Colorado Conversations 2002: Speaker Bios
Christopher T. Gates
Chris Gates is President of the National Civic League and also serves as
a member of NCL’s Board of Directors. In this position he serves as the
chief executive of NCL, the nation’s oldest organization advocating for
the issues of community democracy. NCL was founded in 1894 by civic reformers
including Teddy Roosevelt and Louis Brandeis. Prior to being named President
in 1995, Mr. Gates was Vice President of the National Civic League for eight
years.
Gates speaks extensively around the country, and around the world, on topics
including the changing forms of democracy, citizen participation, community
visioning and strategic planning. He has also regularly lectured in a variety
of academic institutions, including the University of Colorado’s Graduate
School of Public Affairs and the State and Local Government Program at Harvard’s
Kennedy School of Government, and is a regular instructor in leadership training
programs across the country.
In addition, Gates provides technical assistance to communities undertaking
strategic planning or visioning projects. Past projects have included Phoenix,
Arizona; Indianapolis, Indiana; New Orleans, Louisiana; Charlotte, North Carolina;
and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Gates is also active in his community of Denver, Colorado where he serves
as the founding chairman of the Colorado Institute for Leadership Training
and a member of the board of directors of the Latino Research & Policy
Council.
Gates serves on a variety of other boards including the National Commission
on Civic Renewal, the Council for the Advancement of Citizenship, and the
California Center for Civic Renewal.
He is also co-chair of the Civic Practices Network, co-chair of the Saguaro
Seminar, a Harvard University project studying ‘social capital’
and co-chair of the Alumni Council of the Kennedy School of Government’s
Career Services Office.
Gates has a Masters in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard University, where he studied the interaction between
the public and private sectors, and an honors degree in economics from the
University of Colorado at Boulder. He was also a visiting scholar at the University
of East Anglia in Norwich, England, where he studied political economics.
Arturo Vargas
Arturo Vargas is the Executive Director of the National Association of Latino
Elected and Appointed Officials, a national membership organization, and the
NALEO Educational Fund, a national nonprofit civic participation and civic
research organization. The NALEO Educational Fund is the leading organization
that empowers Latinos to participate fully in the American political process,
from citizenship to public service. The Fund's primary programmatic activities
include U.S. citizenship outreach and assistance, civic participation, campaign
training, technical assistance to elected and appointed Latino officials,
youth leadership development, research on Latino demographic and electoral
trends, and policy analysis and advocacy on access to the democratic process.
Prior to joining NALEO, Arturo Vargas was the Vice President for Community
Education and Public Policy of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational
Fund. His responsibilities included supervision and direction of MALDEF's
community education and leadership development progran1s. His prior positions
at MALDEF included Director of Outreach and Policy where his responsibilities
included the coordination of the organization's 1991 redistricting efforts,
which led to an historic increase in the number of Latinos serving in the
California legislature. Before that, Arturo directed MALDEF's National 1990
Census Program, an award-winning national outreach and public policy effort
to promote a full count of the Latino population. This program was recognized
by the U.S. Census Bureau as the most effective outreach effort in the 1990
Census.
Before joining MALDEF, Arturo was the senior education policy analyst at
the National Council of La Raza in Washington, D.C. His major focus area were
language issues, including bilingual education, the English-Only movement,
and literacy in the Latino community.
Arturo presently serves on the boards of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation,
the Independent Sector, the National Civic League, the National Immigration
Forum, and Hispanics in Philanthropy. In January 1999, Arturo was elected
to a second term as chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, an umbrella
coalition of the leading national Latino organizations. Arturo has received
Hispanic Magazine's 1995 Hispanic Achievement Award for Community Service,
the National Federation of Hispanic Owned Newspapers 1998 Leadership Award,
the National Association for Bilingual Education's 1999 President's Award,
and has been included in Hispanic Business Magazine's List of 100 Hispanic
Influentials in 1996 and 1998.
Arturo holds a master's degree in Education and a bachelor's degree in History
and Spanish from Stanford University. He is from Los Angeles, and was born
in EI Paso, Texas.
Sara E. Meléndez
Sara E. Meléndez is president and CEO of INDEPENDENT SECTOR. Under
Dr. Meléndez's leadership since 1994, INDEPENDENT SECTOR has increased
the visibility of the people, organizations, and service of the nonprofit
sector; successfully opposed efforts to silence nonprofits' advocacy rights;
and promoted collaboration among business, government, and the nonprofit sectors.
Dr. Meléndez has served as a spokesperson on philanthropy and the
nonprofit sector for various media, including the New York Times, Washington
Post, NPR, NBC News, CNBC, and CNN. She has also testified before Congress
on nonprofit issues.
Before assuming the INDEPENDENT SECTOR presidency, her experience included
positions as president of the Center for Applied Linguistics, vice provost
and dean of arts and humanities at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut,
and director of special minority initiatives at the American Council on Education.
She has also served as assistant professor and director of bilingual programs
at the University of Hartford in Connecticut.
A native of Puerto Rico, she grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a bachelor's
degree in English from Brooklyn College and a doctorate from the Graduate
School of Education at Harvard University. She has worked and written extensively
on multicultural, diversity, and language issues and the importance of education
and leadership opportunities for women and minorities in America.
Dr. Meléndez has served as a trustee of CIVICUS: World Alliance for
Citizen Participation, Ethics Resource Center, the National Puerto Rican Forum,
and Richmond College, the American University in London.
Jim Wallis
Jim Wallis is a national commentator on ethics and public life and a spokesperson
for faith-based initiatives to overcome poverty; the editor of Sojourners
magazine, covering faith, politics and culture for 30 years; and the convener
of Call to Renewal, a national federation of churches, denominations, and
faith-based organizations working to overcome poverty. Wallis speaks at more
than 200 events a year and his columns appear in the Washington Post,
LA Times, MSNBC, and Beliefnet. His most recent book is Faith Works:
Lessons From the Life of an Activist Preacher (Random House, 2000). He
regularly offers commentary and analysis for radio and television and teaches
a course at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government on "Faith,
Politics and Society." Jim lives in inner-city Washington, D.C. with
his wife, Joy, and their son, Luke.
In the last several years, Wallis has led more than 250 town meetings, bringing
together pastors, civic and business leaders, and elected officials in the
cause of social justice and moral politics. Under Wallis' leadership, Call
to Renewal has hosted five Roundtables on Poverty for national religious leaders
and held five successful National Summits. Endorsed initially by 60 Christian
leaders, Call To Renewal's Covenant and Ten Year Campaign to Overcome Poverty
now has thousands of supporters around the United States.
Jim Wallis was raised in a Midwest evangelical family. As a teenager, his
questioning of the racial segregation in his church and community led him
to the black churches and neighborhoods of inner-city Detroit. He spent his
student years involved in the civil rights movement and protesting the Vietnam
War. While at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, Jim and several
other students started a magazine and community with a Christian commitment
to social justice. In 1975, Sojourners moved to the Columbia Heights neighborhood
of Washington, D.C. They later founded the Sojourners Neighborhood Center,
which serves the children of the community through tutoring and mentoring
programs, a summer Freedom School, and parents' support activities.
Time magazine named Wallis one of the "50 Faces for America's
Future." His books include The Soul of Politics (1994) and Who
Speaks for God? A New Politics of Compassion, Community, and Civility
(1996).
David D. Chrislip
David D. Chrislip is Principal of Skillful Means. He has spent the past 26
years helping people enhance their leadership capacities and create visions
and strategies for their organizations and communities by working together.
The broader purpose of his work is to build civil society. His work focuses
on three areas: civic leadership development, collaboratively addressing complex
community issues, and organizational strategy and development. His roles include
research, writing, process design, capacity building, leadership coaching
and consulting, and facilitation. He has served as a Senior Associate of the
National Civic League and as Vice President of Research and Development for
American Leadership Forum. He is the co-founder of the Denver Community Leadership
Forum. He has taught graduate courses in leadership and ethics at the University
of Denver and at the University of Colorado at Denver. He is a senior Course
Director with the Colorado Outward Bound School and the National Outdoor Leadership
School. Previously he served in financial management positions with The Boeing
Company.
An experienced seminar leader and consultant, Chrislip has worked with many
communities and organizations, both nationally and internationally, and has
conducted leadership development programs for several thousand students, managers
and community leaders. He has written a number of published articles on politics,
civic engagement, and civil society and is the co-author, with Carl Larson,
of Collaborative Leadership: How Citizens and Civic Leaders Can Make a
Difference (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994). His next book, The Collaborative
Leadership Fieldbook: A Guide for Citizens and Civic Leaders, will be
published by Jossey-Bass in the spring of 2002.
Mr. Chrislip received his B.A. degree (1966) from Oklahoma State University
in economics and history, an M.S. degree (1970) from Wichita State University
in economics, and an M.P.A. degree (1982) from Harvard University's John F.
Kennedy School of Government.
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