Selected
Bios > G-L
Independent, subject
matter experts who know how Washington works
Some
of the people who have written for us or taught at previous TCN and CQ programs include:
JIM GARAMONE is a reporter with American Forces Press Service. He has been covering the defense beat since 1976. Mr. Garamone served 13 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve.
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 PEGGY GARVIN is an information
consultant and author of
Real World Research Skills: An Introduction to Factual, International, Judicial, Legislative, and Regulatory Research to be published by TheCapitol.Net in 2006,
and The United States Government Internet
Manual from Bernan Press. She is also a contributing author for the
Congressional Deskbook, published by TheCapitol.Net. She has worked
with government information, libraries, and information technology
over her 20-year career with the Library of Congress Congressional
Research Service and with the private sector in Washington, DC.
Peggy writes a monthly column called The Government Domain for the
web journal LLRX.com. She
earned her Master of Library Science degree from the Syracuse
University School of Information Studies.
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BETH GASTON
is
the Executive Assistant to the Deputy Administrator, Veterinary
Services, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, U.S.
Department of Agriculture. Previously, Beth served in public
relations at APHIS, the National Science Foundation, and the
University of California, Riverside. She was an award-winning
reporter for several newspapers and a copy editor for McClatchy News
Service.
She co-wrote Chapter 11 and edited the
Media Relations Handbook for Agencies, Associations, Nonprofits and
Congress (TheCapitol.Net 2004).
She holds a BS in Biology and a BA in Science Journalism from the
University of California, Riverside.
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ROBERT N. GEE is Chief of Public Services for the Law
Library of Congress. He provided legal research and reference
assistance to the Law Library's congressional and public clients as
a legal reference specialist for ten years before assuming the
management of the Law Library's public service operations in 1994.
Since 1989 he has instructed seminars on legal research and
legislative history research for congressional staff. He holds a BA
in political science and a JD from the University of Oklahoma, and a
Masters of Law degree (LLM) from George Washington University.
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 DEANNA R. GELAK has more than 20 years of policy and public speaking experience spanning the legislative, executive branch and private/nonprofit sector arenas. She is Founder and President of Working for the Future, LLC, a public policy firm that advises citizen leaders and organizational spokespersons on political communication strategies and policy issues.
Ms. Gelak is the youngest woman ever to be elected President of the American League of Lobbyists. She is widely respected for her work promoting the Lobbyists' Code of Ethics. Ms. Gelak
has appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal and she has promoted
ethical lobbying and citizen involvement on National Public Radio's
Talk of the Nation and at the National Press Club.
Ms. Gelak designed the "mock Congress" for National 4-H which is still utilized today to educate high school students from across the nation. Her communications training method has been used to empower businesswomen in Afghanistan, Jordan, Morocco and Iraq. Her communications method has been endorsed by legendary entertainer and songwriter, Lee Greenwood, and praised and utilized by political communications strategist, Mary Matalin.
Ms. Gelak chaired the national Congressional Coverage Coalition, which successfully led the effort to apply labor and civil rights laws (including the Family and Medical Leave Act, OSHA and the overtime protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act) to members of Congress and their staffs for the first time in history. Previously members of Congress were exempt from the labor and civil rights laws that they had passed for the rest of the country.
Ms. Gelak is formerly the director of governmental affairs for the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional society with more than 175,000 individual professional members. She achieved certification as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), which reflects her expertise in human resource policy issues and she was selected to serve on a Bureau of National Affairs Advisory Board.
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DONALD E. GESSAMAN is a consultant to the EOP Group. From 1967-1995, Mr. Gessaman worked in the Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President, National Security Division, which provides analysis and options on defense and intelligence resource issues for the OMB Director and the President. After entering as a budget examiner, he later became Navy branch chief, deputy division chief, and finally, deputy associate director of national security. From 1963-67, he worked at the Department of Defense.
Mr. Gessaman earned a BS in industrial management from the University of Cincinnati, an MS in industrial engineering from Stanford University, and studied National Security Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
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 MARTIN B. GOLD is a partner
with the law firm of Covington & Burling. In 2003, he served as
Floor Advisor and Counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. His
tour with the Leader represented a return to Senate service after
twenty years in the private sector. Mr. Gold was co-founder of The
Legislative Strategies Group, LLC and his practice ranged widely,
with an emphasis on sports law, health care, antitrust,
communications, and taxation.
Mr. Gold is the author of Senate
Procedure and Practice: An Introductory Manual, a widely consulted
primer on Senate Floor procedure, a subject on which he frequently
lectures in offices of United States Senators and for Congressional
Quarterly and TheCapitol.Net. He has also spoken frequently at
George Washington University, American University, the University of
Maryland, and to numerous domestic audiences on political and
legislative subjects.
Further, he has been a guest lecturer
at Moscow State University, the Moscow State Institute of
International Relations, the State Parliament of Ukraine and the
Federation Council of the Russian Federal Assembly. Mr. Gold is also
a consultant to C-SPAN on matters of Senate procedure.
During a 10-year period from 1972 to
1982, Mr. Gold worked in a variety of senior staff positions in the
United States Senate, culminating as counsel to Senate Majority
Leader Howard H. Baker, Jr. (R-TN). Mr. Gold began his career as a
legal assistant to Senator Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR) and later served
as Republican Staff Director and Counsel to the Senate Rules
Committee and as a professional staff member on the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence.
Subsequent to his Senate experience,
Mr. Gold was president of the lobbying firm Gold and Liebengood,
which he co-founded in 1984. He joined the government relations
firm, Johnson, Smith, Dover, Kitzmiller & Stewart, Inc. in 1995.
A graduate of the Washington College
of Law at American University, Mr. Gold also served Of Counsel to
Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, a Pacific Northwest law firm
with principal offices in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
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 DANIEL GOURE
is a Vice President with the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit public-policy research organization headquartered in Arlington, VA, where he is involved in a wide range of issues as part of the institute's national security program. Previously he was the Deputy Director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, where he was responsible for a wide range of analyses involving U.S. national security decision making and military planning, defense industrial and technological issues, the future of conflict and warfare, and military strategy and operational art. He
also participates in analyses of emerging security issues including the future
peacekeeping and multilateral security initiatives in Europe and Asia.
Prior to joining CSIS, Dr. Goure spent two years in the U.S. government as the director
of the Office of Strategic Competitiveness in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. His
responsibilities included identification and evaluation of new security and defense
concerns, policy towards Russia and the newly-independent states, arms control and
regional security.
Before entering government, Dr. Goure spent almost fifteen years in positions of
increasing responsibility with several firms. During five years with SRS Technologies,
where he was Director of Soviet Studies, he managed more than twenty projects for various
agencies and departments of the U.S. government dealing with the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe. Before joining SRS, Dr. Goure worked as a senior analyst for the Center for Naval
Analyses, Science Applications International Corporation, R&D Associates, and System
Planning Corporation specializing in then Soviet domestic and defense policy issues.
Dr. Goure has done extensive consulting and teaching. He has consulted for the
Department of State and taught/lectured at Johns Hopkins University, the Foreign Service
Institute, the National War College, the Naval War College, and the Inter-American Defense
College.
Dr. Goure holds Masters and PhD degrees in international relations and Russian Studies
from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in government and history from Pomona College.
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 DAVID GRIMALDI is a senior counsel at The Raben Group, where he advises clients primarily on intellectual property, copyright, and patent issues. Mr. Grimaldi
previously served as legislative counsel to Representative Ed Towns (NY-10),
where he focused mainly on legislation arising under the Subcommittee on
Telecommunications and the Internet and the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and
Consumer Protection.
Prior to his time with Mr. Towns, Mr. Grimaldi was an aide to former Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo during his New York gubernatorial campaign.
A Washington, DC native, Mr. Grimaldi earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, followed by law school at Catholic University in Washington, DC. Mr. Grimaldi is a member of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
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T.J. HALSTEAD
serves as a legislative attorney in the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. He is one of CRS' primary analysts on constitutional and administrative law issues. Before joining CRS in 1998, Mr. Halstead served in the Kansas Office of the Attorney General, in the Criminal Litigation Division. He also worked in the Legal Division of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and was an intern in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Mr. Halstead earned his BA and JD from the University of Kansas. He is a member of the Kansas and the United States Supreme Court bars.
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 LOU HAMPTON
is president of The Hampton Group, Inc., a Washington DC-based
firm specializing in presentation, media and crisis communication skills. A former
marketing director and speech writer, Mr. Hampton has spent nearly 20 years rehearsing
thousands of clients--from CEOs to customer service telephone operators, novice
salespeople to experienced journalists in techniques for communicating under pressure. Mr.
Hampton serves as a message consultant to several public and government relations firms,
has advised state and national political campaigns, has coached journalists on their media
appearances, and has spoken on communication-related topics to several professional
associations. His coaching techniques have been featured in the Washington Post,
Washingtonian Magazine, Washington Journalism Review and the Los Angeles Times.
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 DAVID HAWKINGS is the
managing editor of CQ Weekly. He previously served as
Congressional Quarterly's senior
editor for legislative affairs and before that directed the magazine's budget, taxes, trade, appropriations,
and congressional leadership
coverage. From 1997-99, he was the managing editor of the CQ Daily
Monitor, directing CQ's daily news report and online at CQ.com. Before coming to CQ in
1995, Mr. Hawkings spent six years as a correspondent in the
Washington bureau of Thomson Newspapers. He began his journalism
career as a reporter, columnist and assistant city editor during four
years at the now-defunct San Antonio Light.
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ROBERT HEALY has worked for
Congressional Quarterly since 1974, and is currently serving as the
senior editor of CQ Today (formerly the CQ Daily Monitor), a daily
report on congressional activity. Prior to his present position, Mr.
Healy spent seven years as the managing editor of the Monitor, and
was a senior editor in Congressional Quarterly's book department.
Mr. Healy was the first editor of CQ's Federal Regulatory Directory
and associate editor of the first edition of Politics in America, a
reference book on members of Congress. Mr. Healy earned his BA in
American Studies from George Washington University.
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BILL HENIFF JR
is an analyst in American National Government with the Congressional
Research Service of the Library of Congress, and an adjunct
professor at George Mason University. He is a contributing author
for the Congressional Deskbook
and the Congressional
Operations Poster, both published by TheCapitol.Net. He received his PhD in
Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, College
Park.
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 ELEANOR HILL
is a partner with the law firm of King & Spalding, Washington, DC office. She returned to King & Spalding in October 2003 following her service as the staff director of the Joint Congressional Inquiry on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As a member of the firm's Special Matters/Government Investigations Group, her practice focuses on corporate internal investigations, congressional and other government investigations, legislative and policy issues, compliance matters, and issues pertaining to homeland security and intelligence.
Ms. Hill has extensive investigative experience, in both the private sector and the executive and legislative branches of government. As staff director for the Joint Congressional Inquiry, she led the historic, bipartisan and bicameral investigative effort of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to determine what our Intelligence Community knew, or should have known, regarding the terrorist threat to the United States prior to the September 11th attacks. The extensive investigation and the hearings that followed culminated in the release of an 800-page report that identified numerous shortcomings in Intelligence Community counterterrorist efforts and nineteen recommendations for reform. Ms. Hill spent nearly seven months leading the team that negotiated the declassification of that report with the Intelligence Community.
Prior to her work with the Joint Inquiry, Ms. Hill was a partner at King & Spalding, representing corporate clients in various House and Senate investigations and in matters pertaining to compliance, corporate ethics and legislative matters. Her clients included companies in the defense, pharmaceutical, energy and health care industries.
From 1995 through 1999 she served as Inspector General to the Department of Defense, having been appointed to that position by President Clinton. As the Inspector General, she directed a wide range of audits and criminal and administrative investigations and established investigative policy throughout the Department, including the Military Departments. Recognized as a leader in the federal inspector general community, she served as chair of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, as the co-chair of the Intelligence Community Inspectors General Forum, and as a Member of the Attorney General's Council on White Collar Crime. She was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal by Secretary William Perry and the Bronze Palm to the Distinguished Public Service Medal by Secretary William Cohen.
From 1980 through February 1995, Ms. Hill was associated with the United States Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, where she led numerous domestic and international Congressional investigations on such topics as organized crime and labor racketeering, drug enforcement, national security, export controls, fraud and abuse in federal programs and fraud and abuse in the insurance industry. As the Subcommittee's chief counsel and staff director, she led numerous efforts to draft and negotiate legislative proposals in a variety of areas. In 1987, she also served as liaison counsel for Senator Sam Nunn on the Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition.
Ms. Hill is an experienced federal prosecutor and trial lawyer, having served both as an Assistant United States Attorney in Tampa, Florida and as a special attorney with the Organized Crime Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. Ms. Hill is widely recognized for her expertise both in the public and private sector. She has testified on numerous occasions before various congressional committees in both the House and the Senate and has served as a featured speaker on congressional investigations in Congressional Research Service training for congressional Members and staff. Her experience includes numerous public speaking engagements and both national and international media interviews on issues related to investigations, homeland security, intelligence policy and counterterrorism.
Ms. Hill graduated,
magna cum laude, from Florida State University and with high honors from the Florida State University College of Law. At Florida State, she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and the Law Review.
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 JEFF HILL
is a Director of Jacobs & Associates. Previously, he was a senior manager at The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE). Prior to joining CRE, he was a senior advisor at Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), where he served for some twenty-five years. His work at OIRA included reform of the regulatory system, regulatory planning and review under the host of applicable Executive Orders, and the development of federal information policy under the Paperwork Reduction Act. Mr. Hill's career has also included work in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and time on Capital Hill. He served as an adjunct professor of government at Georgetown University from 1987-1996.
He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard
Law School.
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SCOTT HODES spent over a decade working as an attorney for the federal government prior to entering private practice in 2003. Mr. Hodes worked for the Department of Labor, Department of Justice (Office of Information and Privacy), and the FBI. From 1998 to 2002 he was the Acting Unit Chief of the Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Section’s Litigation Unit and was a Top Secret Classification Authority at the FBI. Mr. Hodes has been involved in thousands of FOIA and Privacy Act matters. Mr. Hodes is a member of the American Society of Access Professionals and a contributing editor to a number of publications on matters dealing with government information policies and practices. His current practice focuses on civil matters, primarily on the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.
He received his JD from Arizona State University and a BS in Accounting from Indiana University.
He is admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia and the State of
Maryland, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and the
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
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 JACK HOWARD is president of Wexler Walker Public Policy Associates, a government affairs firm which provides strategic counseling, direct lobbying, coalition building, and grassroots communications services to corporations associations, non-profits and government clients.
Mr. Howard served as deputy assistant to President George W. Bush and deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs from 2001 until January, 2003. As second ranking official in the White House legislative affairs operation, he played a key role in working with senior White House staff and Cabinet officials to secure enactment of major parts of the President's legislative agenda. He previously served as a special assistant for legislative affairs for President Herbert Walker Bush.
Prior to coming to the White House, Mr. Howard worked as a senior strategic and policy advisor to several House and Senate Republican Leaders. He served as deputy chief of staff to House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. He served in senior staff positions for Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Mr. Howard is a graduate of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.
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 BRYAN HUBBARD
is a communications professional with more than 16 years of experience in leading government and private company internal and external communication programs. As Special Advisor to the Deputy Comptroller for Public Affairs at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, he provides strategic counsel on media, employee communications, and public affairs programs and technologies.
He has provided similar counsel as Deputy Director for Corporate Communications for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, as Director of Corporate Communications at software/business solution firms, as Executive Producer of a successful Internet media firm, and as a member of the Secretary of the Air Force’s public affairs team.
Mr. Hubbard holds a bachelor’s in English from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a master’s in Communication from Arizona State University.
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 AL HUNT
is the Washington managing editor for Bloomberg News. Previously he was the Washington Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal, where he was a journalist for 35 years. He was the recipient of the William Allen White Foundation's national award in 1999.
Mr. Hunt served as a panelist on CNN's The Capital Gang, NBC's Meet the Press, and PBS' Washington Week in Review, as well as a political analyst on CBS Morning News. He is co-author of the American Enterprise Institute’s The American Elections of 1980, The American Elections of 1982, The American Elections of 1984, and the 1987 Brookings Institutes Elections American Style.
Mr. Hunt earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Wake Forest University.
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 KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON is
Professor of Communications and Dean of The Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also
Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. She is the author
and co-author of nine books including: Dirty Politics: Deception,
Distraction and Democracy (Oxford, 1992) as well as Packaging the
Presidency, which received the Speech Communication Association's
Golden Anniversary Book Award and Eloquence in an Electronic Age,
which received the Winans-Wichelns Book Award. Her most recent book
is Spiral of Cynicism: Press and Public Good.
Dr. Jamieson is an expert on
political campaigns. During the 1996 general election she served as
a commentator - on the debates for CBS News, on advertising in The
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and on the discourse of the campaign for
National Public Radio's Weekend Edition and CNN's Inside Politics.
She is also the recipient of many fellowships and grants including
support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Ford Foundation along
with several others.
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KENT JENKINS, JR. is Vice President of Communications for Amerigroup Corporation.
Previously he was a Managing Director in the Media Practice of Burson-Marsteller, who specializes in crisis communications, international issues management and media relations. A former political journalist who spent more than a decade at The Washington Post and U.S. News and World Report, Mr. Jenkins has extensive communications experience in the fields of public policy, technology and healthcare.
In the crisis communications and issues management fields, Mr. Jenkins leads a team that has assisted the U. S. Postal Service since anthrax was discovered in the mail system in October 2001. Mr. Jenkins has served as senior media strategist on all anthrax-related matters and continues to advise the Postal Service on broad range of issues. In 2003, the Public Relations Society of America awarded the anthrax team its highest honor, the Silver Anvil for the nation's best overall public relations campaign. The anthrax team also swept the industry's three top citations for crisis management in 2003: the Silver Anvil, the Sabre Award and the PR Week Award.
Mr. Jenkins leads a team that has assisted Duke University in regard to a mistake in organ transplant surgery that led to the death of 17-year-old Jessica Santillan in February 2003. A Forbes magazine feature story hailed Duke's crisis communication effort as a "PR coup" and PR Week magazine cited Duke as one of "Five Communicators We Listened To" in 2003.
Mr. Jenkins also serves as senior media strategist for The Coca-Cola Company, advising the company on a wide range of business issues in Latin America, Africa and Europe. And he assists a major European financial institution on multinational litigation.
In the healthcare field, Mr. Jenkins has represented a wide range of pharmaceutical companies and healthcare service organizations. He has provided media counsel to numerous clients on regulatory and congressional matters, including efforts to include specific treatments in the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs. He developed a media campaign that helped defeat harmful government regulations related to organ-transplant surgery.
In the technology field, Mr. Jenkins served as Washington spokesman for Cisco Systems Inc. from 1999 through 2001. During that time he was in charge of public-policy communications. He developed media strategy for Cisco President John Chambers regarding Mr. Chambers' extensive participation in the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign and a successful California education reform initiative that Mr. Chambers headed. He also planned successful media campaigns for several new technology products.
Mr. Jenkins' work as a Washington journalist included coverage of many national and statewide political campaigns and Congress. While at The Washington Post he reported extensively on figures as diverse as Iran-contra figure Oliver North and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. For two years he edited a staff of political reporters covering the District of Columbia government headed by then-Mayor Marion Barry. At U.S. News and World Report he was a Senior Writer covering national politics and Congress.
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 DENNIS W. JOHNSON is associate
dean of the Graduate School of Political Management and director of
the Master of Arts in Legislative Affairs program at the George
Washington University. His current research interests include
campaigns and elections, the role of interest groups in campaigns
and the profession of campaign management. He is also a
distinguished author; his latest work is No
Place for Amateurs: The Professionalization of Modern Campaigns.
Before joining George Washington University in 1992, he was the
owner of Johnson Research Associates, a research-oriented campaign
consulting firm that provided services to Democratic candidates.
Prior to that, he was chief of staff to Congressman Norman Sisisky
of Virginia from 1985-88, and served as coordinator of government
affairs for Virginia Power 1983-85.
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 PHILIP JOYCE
is Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University. His research primarily focuses on the U.S. federal budget and the use of performance information in the budget process. He is the author of two books--Public Budgeting Systems (8th edition--with Robert D. Lee and Ronald Johnson) and
Public Performance: Why Management Matters (with Patricia Ingraham and Amy Donahue), in addition to more than 40 articles and book chapters.
Professor Joyce has 12 years of public sector work experience, including five years each with the U.S. Congressional Budget Office and the Illinois Bureau of the Budget. He has consulted internationally, both as an individual and with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in the People’s Republic of China, Latvia, Slovenia and Mexico.
He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
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MARTIN KADY is the homeland security reporter for Congressional Quarterly. He is also starting to cover technology policy, including issues like Internet taxation and digital copyright. Mr. Kady has been at CQ since August, 2002, and helped launch
CQ Homeland Security, Congressional Quarterly's homeland security publication.
Before coming to CQ, Mr. Kady spent three years covering the boom and bust of the Washington area's telecom and technology industry. He also spent three years as a reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina, and three years at the Potomac News in Woodbridge, Virginia. He has a foreign affairs degree from the University of Virginia.
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 SHEILAH KAST is the host of Maryland Morning on WYPR, the public-radio station
based in Baltimore, which focuses on
Maryland politics, policy, science, history, arts and culture.
Ms. Kast learned the craft of broadcasting at ABC News, where she worked as
a Washington correspondent for fifteen years. Her reporting ranged from the
White House to Congress to the historic 1991 coup attempt in Moscow, which
signaled the end of the Soviet Empire. Her concentration during most of her
reporting life has been on the economy and workplace, and how they affect
people's everyday lives. She began her career at The Washington Star
newspaper, where she covered energy and financial regulation and other
business issues.
Her first public-broadcasting venture was done in association with
BusinessWeek magazine in the late 1990s. Ms. Kast launched and hosted a
weekly national public television show, This Week in Business, on which she
analyzed breaking developments in business, interviewed business leaders and
discussed trends in personal finance.
Public radio listeners have frequently heard her host NPR's Sunday morning
magazine, Weekend Edition Sunday. She has also substituted for Diane Rehm.
Ms. Kast lived in Romania for two years when her husband served as U.S.
ambassador there. After returning to the United States, she covered the
Washington aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks for CNN.
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 DEBORAH P. KELLY
Deborah Kelly joined Dickstein Shapiro LLP in 1988, and is a partner, as well as the firm's Deputy General Counsel and a member of its Executive Committee. Ms. Kelly focuses her practice on civil litigation with emphasis on all aspects of employment law. She defends employers against wage and hour class action suits, regularly counsels companies in matters concerning employment, conducts training in all aspects of EEO compliance and Human Resources (HR) issues, drafts employee policy manuals and represents companies against employment claims up to and including jury trial litigation. As head of the Firm's Employment Practice, she directed the development of Dickstein Shapiro's innovative and patent-pending PolicyPartnerSM Web-based service, which provides Dickstein Shapiro's clients with "one-stop" desktop access to compliance information related to a company's HR policies, procedures, guidelines, and forms. Ms. Kelly received her BS, magna cum laude, from The University of Vermont (1974).
She received her MA in political science (1977) (Thesis: The Politics of Nonvoting) and her PhD in political science (1982) (Dissertation: Rape Victims' Perceptions of Criminal Justice) from The Johns Hopkins University, where she received the James McCoy Prize (1977) and the James Hart Fellowship (1978). She received her J.D., summa cum laude, from American University, Washington College of Law (1988), where she was the recipient of the Mussey Prize for her scholastic average (1988).
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 STEVEN KELLER is a faculty member at the George Washington University
in the Political Communications Program. He teaches courses in history and criticism of
American public address, political oratory and speech writing, and argumentation and
debate. For the past nineteen years he has provided communication training and consulting
services to presidential appointees, national trade associations, and governmental
agencies. He has conducted scores of workshops and training programs focusing on
congressional testimony for a wide range of clients including: Brookings Institution,
Department of Energy, Department of State, Immigration & Naturalization Service,
Smithsonian Institution, and the U.S. Coast Guard. The Office of Personnel Management
handbook for preparing Congressional testimony is based on the training program Professor
Keller designed.
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KEVIN "SPANKY" KIRSCH is a retired Air
Force Lt. Col., who started his career as a strategic bomber pilot,
having flown both the B-52 and FB-111 aircraft. After his flying
assignments, he worked at Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters
as Chief of Advanced Weapons Concepts, where he managed a number of
nuclear weapons projects. When SAC evolved into Strategic Command (STRATCOM)
in 1991, he went to work in the CINCSTRAT's Staff Group, working as
a special assistant for weapons and legislative affairs. While
assigned to STRATCOM, he primarily worked with the legislative
offices of the Joint Staff, Air Force, and Navy, on issues dealing
with weapons acquisition and policy and nuclear stockpile issues. In
August 1994, Lt. Col. Kirsch became the military assistant to the
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs (ASD/LA),
where his primary function was intra- and interagency coordination.
His final military assignment was as special assistant for the ASD/LA
for acquisition and information technology policy, which included
strategic and tactical weapons, acquisition reform, small business,
government contracts, information management and security, Y2K,
critical infrastructure, communications, and computers. After
retirement, Spanky was the assistant for external communications in
the DoD DCIO office, which included all of the legislative and
public affairs functions for the DoD Y2K office.
He participated on the DoD transition
team for the Bush administration, conducting the research function
and confirmation hearings for all the senior Pentagon leadership.
Presently, he performs these functions as a special assistant for
the DoD Spectrum Management office, where he was most recently
detailed to an Ambassador at the State Department as the Delegation
Coordinator for the World Radio Conference.
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MICHAEL KOEMPEL
is a senior specialist in American National Government for the
Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. He is co-author
of the Congressional
Deskbook.
From 1979-94 Mr. Koempel served as
Congressional Quarterly's Director of Information Services,
supervising CQ's Research Department and Library, Professional
Education Service, and the editorial and developmental operations of
CQ's Washington Alert, now CQ.com on Congress.
Mr. Koempel worked for nine years on
Capitol Hill as a legislative assistant to a member of the House of
Representatives and served as a legislative liaison in the Minnesota
governor's office in 1979. He is a member of the District of
Columbia Bar.
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JACKIE KOSZCZUK is the editor of Politics in America 2006, CQ's
authoritative guide to Congress and its members, and an editor of CQ.com. She
has covered Capitol Hill as a journalist for more than 15 years, including a
stint as the national congressional correspondent for the Knight Ridder
newspaper chain's Washington bureau. Previously, she was a senior writer
for CQ Weekly magazine, where she wrote about the internal dynamics of the
leadership and the impact of money on politics. Ms. Koszczuk also was an
editor for the magazine, overseeing the defense and foreign policy section.
From 1988 to 1994, she was a correspondent in the Washington bureau of the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she wrote about House Speaker Jim Wright and
ethics in government. She has been a reporter for The Daily Herald in
Chicago and for the Kankakee Daily Journal in Illinois.
Ms. Koszczuk has received numerous awards for her writing, including the
Everett Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting on Congress in 1998. In
1993, she received the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Amon Carter Award for best
feature writing, and in 1989, the Dallas Press Club award for best
government/political reporting. In 1984, she was named best feature writer
by the Chicago Press Club.
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KENNETH A. KRAFT is Appropriations Counsel and Legislative Director with the Office of Rep. David L. Hobson (R-OH). From 1971-77, he served as a Legislative Assistant to Sen. Joseph M. Montoya (D-NM); from 1977-92, Mr. Kraft served as Appropriations Counsel to Rep. Lawrence Coghlin
(R-PA); and from 1999-2000, he served as Counsel to Rep. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen (R-NJ).
Mr. Kraft graduated from the University of Maryland with an AB in British literature and art history and The George Washington University Law School.
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 WILLIAM KRISTOL is editor and publisher of
The Weekly Standard, a weekly
journal of politics and ideas based in Washington, DC. Mr. Kristol is a regular on
ABC’s This Week; and he also appears often on Good Morning America, the
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and the Charlie Rose Show. Washingtonian Magazine
recently called Mr. Kristol "the hottest pundit in town."
Before starting The Weekly Standard in 1995, Mr. Kristol was chairman of the
Project for the Republican Future where he helped shape the strategy that produced the
1994 Republican congressional victory. Prior to that, he served during the Reagan and Bush
Administrations as Chief of Staff to Education Secretary William Bennett and then to Vice
President Dan Quayle. Before moving to Washington in 1985, Mr. Kristol taught at the
Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, and at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Kristol’s writing in the fields of political philosophy and American Politics has
appeared in journals such as the Chicago Law Review, Commentary
and the Public
Interest.
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 WILLIAM LaFORGE is an attorney
in the Washington, DC office of the law firm Winstead PC. As part of the firm's government relations team, he
represents businesses and other organizations with public policy
interests before the U.S. Congress and executive branch agencies.
For more than 30 years, Mr. LaForge has been involved with the
public policy arena at local, state and federal levels. On Capitol
Hill, he was chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Appropriations
Subcommittee on Agriculture, and culminated his government career as
chief legislative counsel and chief of staff to U.S. Senator Thad
Cochran of Mississippi. Mr. LaForge is a long-time adjunct professor
in the School of Business and Public Management at the George
Washington University, and, until 2002, in the School of Business
and Government Relations at the Georgetown University. He is a DC Bar
Association faculty member for continuing legal education lobbying
programs. He also served as faculty director of the Bryce Harlow
Institute on Government and Business Affairs, The Fund for American
Studies, 1997-2002.
Mr. LaForge earned a BA in History from Delta
State University; his LLM in International and Comparative Law from
Georgetown University; and a JD from the University of Mississippi
School of Law. He serves as National President of the Federal
Bar Association.
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 JAMES B. LEES is a nationally recognized trial attorney and communications consultant who owns and operates Hunt & Lees law firm in Charleston, WV where he practices law as well as provides communications consulting services to businesses and attorneys throughout North America.
Mr. Lees is a former Deputy District Attorney in Pittsburgh, PA where he successfully prosecuted 44 first-degree murder cases and 6 death penalty cases. Litigating both civil and criminal cases in private practice throughout the United States since 1984, Mr. Lees has now tried over 250 jury trials to verdict.
He now consults frequently throughout North America on persuasive communications for businesses, political candidates, and attorneys. A frequent lecturer on the use of psychology and focus groups to formulate persuasion strategies, Mr. Lees has lectured in 26 states throughout the United States as well as the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. He has appeared on ABC Television’s Good Morning America, anchored a state-wide radio talk show, taught persuasion techniques at Harvard Law School, and written a monthly newspaper column for a state-wide newspaper.
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MICHELLE LEHMAN is Vice President of Public Affairs for the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA), a nonprofit trade association representing beer distributors across the nation. She is responsible for outreach to national print, broadcast and radio media. She serves as the association's spokesperson on issues such as promoting responsible beer consumption and discouraging alcohol abuse, the substantial economic contribution of beer distributors and the beer industry as a whole, and the potential health benefits of moderate beer consumption. Additionally,
Lehman produces and distributes audio and video public service announcements featuring elected officials, public opinion leaders and celebrities encouraging safe and responsible alcohol consumption.
Prior to joining the team at NBWA, Lehman served as press secretary to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee under the leadership of former Senator Fred Thompson (TN), assisting the Committee during the Enron investigation and passage of legislation to create the Department of Homeland Security.
Lehman also served as associate director of technology policy issues at Dittus Communications, a Washington, DC-based public relations firm, supporting clients with strategic media relations to bolster their public policy initiatives on Capitol Hill and with federal agencies.
Lehman spent several years as press secretary to Representative Bob Goodlatte (VA-6), assisting her hometown Congressman during the Clinton impeachment hearings and on matters of technology, class action reform and all issues involving the House Judiciary and Agriculture Committees.
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 BOB LEVI has toiled in the vineyards of legislative and political affairs for over a quarter century. For twenty-two of those years, he has hung his shingle on Capitol Hill, serving Congress and the postal community.
Bob is in his seventh year as the National Association of Postmasters of the United States' Director of Government Relations. At NAPUS, Bob spearheads postmaster legislative advocacy on and off Capitol Hill, as well as directs NAPUS' political activities. Before assuming this position, Bob Levi worked for six years as Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs at the National Association of Letter Carriers.
Prior to his tenure at the NALC, Bob worked on Capitol Hill. During those years, he served as Legislative Director of two House Post Office and Civil Service Subcommittees. In addition, Bob, at different times, was Legislative Director and Legislative Assistant to Representative Gary Ackerman (NY).
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 JAMES R. LIGHTFOOT is senior policy advisor, Federal Government Relations, with the Washington, DC, office of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC. Previously, he was vice president of Forensic Technology Inc., a high tech, international company that provides solutions to crime laboratories for solving gun related crimes. Prior to that, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the third district in Iowa from 1984 until he voluntarily retired in 1996. While in Congress, he served on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's Subcommittee on Aviation, and also as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service and General Government, and served on the Subcommittee on Transportation, and on the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations.
Mr. Lightfoot served in the U.S. Army from 1956 to 1964. Some of his past occupations include being a police officer Tulsa, Oklahoma, a commercial broadcaster, a commercial pilot, and flight safety counselor for the Federal Aviation Administration in the U.S. Department of Transportation.
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 VERNON LOEB has been covering
the U.S. intelligence community and national security issues on the
national staff of The Washington Post for the past 16 months. During
that time, he has written extensively about the Central Intelligence
Agency, numerous issues effecting the broader intelligence community
and a series of breaking news events involving U.S. intelligence:
the bombing of the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, the
CIA's role in the Wye peace accord, the Kindred Spirit investigation
at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the mistaken bombing of
the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Mr. Loeb came to The Washington Post
as a reporter on the metropolitan staff after working as a reporter,
bureau chief and foreign correspondent for 16 years at The
Philadelphia Inquirer. Mr. Loeb covered four Philadelphia mayors and
was the newspaper's City Hall bureau chief from 1985-1989 and
1992-1994. Between the stints at City Hall, Mr. Loeb was The
Inquirer's Southeast Asia correspondent from 1989-1992. Based in
Manila, he covered events such as the Tiannenmen Square massacre in
China and the normalization of U.S. relations with Vietnam. Mr. Loeb
also worked on a team of reporters covering the Persian Gulf War and
Iraq's missile attacks on Tel Aviv and wrote extensively from the
West Bank.
Mr. Loeb graduated with a degree in
journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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PETER LOGE heads up his own firm, Milo Public Affairs, LLC. Previously, he was a Senior Vice President at M&R Strategic Services. Mr. Loge served as the first Director of the Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform at The Justice Project, where he helped redefine the national debate over the death penalty.
He has extensive expertise in both communications and political strategy including serving as the chief of staff, communications director, and campaign manager to U.S. Representative Brad Sherman; director of constituent services to former U.S. Representative Sam Coppersmith; and deputy to the chief of staff for Senator Edward Kennedy.
Mr. Loge has served as an advisor to candidates across the country and has provided direction for numerous issue campaigns on a variety of topics. Peter has also been a political satirist for NPR and the BBC and has published numerous scholarly and popular articles on a range of topics. He lectures regularly on politics and lobbying at colleges around the country and teaches courses in political language and rhetoric at the George Washington University.
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URL: TheCapitol.Net/Faculty/facultybiog.html Last updated:
January 02, 2009
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