Wendy Willis is the Executive Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, a global network of major organizations and leading scholars working in the field of deliberation and public engagement. Wendy is also the Founder and Director of Oregon’s Kitchen Table, a program of the National Policy Consensus Center in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. Wendy is also a widely published poet and essayist, writing often on issues of public life. She is also the former Executive Director of the City Club of Portland and has served as an Assistant Public Defender for the District of Oregon and law clerk to Chief Justice Wallace P. Carson, Jr. of the Oregon Supreme Court. Wendy graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law Center and holds an M.F.A. from Pacific Lutheran University and a B.A. from Willamette University. Her most recent book, These are Strange Times, My Dear, was released in February 2019. Her last book, A Long, Late Pledge, won the Dorothy Brunsman Award for Poetry an was a 2019 Oregon Book Award finalist.
Co-Chair Kyle Bozentko brings over a decade of civic engagement, public policy, and political organizing experience to oversee the strategic, organizational, and programmatic development of the Jefferson Center. In this role he has worked with the Minnesota Historical Society, the Cleveland City Council, and the Consultation and Response Agency of the Department of Premier and Cabinet in South Australia to strengthen their public participation and civic engagement initiatives on issues ranging from municipal governance to nuclear waste storage. Kyle serves on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Public Participation, the Advisory Board of Forum dos Cidadaos, and on the Mnsure Health Industry Advisory Committee.
Co-Chair Bruce L. Mallory, professor of education at the University of New Hampshire from 1979 to 2016, has been a practitioner and national leader in the deliberative democracy movement for the past fifteen years. At the Carsey School of Public Policy, he provides technical assistance and leadership related to the use of deliberative processes for citizen engagement. As co-director of New Hampshire Listens, a civic engagement initiative of the Carsey School, Bruce leads the development of capacity building in local communities and at the state level for public dialogue on a range of issues. Bruce served as the interim director of Carsey Institute from 2011 to 2014. In addition, he has served as Education department chair (1987-1993), graduate school dean (1997-2003), and provost and executive vice president (2003-2009) at UNH. In 2015, Bruce was named by the NH Humanities Council as one of the 40 most significant contributors to the humanities in New Hampshire over the past 40 years.