday Democracy, and serves on the boards of E-Democracy.Org, the National School Public Relations Association, and The Democracy Imperative.
Richard Marcantonio
Public Advocates | San Francisco
As a managing attorney, Richard A. Marcantonio leads Public Advocates’ transportation, housing and climate justice advocacy and litigation team. His deep knowledge of both affordable housing and transportation equity makes him a valued interdisciplinary advocate. As California reforms its approach to regional planning for land use and transportation, Richard is working with coalitions around the state to ensure that laws calling for greenhouse gas emission reductions are implemented to bring benefits, rather than added burdens, to low-income communities and communities of color. He has been instrumental in connecting PB and PBP with planning and policy alliances Public Agenda is part of, including the CA Climate Equity Coalition, 6 Wins for Equity and Justice Coalition, and educational equity campaigns across California. Richard’s advocacy on behalf of PB has led directly to the CA Department of Transportation including PB as an eligible use of their planning grants in the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Planning Agency, allocating $1 million for a PB pilot with transportation funds in low-income communities.
Joe Moore
Diliberto Real Estate Services | Chicago
Joe Moore is a former Alderman and member of Chicago City Council. He represented the city’s 49th Ward from 1991-2019, which includes the Rogers Park neighborhood. He joined Diliberto Real Estate Services' Municipal Economic Services Group as its National Director in 2019. He has been named the “Most Valuable Local Official” in the country by The Nation magazine, in recognition for his successful sponsorship of a resolution against the war in Iraq, measures requiring living wages for employees of big box retail stores, and environmental restrictions on Chicago’s coal-fired power plants. Starting in 2009, he launched the first participatory budgeting process in the US, inviting residents of his ward to directly decide how to spend his $1.3 million discretionary budget.
Aseem Mulji
University of California | Berkeley, CA
Aseem is a law student at the University of California, Berkeley. He helped to implement the first citywide participatory budgeting process in Vallejo, California and, from 2014 to 2016, served as PBP’s Data & Technology Manager. While at PBP, Aseem helped to launch the Participation Lab and worked with public institutions to integrate technology thoughtfully and responsibly in PB processes. He looks forward to using legal expertise in service of participatory democracy and social justice.
Tiago Peixoto
World Bank Institute | Washington, DC
Tiago is currently an open government specialist with the ICT4Gov program of the World Bank Institute (WBI)’s Open Governance cluster. Prior to joining the Bank, Tiago managed projects and worked as an advisor and consultant for various organizations in the field of participation and technology, such as the European Commission, OECD, the United Nations, and the Brazilian and UK Governments. He is also a research coordinator of the Electronic Democracy Centre, a joint venture of the European University Institute, the University of Zurich and the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford. Tiago is one of the leading experts on online and digital engagement in PB.
Whitney Quesenbery
Center for Civic Design | New York City
Whitney is co-director of the Center for Civic Design, the home of the Field Guides to Ensuring Voter Intent and the Anywhere Ballot. She and the CCD team work to create a better voter journey from inviting more people to be voters through automatic registration, election guides that help them be informed voters, better ballots (including usability testing ballots for PB in New York), and modern voting systems. She has worked with election departments from Connecticut to California helping them make elections easier, more usable, and more accessible. Her work in civic design began with her appointment to the EAC Federal advisory committee writing the first usability requirements for voting systems. Whitney brings her expertise in UX research, accessibility and plain language, and a passion for understanding the story behind the data to her work. She is the author of three book about user experience: A Web for Everyone: Designing Accessible User Experience, Storytelling in User Experience, andGlobal UX: Design and Research in a Connected World. Whitney and co-director Dana Chisnell teach a ground-breaking course in Election Design at the University of Minnesota.
Richard Raya
City of Oakland | Oakland, CA
As Chief of Staff for an Oakland City Councilmember, Richard worked with PBP to help spearhead Oakland’s first-ever participatory budgeting process, the first in the US with federal funds (HUD Community Development Block Grants). He also mediated community benefit negotiations between market-rate housing developers and community activists, resulting in plans for mixed-income buildings, below-market retail space, union labor, local-hire targets, and funds for neighborhood participatory budgeting projects. Before this, Richard served as Executive Director of Youth Radio, and Director of Administrative Services for the Alameda County Public Health Department. Richard grew up in one of California’s largest Section 8 housing complexes. After dropping out of high school, he went to community college, then transferred to U.C. Berkeley. He earned a B.A. in English and a Master’s in Public Policy. He’s accompanied on his journey by his urban-planner wife, five sons, and their rescue dog, a pit bull named Dazzle Rathbone.
Erin Sanborn
Taos, NM
Erin has worked throughout the US to improve communities’ economic resiliency, through the integration of environmental stewardship, social justice and economic development. For 30 years she has provided conflict resolution and organizational development support to help organizations tackle complex problems. She has served as a consultant, leadership coach, project and program manager, conference organizer, trainer, public speaker, facilitator and mediator for the US Environmental Protection Agency, MIT, Intel, the Alliance for Community Care, the Taos Community Foundation, and dozens of other organizations, institutions, and businesses. Erin specializes in the design and management of complex multi-stakeholder (government agencies, nonprofit/NGOs, communities, businesses) collaborative processes focused on the quality of education, transportation, healthcare and sustainable development.
Daniel Schugurensky
Arizona State University | Tempe, AZ
Daniel is a professor in the School of Social Transformation and in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. He is particularly interested in the connections between participatory democracy, citizenship education and community engagement. Daniel has helped organize three international conferences on citizenship learning and participatory democracy (Toronto 2003, Toronto 2008, Rosario 2010). He has conducted research on Participatory Budgeting in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Canada, paying special attention to the educational dimension of participatory budgeting. He co-edited the book “Learning citizenship by practicing democracy: International initiatives and perspectives” (Cambridge Scholarly Press, 2010). Other recent publications include “The Tango of Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy”, “’This is our school of citizenship’: Informal learning in local democracy”, “’I took a lot of stuff for granted’: Participatory budgeting and the Neighbourhood Support Coalition” (with Elizabeth Pinnington), “Who Learns What in Participatory Democracy? Participatory Budgeting in Rosario, Argentina” (with Josh Lerner), and “Participatory Budgeting in North America: The Case of Guelph, Canada” (with Elizabeth Pinnington and Josh Lerner).
Donata Secondo
Democracy Fund | Washington DC
Donata Secondo is the Manager of Learning and Strategy at the Democracy Fund, a bipartisan foundation working to ensure that our political system is able to withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. As part of the Democracy Fund’s Strategy, Impact, and Learning team, she supports the organization in developing impactful systems-based strategies and in fostering an active learning culture for the organization, our grantees, and the broader field. Prior to joining the Democracy Fund in 2015, Donata worked as Program Associate with the Participatory Budgeting Project, where she managed the PBNYC process and helped engage thousands of NYC residents in directly allocating a portion of the city’s budget. Her research and experience working on PB has lead to several publications. Donata has a Masters of Science in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a BA in International Development.
Al Solis
San Francisco
At the Buck Institute for Education (BIE), Alfred led a human-centered design project for an integrated Project Based Learning (PBL) teacher experience. As Director of Innovation, he was also responsible for developing BIE.org and PBLU.org to support and advance PBL for teachers and leaders. He co-developed BIE's flagship PBL 101 Workshop (15K participants/annually) and co-authored the PBL 101 Workbook. Prior to joining BIE, Alfred taught math and physics at High Tech High where he used his engineering background and industry experience to design classroom projects. Alfred started his career with Andersen Consulting doing business/internet consulting and later joined a Bay Area venture fund.
Santa Soriano-Vasquez
Community Service Society | New York City
Santa is the Director of Government Relations at the Community Service Society of New York. She promotes and advances CSS’s legislative agenda and programs at the City, State and Federal levels by drawing attention to initiatives and issues that CSS takes on to systematically address the barriers to economic mobility of low income New Yorkers. She monitors proposed government policies and the annual city and state budget cycle, especially as they relate to funding CSS programs and initiatives. Prior to her current position, Santa worked as a Training/Technical Assistance Specialist for CSS/Center for Benefits and Services where she performed research, wrote publications, and conducted trainings on federal, State, and local government benefits programs. From 2002 to 2005, Santa worked with CSS/Retired and Senior Volunteer Program where she worked on the development of innovative volunteer programs related to disconnected youth, financial literacy and reentry issues to increase the capacity of CBOs through partnerships. Santa holds a Masters in Public Administration from New York University and a Bachelor Degree in Psychology from City College of New York. She got involved with PB by serving for five years on the PBNYC Steering Committee and Research Board.
Anne Stuhldreher
Financial Justice Project, City and County of San Francisco
Anne is the Director of Financial Justice in the Office of the Treasurer for the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco is the first city in the nation to launch a Financial Justice Project to assess and reform how fines, fees, and financial penalties impact the cities’ most vulnerable residents. Throughout her career, Anne has advanced innovations in local economic empowerment, civic engagement and public interest journalism. In San Francisco, she brought people together to initiate and launch initiatives like: Bank on San Francisco (that spurs banks to create starter accounts for the estimated one in five Americans who don’t have them); the Working Families Credit, and Kindergarten to College. As a Senior Policy Advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver, she helped start the WE Connect Campaign and Bank on California. She also served as a Senior Program Manager for the California Endowment, a statewide health justice philanthropic foundation that has invested in participatory budgeting across California. Formerly, Anne worked at the Ford Foundation, and was the Associate Director of Opportunity Fund, a Community Development Financial Institution in Northern California.
Celina Su
City University of New York | New York City
Celina is an associate professor of political science at the City University of New York and co-founding executive director of the Burmese Refugee Project, which employs participatory models to foster community development among Shan Burmese refugees in northwest Thailand. Her research focuses on civil society and the cultural politics of education and health policy. She has written numerous articles and two books on civic engagement and education policy: Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx (Cornell University Press, 2009), and, co-authored with Gaston Alonso, Noel Anderson, and Jeanne Theoharis Our Schools Suck: Young People Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education (New York University Press, 2009). She serves on the Steering Committee for PBNYC.
Rachel Swaner
Center for Court Innovation | New York City
Rachel is a principal research associate for the Center for Court Innovation, focusing on youth programming at the Red Hook Community Justice Center. She is also working on a national portrait of the commercial sexual exploitation of children, and the evaluation of Defending Childhood, the U.S. Attorney General’s multi-site initiative to address children’s exposure to violence. Prior to joining the Center, she was a research associate at the Harlem Children’s Zone, where she evaluated social, educational, and health programs for children and youth. Ms. Swaner received her B.S. and Master’s of Public Administration from New York University, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center. She has served as a budget delegate in the 39th District in PBNYC.
Aaron Tanaka
Center for Economic Democracy | Boston
Aaron is the Director of the Center for Economic Democracy in Boston, and Co-Chair of the Board of the New Economy Coalition. He worked with PBP as the part-time lead organizer for the first youth participatory budgeting process in the US, in Boston. He was previously the founding Executive Director of the Boston Workers Alliance (2005-2012), where he built a grassroots organization that serves thousands of Boston residents with job search and CORI sealing services. He was co-chair for the Commonwealth CORI Coalition, a statewide network of over 135 labor, youth, community, faith and criminal justice organizations. Aaron has been intimately involved in policy and public program design at both city and state levels, including with the Boston’s CORI Ordinance, the Boston Residents Jobs Policy, and the Renew Boston program. In 2010, the BWA incorporated municipal Participatory Budgeting as an organizational goal, and began a grassroots education campaign to popularize the idea in Roxbury and Dorchester.
Tai Tsao
Meeteor | New York City
Tai is a Change Management Specialist at Meeteor. She is driven to help individuals, teams, and organizations lead changes with lasting impact. At Meeteor, Tai brings the lens of learning, behavioral science and organizational change to help Meeteor customers be more successful when adopting technology and integrating new ways of working. She develops content, programs, and educational materials to support the change adoption process including strategies for incorporating new meeting practices, communicating vision, and evaluating effectiveness. In addition, Tai writes about improving meeting effectiveness and developing high-performance teams. Prior to joining Meeteor, Tai worked as a change management and organizational development consultant in a variety of settings: domestic and abroad, internal and external, business and non-profit organizations. She was also the founder of i-Talent Learning Community, an organization that provides career development and mentoring programs for college students in Taiwan. Tai received her Master’s degree in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Science in Banking from National ChengChi University. When not working and learning to unlock human potential, Tai enjoys exploring cultural activities in New York City as a local tourist.
David Vlahov
Yale University | New Haven/New York City
David Vlahov, PhD RN, brings expertise in measuring health and well-being impacts of community-wide interventions. His data has contributed to health policy changes, including when he served on the New York City Board of Health. His study of Participatory Budgeting started during a Visiting Professorship with the Faculty of Medicine, Federal University Midas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He was the Founding President of the International Society for Urban Health, and is currently at the Yale University School of Nursing with a joint appointment in the Yale School of Public Health. He serves as Co-Director of the Culture of Health – Evidence for Action (E4A) – National Program Office for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Meg Wade
Seattle
Meg managed PBP’s operations until May 2015. Before joining staff, she served on the PBP Board of Directors for two years. She first participated in PB during the inaugural year of participatory budgeting in Chicago’s 49th Ward, serving as a co-chair of the transportation committee. A freelance writer, facilitator, and organizer, she has been active in numerous efforts for local democracy and sustainability. She holds both a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Chicago.
Ny Whitaker
Events by Ny | New York City, NY
Ny is a marketing professional specializing in events, cause marketing, corporate sponsorships & strategic partnerships. She has more than a decade of experience managing the marketing departments for several prominent New York based corporations and nonprofit organizations. She serves as President of Events by Ny and teaches at NYU’s School for Continuing and Professional Studies. She has served as a facilitator for Participatory Budgeting in New York City, in Council District 8 in East Harlem.
Sondra Youdelman
New York City
Sondra is an independent consultant who previously served as Executive Director of Community Voices Heard, a member organization of low-income people, predominantly women with experience on welfare, building power in New York City and State to improve the lives of families and communities. Sondra has worked both in the United States and abroad to achieve social and economic justice through organizing. She has over 15 years experience as an organizer and activist with grassroots groups including farm workers, Native Americans, public housing residents, and low-income workers in the United States, and abroad for various populations throughout Latin America and in several African countries. She obtained a Master’s Degree in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.