Public Works Staff and Senior Consultants

Schnurer

Firm president Eric B. Schnurer has served as an aide to several governors and U.S. Senators, and has been a policy advisor or speechwriter for nearly a dozen presidential candidates. He holds a Master's degree in public policy from Harvard and a law degree from Columbia, and has been published in major national publications on issues from Medicare and Social Security reform to long-term care and crime policy.

He has served in the federal Office of Independent Counsel (i.e., the "special prosecutor's office"), as chief of staff to the Acting Governor of Pennsylvania, and was appointed by a Democratic governor to serve on the Delaware River Port Authority and by a Republican governor to serve on the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime & Delinquency.

Rhodes

Dr. Linda M. Rhodes
Aging, health care, K-12 and higher education
Linda served as Pennsylvania Secretary of Aging, administering the largest third-party prescription benefit program in the country and overseeing a billion dollars in long term care funding. She created one of the nation's first Family Caregiver Support Programs, which has been cited as a Best Practice example by the Administration on Aging. She is author of Caregiving As Your Parents Age and the national award-winning Should Mom Be Left Alone? Should Dad Be Driving?: Your Q&A Companion to Caregiving, both published by Penguin USA, and the award-winning weekly column on aging and Caregiving issues, Our Parents, Ourselves.

Linda holds a Doctorate in Education from Columbia University's Teachers College. She has developed and taught innovative entrepreneur classes for rural high schools featured in the Wall Street Journal, created a web-based school-to-work program for 24 school districts, created a school safety program for California, and designed a Community Technology Center for inner city children and adults without access to computers through a federally funded grant.

Reitz

Marion Reitz
Human services, management and efficiency
Marion is a senior health and human services consultant with over twenty-five years of experience managing and leading government agencies, as well as for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Prior to beginning her consulting practice, Marion was Vice President, Health Management Services Group, MAXIMUS, where she was responsible for the design, implementation, and management of several state contracts in Medicaid managed care.

She also served for nine years as the Director of the Division of Family Development in New Jersey, responsible for all public assistance and child support programs for the state. She has been responsible for programs at the local level, working in Philadelphia as an Assistant Managing Director with the specific mission of creating interdisciplinary and interdepartmental solutions to health and human service needs not responding to categorical approaches. Marion has a Bachelors Degree in Psychology from Indiana University and a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania.

George Ball
Economic development, infrastructure

Ball

George has extensive experience in management consulting - ranging from privatization of government services in the United States and Europe to new technology for producing light gauge steel - and came within 322 votes of being elected Pittsburgh City Controller.

George received his JD/MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and his BA from Duke University.

Steve Bella
Workforce development

Bella

Steve has held several senior staff positions for Governors across the country, including policy director for Indiana Governor Joe Kernan, communications director for Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, policy director for Indiana Governor Frank O'Bannon, and policy advisor to Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber.

Steve's work has included the design and implementation of several statewide initiatives, and his latest focus has been in education and workforce development.

J. Joseph Cullen
Environment, energy

Cullen

Joe, former Director of the Governor's Policy Office for the Governor of Pennsylvania and Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Planning Board, also served as a Special Assistant to the Governor of Pennsylvania providing advice on energy, environmental, insurance, election law and education reform issues. He was policy and budget director for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, and has over 10 years of experience in the private sector working as an environmental and land use attorney in Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Joe graduated with honors from Yale University and served as a Jesuit volunteer teacher in Peru before earning his law degree at Georgetown University Law Center. He won the Democratic nomination for Congress in the 10th Congressional District of Pennsylvania with 70% of the vote in 1996 before losing a closely contested race to a 38-year incumbent.

Dash

Sarah Dash
Health care

Sarah holds a Master's in Public Health from Yale University and a Bachelor of Science from MIT. She has experience in the Federal government, public interest law, and academic research, where she has developed her interests in the translation of research into effective policy and practice as well as the promotion of efficiency in government. After receiving her Master's degree, she worked as a legal assistant at a public interest law firm specializing in child welfare, civil rights, and Social Security Disability law. She then received a Cancer Research Training Award fellowship at the National Cancer Institute and worked in advocacy outreach with NCI's Office of Liaison Activities and on a variety of research projects with the Applied Research Program. Prior to joining Public Works, she served as a program analyst in NCI's Applied Research Program, where she served as grants management coordinator and managed a range of scientific and administrative performance improvement initiatives.

Gross

Christie Gross
Health care, human services

Christie holds a Master's degree from the University of Delaware in Public Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Political Science. She has both public sector and public consulting experience. Her educational and practical knowledge is highly concentrated in the area of health policy and fiscal administration with experience in cost allocation analyses, program evaluation and strategic planning. Some of her accomplishments include the revision of the Grant-in-Aid senior center funding formula and the publication of the 1999 Consumer Assessments of Health Plans Study (CAHPS), both for the State of Delaware.

Hacker

Sidney Bailey Hacker
Workforce development, budgeting

Sidney graduated from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and has devoted most of her professional life to state government, starting with the Texas Legislature where she worked for five years for the House Appropriations Chair on Texas' school finance formula problem. She then ran the Austin office of Texas' Office of State-Federal Relations for Governor Ann Richards.

Sidney then joined the Texas Performance Review, working to reform the state's criminal justice agency, workforce development system, and utility regulation agency, while developing ways to enhance Texas' economy. She subsequently served as policy director for the gubernatorial campaign of Tony Sanchez, and then managed state and local government relations for Dell Computers. She also served as Deputy Budget Director for the City of Austin before joining Public Works.

Keith

Kathy Keith
Economic development, emergency management

Kathy is a senior manager with experience in both federal and state government operations and policy. Most recently, she served as the Director of Economic Development for the State of New Mexico, where she launched programs to support existing state businesses and entrepreneurial development efforts, especially in creating jobs in the most rural counties with the highest unemployment rates. She spent more that a decade in the federal government, managing a $500 million special project for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, serving as the White House Liaison for the U.S. Department of Energy, and handling issues of Medicare fraud at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She worked for the U.S Congress for seven years, where she served as legislative director to then-Congressman Bill Richardson. Kathy has a bachelor's degree in Journalism and Political Science from Texas Tech University.

Keith

Rick Minor
Education, information technology, healthcare, child/elderly protection

Rick Minor previously was a Senior Manager for Accenture's Government Division and has served as a consultant, project manager and instructor for federal, state, and local governments. Rick also has worked as the Policy Director for two gubernatorial campaigns and a state party. His experience includes policy work in education, information technology, healthcare, and child/elderly protection. He received his Master in Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and graduated with honors from the University of Florida.

Marybeth Schubert

Schubert

Higher education, workforce development

Marybeth has directed new program development, business and technology management, organizational strategy, marketing and public relations, research and public policy initiatives in such areas as higher education, economic development, workforce development, and international economics for 15 years. She has been Deputy Dean at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, Chief of Staff for Laura D'Andrea Tyson (formerly chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors) at the University of California at Berkeley, Director of Bridges to Opportunity for New Mexico for the New Mexico Association of Community Colleges, and Programs Manager for the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy.

She has served as staff to the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, a consultant for the Law and Economics Consulting Group, and as special assistant to the dean at London Business School. She served on New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's Transition Team for the Department of Labor, and in 2004 she was selected to serve on the Oversight Committee for the New Mexico State Workforce Development Board.

Andy Brack
Information technology

Andy is a former U.S. Senate press secretary and reporter who has a national reputation as a communications planner and Internet strategist. For five years, he edited an international online publication that focused on how to use the Internet in politics. He currently publishes a weekly legislative forecast called South Carolina Statehouse Report. As a communications strategist, he has worked with America Online, Commonwealth of Australia's Department of Health and Family Services, the Bertelsmann Foundation, Northpoint Communications, and other firms. Brack, a graduate of Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, served in 2001 on the Southern Governors' Association Research and Development Advisory Committee. In 2000, he was a candidate for U.S. Congress.

David Condon
Vocational development, human services

David consults on education and workforce development issues, emphasizing K-16 reform strategies. He has served as Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education and as Deputy Director of the Department's GEAR UP Program. Before that, he spent seven years in private law practice, specializing in toxic and mass tort litigation nationwide. He has been a candidate for the legislature in his home state of South Carolina and is experienced in political and policy matters at the local, state, and national level. David holds a law degree from the University of South Carolina, a Bachelor's degree from the University of the South (Sewanee), and a Master's degree from the London School of Economics.

Mark Griffin

Mark is an attorney who also earned a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He served as statewide policy director for the Lee Fisher for Governor Campaign and has provided policy consulting services for numerous other campaigns at the state and local levels. Most recently, he served as the Cuyahoga County Director for the Kerry-Edwards Campaign. As an attorney, Mark was a partner at Hahn Loeser & Parks were he litigated numerous regulatory and telecommunications-related cases. While an associate, he provided legal assistance to Cleveland City Council during the financing of Cleveland Browns Stadium and represented clients concerned about the operations of Cleveland's Minority Business Enterprise program. His signature case was earning a settlement for a telecommunications client that has been reported by others to be the largest single plaintiff settlement in the history of Cuyahoga County. Born and raised in Cleveland, he graduated summa cum laude from the Case Western Reserve School of Law.

Robin Herskowitz
Health care, human services

Robin has more than 20 years experience in health and human services policy development at all levels of government. She served as a Senior Policy Analyst with the Texas State Comptroller's Office and Chief Clerk for the Senate Committee on Public Health. She has crafted public policy that helped save Texas taxpayers billions of dollars, most notably in the area of reducing fraud and abuse in the state's Medicaid and state employee workers compensation programs. She also directed a study that resulted in a billion dollar appropriation for help defray healthcare provider's costs resulting from delivering uncompensated emergency medical services to undocumented immigrants. Most recently she directed the performance review of the Arkansas Department of Health.

Hickox

Winston H. Hickox
Environment

Winston has spent roughly half of his career in government and half in the private sector in the real estate investment management field. From 1999 to 2003, Winston served as Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA), a member of the Governor's Cabinet. Among his many accomplishments at CalEPA, Winston played a key role in the enactment of landmark legislation that authorized the California Air Resources Board to set standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light duty trucks to be sold in California; established the EPIC (Environmental Protection Indicators for California) project, creating a tool to measure and report the status of California's environment; helped establish the "Fuel Cell Partnership" to advance fuel cell technology in California; and played a leadership role in the enactment of the first "E-Waste" recycling and reuse law in the country. Former Secretary Hickox's prior government service includes 7 years as a Special Assistant to California Governor Jerry Brown for Environmental Affairs, as well as Deputy Secretary for Environmental Affairs. Most recently, Winston served as a Senior Portfolio Manager at the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest public pension program in the United States. Winston worked on the design and implementation of environmentally-oriented investment initiatives, including the allocation of $200 million in private equity investments in clean technologies; the allocation of $500 million for publicly traded securities of environmentally responsible firms; and the promotion of better corporate governance and appropriate responses to climate change by corporations in the transportation and energy sectors.

Jennifer Kolker
Health care, human services

Jennifer, formerly assistant director of policy and planning for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, holds a Master's degree in Public Health Policy. She has experience in planning and policy development for health and welfare, coordinating inter and intradepartmental program policy in areas such as managed care, welfare reform, health insurance, violence prevention, correctional health, health care for the homeless and health and social service programs for children. Jennifer is knowledgeable in epidemiological data collection and analysis, disease control and other public health functions.

Amy H. Nadash
Environment

Amy has more than 15 years of experience in government relations. She worked on Capitol Hill for Congressman Tom McMillen and Les Aspin, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. When Congressman Aspin was appointed Secretary of Defense by President Clinton, she joined him at the Pentagon running the $75 million Civil-Military Programs. She also served as the acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in Reserve Affairs, serving as Chief of Staff to 100 military and civilian personnel. In 1999, she joined the White House working in the Office of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton where she developed and managed a program to recognize every community in the country for their efforts to commemorate the millennium through meaningful activities. Most recently, she has run her own consulting business, advising corporate clients on strategic planning and political and legislative affairs. Amy received her BA from the University of California at Berkeley.

Molly Raphael
Health care

Molly was a deputy state health secretary and hospital vice-president of a 400-bed acute care teaching hospital with a 234-bed psychiatric facility. Molly holds a Master's degree in Administration and Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania. She has national and international experience in public health policy that includes strategic planning, needs assessment, regulatory compliance, patient safety, health insurance, advocacy and quality assurance. She has worked professionally in both acute care and behavioral health care settings including long term care, hospitals, and community health programs.