The Citizen’s 2nd annual Ideas We Should Steal FestivalTM will be held on Tuesday, December 10th at the Comcast Technology Center. It will feature an exciting line-up of thinkers, problem-solvers and change-makers from around the continent. Here’s a partial list—come back for updates.
Hope to see you there!
John Oliver
Last Week Tonight host
Ali Velshi
MSNBC host
Letitia James
NY Attorney General
Josh Shapiro
PA Attorney General
La Shon Walker
FivePoint Holdings director of community affairs
Nan Whaley
Dayton, OH, Mayor
Steve Benjamin
Columbia, SC, Mayor
Carson Hicks
NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity executive director
Taylor Paul
Co-founder RVA League for Safer Streets
Tiffany Cross
The Beat DC Co-founder
Josh Kopelman
First Round Capital Co-founder
Andrea Zopp
World Business Chicago CEO
Steven Brill
NewsGuard CEO
David Muhammad
National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform Executive Director
Bruce Katz
Nowak Metro Finance Lab Director
Brian Elms
Change & Innovation Agency Innovation Practice Lead
Shari Davis
Participatory Budgeting Project Co-Executive Director
David Adelman
Campus Apartments CEO
Zach Maxwell
Arlington Voice Publisher
Michael Rubin
Kynetic majority owner/CEO & Reform Alliance co-founder
Hill-Freedman World Academy
In partnership with LiveConnections
Bill Golderer
United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey President/CEO
John Oliver
Last Week Tonight host
HBO’s Emmy winning Last Week Tonight with John Oliver host covers news, politics, and current events. Oliver has won two Peabody Awards and is accredited with the “John Oliver Effect,” a title given to the actions and attention his show brings in the political world.
Ali Velshi
MSNBC host
Host of MSNBC’s Live with Ali Velshi and co-host of Velshi and Ruhle, Velshi is an award-winning journalist whose accolades include a National Headliner Award and three News and Documentary Emmy Award Nominations. Velshi is a Citizen board member.
Letitia James
NY Attorney General
NY Attorney General Letitia James is the first woman of color to hold statewide office in New York and the first woman to be elected Attorney General. Prior to her current post, she served as the Public Advocate for the City of New York, the second highest elected official in New York City and the first woman of color to hold citywide office there. She served on New York City Council, was head of the Brooklyn Regional Office of the New York Attorney General’s Office, and spent many years as a lawyer in the New York State Legislature. She began her career as a public defender at the Legal Aid Society, and has worked to protect vulnerable communities and tackle corruption
Josh Shapiro
PA Attorney General
PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro was sworn in as the state’s 50th A.G. in 2017. Since then, he’s rebuilt the office and prioritized work that helps keep Pennsylvanians safe—addressing the opioid crisis, protecting access to contraceptive care, empowering survivors of sexual abuse and cracking down on unregistered guns and straw purchases.
La Shon Walker
FivePoint Holdings director of community affairs
La Shon Walker is director of community affairs at FivePoint Holdings, where she directly assists individuals with the full spectrum of wealth-building services, from selling a home, funding a business, growing a business, and guiding businesses on purchasing property to continue to create wealth and develop further. She also has taught social justice and social entrepreneurship to both high school students and adults, and assisted with financial literacy and small business coaching.
Nan Whaley
Dayton, OH, Mayor
Dayton, OH, Mayor Nan Whaley serves as second Vice President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. As mayor, she has focused on the areas of community development, manufacturing, and women and children. Whaley is also a founding board member for the Ohio’s Mayor Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of Ohio’s 30 largest cities.
Steve Benjamin
Columbia, SC, Mayor
Columbia, SC, Mayor Steve Benjamin served as the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2018-19. As mayor, he helped cut unemployment in the metro by roughly half and secured billions in new regional capital investment. He introduced the “Justice for All” initiative in 2014, which implemented new training, competitive pay, diverse representation and community engagement to strengthen trust and accountability between police officers and citizens.
Carson Hicks
NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity executive director
Carson Hicks is deputy executive director of the NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, where she oversees the day-to-day work of the office and its staff. She also serves as an in-house consultant on evaluation design and methodology. From 2011-2014, Dr. Hicks was the Director of Programs and Evaluation in the office. Prior to joining NYC Opportunity, she was a Teaching Fellow at Columbia University and Managing Editor of the Journal of Sociological Methodology.
Taylor Paul
Co-founder RVA League for Safer Streets
Taylor Paul is a returned citizen who works with high-risk youths and men to help them become good citizens, fathers, sons, and to be successful in life. While incarcerated, he co-facilitated multiple treatment programs in re-entry, and is the co-founder of the S.A.N.I.T.Y. (Standing Against Negative Influences Towards Youth) project for men with children, as well as the RVA Basketball League for Safer Streets, which offers workshops utilizing social skills, problem-solving, and critical thinking tools.
Tiffany Cross
The Beat DC Co-founder
Tiffany D. Cross is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of The Beat DC, a national platform intersecting politics, policy, business, media, and people of color. She previously worked as an associate producer for CNN and served as the DC Bureau Chief of BET News and the Liaison to the Obama Administration for BET Networks where she covered Capitol Hill, produced political specials, and oversaw the daily operations of the news department.
Josh Kopelman
First Round Capital Co-founder
Kopelman founded Infonautics, Half.com and Turntide before starting First Round Capital, a venture capital firm that provides seed-stage funding to tech companies. A Wharton graduate and longtime Philadelphia resident, he’s also the chairman of the Philadelphia Media Network, publisher of The Inquirer.
Andrea Zopp
World Business Chicago CEO
Andrea Zopp is president and CEO of World Business Chicago, a company focusing on inclusive economic growth, supporting businesses and showcasing Chicago as a global city. Zopp served as deputy mayor and chief neighborhood officer for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and was the first woman and the first African American to serve as first assistant in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office. She also has extensive experience in the corporate world, including roles as general counsel at Sears and Exelon.
Steven Brill
NewsGuard CEO
Steven Brill, a lawyer and entrepreneur, founded NewsGuard in 2018 to use human intelligence to rate the reliability of news and information websites. A New York Times best-selling author, Brill’s latest book is Tailspin: The People and Forces behind America’s Fifty-Year Fall—and Those Fighting to Reverse It, published in May, 2018.
David Muhammad
National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform Executive Director
David Muhammad is executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform through which he provides leadership and technical assistance to several U.S. cities on gun violence reduction strategies and positive client program development for police departments, municipalities and community-based organizations. He also works on national justice reform efforts including EXiT, in collaboration with Columbia University Justice Lab and more than 80 current and former probation and parole chiefs, to reform the system and improve the outcomes of system-involved individuals.
Bruce Katz
Nowak Metro Finance Lab Director
Katz is co-founder and director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University. With a focus on public reforms and private innovation in cities, Katz advises global, national, state, and regional leaders. He has written two books on the rise of cities and city networks and how cities are the world’s leading problem solvers, including The New Localism, with former Citizen board chairman Jeremy Nowak.
Brian Elms
Change & Innovation Agency Innovation Practice Lead
Brian Elms, innovation practice lead for Change & Innovation Agency, is the author of Peak Performance and former Director of Peak Academy. He is a change agent well versed in innovative government improvement programs. Since joining CIA, Elms has worked alongside a number of companies and governmental departments working to teach new ways to think about systems of government.
Shari Davis
Participatory Budgeting Project Co-Executive Director
Davis is the co-executive director of the Participatory Budgeting Project, an Oakland-based company advocating for increasing participatory budgeting methods all over. Davis has been working in local government for fifteen years and, in Boston, launched Youth Lead the Change—the first budgeting process that included kids in the U.S.
David Adelman
Campus Apartments CEO
David Adelman is a self-made entrepreneur whose Campus Apartments has grown into one of the nation’s largest providers of on-and off-campus housing units with more than $2 billion in assets under management. He is also co-founder and vice chairman of FS Investments, a leading manager of alternative investment funds, with $24 billion of assets under management. Adelman serves on several boards, including the Penn Medicine Board of Trustees and The Citizen.
Zach Maxwell
Arlington Voice Publisher
Maxwell is the journalist and founder of Arlington Voice, a digital news publication in Arlington, TX, which since 2012 has become a source for investigative, political, and breaking news. The publication’s recent accolades include earning the Society of Professional Journalist First Amendment Award in 2019.
Michael Rubin
Kynetic majority owner/CEO & Reform Alliance co-founder
Michael Rubin started GSI Commerce, which he sold to eBay for $2.4 billion in 2011. He subsequently co-founded Kynetic, a holding company for e-commerce retailers Fanatics, Rue La La and ShopRunner. In 2019, inspired by his friend Meek Mill’s experience in the criminal justice system, Rubin and Mill founded REFORM Alliance, to dramatically reduce the number of unfairly-incarcerated people in America.
Hill-Freedman World Academy
In partnership with LiveConnections
Last spring, Hill-Freedman World Academy students recorded their third album, a tribute to the Sound of Philadelphia, in partnership with LiveConnections, the music nonprofit that brings free music education to Philly kids. The album includes guest appearances by Superintendent William Hite, rapper Chill Moody and jazz singer Laurin Talese, and students worked with gospel-jazz keyboardist Luke Carlos O’Reilly, Grammy-nominated songwriter Kristal Oliver, and pop-rock singer-songwriter Andrew Lipke. Photo by Jaci Downs Photography
Bill Golderer
United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey President/CEO
Bill Golderer, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, oversees the organization’s work to fight poverty by investing in youth success and family economic stability. Golderer is the senior pastor at Arch Street Presbyterian Church and the founder of Broad Street Ministry. He lectures and teaches coursework at institutions including Princeton Theological Seminary, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and is a Senior Fellow at Penn’s Fels School of Government.