WASHINGTON— The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today is pleased to announce multiple new hires to further develop its policy research firepower and grow its portfolio. Dane Stangler has joined PPI as Director of Policy Innovation, Paul Bledsoe has a new role as Strategic Adviser, and Emily Langhorne will serve as Education Policy Analyst.
“PPI is excited to welcome such a talented group of scholars, thought leaders and researchers to our team,” said PPI President Will Marshall. “Their wealth of knowledge and decades of experience will be invaluable as PPI works to develop a radically pragmatic and genuinely progressive alternative to today’s angry and divisive populism.”
Dane Stangler joins PPI as Director of Policy Innovation. He is the Head of Policy for Startup Genome, a global leader in ecosystem research and evidence-based policy making which uses a holistic model to assess and grow the economic success of startup ecosystems around the world. Formerly the Vice President for Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation, he has written and published in the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Washington Monthly, and more, and is a trusted expert in the United States Senate on the topics of entrepreneurship and economic growth. At Startup Genome, Mr. Stangler is working to enhance their Lifecycle Model which aims to develop entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world, inform policies to strengthen them, and overall improve the policy environment for startups and entrepreneurship.
Paul Bledsoe has a new role at PPI as Strategic Adviser. He is president of Bledsoe & Associates, LLC, a strategic public policy firm specializing in tax policy, energy, natural resources, and climate change, among other issues. Paul is also senior strategist for the American Energy Innovation Council, a group of 10 CEOs including Bill Gates. Paul served as director of communications of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee under the chairmanship of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) and as communications director for the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Clinton from 1998 to 2000. He was a senior advisor to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a leading centrist think tank, co-founded by former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole, Tom Daschle, Howard Baker and George Mitchell, from 2007 to 2012.
Emily Langhorne will serve as Education Policy Analyst with the Reinventing America’s Schools project, where she will research, write reports and articles, and support forums and conferences on 21st century education strategies. A graduate of James Madison University, Emily also received master’s degrees in education from George Washington University and literature from Trinity College in Dublin. Emily has taught at public high schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, for several years, and while in graduate school she taught in George Washington University’s Upward Bound program, where she designed and implemented literacy curricula for a SaturdayAcademy and a Summer Institute, to boost the literacy skills of urban youths. Emily won awards at both James Madison and George Washington University for her writing.
“We are thrilled to have such a gifted researcher and writer join our project,” said David Osborne, director of Reinventing America’s Schools project and author of the forthcoming book, Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System (Bloomsbury, Sept. 2017). “Emily’s background as a public high school teacher, combined with her writing skills, makes her a valuable addition to our team.”
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