Tom Vellenga will make his case for the necessity of, and strategies for, persuading more Americans to get involved in community and adopt a practical, progressive approach to self-governance. Tom is president of Heartland Democracy. During the Clinton administration, he was a senior policy advisor to White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and to Energy Secretary Federico Peña. Earlier, he served with the Agency for International Development and several Congressional staffs. After he and his wife moved to his native Minnesota to raise their children, he became executive director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and an administrator at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School. A charitable nonpartisan group, Heartland Democracy activates and wins over Midwesterners to practical, progressive goals through civic empowerment and coherent framing of values and ideas.
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