The New Bureaucrat

J. Chris Bernard is passionate about ending child hunger in Oklahoma. The state is committed to leveraging the power of collaboration to solve hunger in Oklahoma by improving systems, policies, and practices. Chris believes that as a nation we have both the food and the money already available, but the challenge is coordinating all the pieces. Learn more about the Masterclass for Results-Driven State Government.

David Kilgore is a communicator. In leading his 600+ employees he spends a lot of time breaking down walls because he believes it is important to enjoy work while acknowledging the impact it has on the children and families of California. As the leader of the California Department of Child Support Services, he doesn’t hesitate to jump into a project, roll up his sleeves and work side-by-side with people at all levels of the organization. Learn more about John's MasterClass.

Innovation is key to state government, and California's model program, Innovation Playbook for Government Change Agents (Cal-IPGCA), is entering its 10th year. Program Chair and IPGCA founder Bekah Christensen leads the state-funded immersive experiential learning environment where trainees re-imagine enterprise-wide challenges from a whole-systems perspective and unlock elegant, innovative solutions. She's is an inspiring character in so many ways! Click this link to learn more about my MasterClass.

Justin Brown is an energetic, passionate innovator focused on going at the root causes of poverty. A former CEO, Justin fully recognizes new ambitions demand new capabilities and new investments in the organization. He has concluded that poverty is the root cause of many of the struggles people in his state face, and addressing it has will have significant downstream impact on the human services needed. Learn more about my MasterClass.

Kathleen Webb has gone from theory to practice, moving from her role as Director of Performance Improvement for the California Government Operations Agency to the state’s DMV as its Chief Deputy Director. Serving 50,000 customers the DMV was infamous for stories of day-long lines, although a strike team learned that 16% of all customers waited more than 2 hours. Today, the average wait time in 20 minutes, and it’s only going to get better. Learn more about John's Masterclass.

The Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) held a session on using podcast to help tell the story of the work states are doing on the environment -- and we recorded the virtual session live as a podcast! Why not! Join me with along with Pat McDonnell, ECOS 2021 president and secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection along with Misael Cabrera, director of Arizona’s Department of Environmental Quality

Technology during the pandemic enabled everything from working at home to vaccine distribution to rapid application of intelligent “bots” to help speed service to citizens in need. But with the escalating citizen needs of the future and the limited resources CIOs will need to increasingly agile. Check out NASCIO’s annual CIO survey. Check out my special MasterClass Offering for Team Managers.

The Environmental Council of the States is doing what the founding fathers dreamed of, making sure the collective learning of the 50 states gets shared. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell serves as the 2021 president of the council of his peers, an organization with a long reputation for collective learning. On this episode, he shares how the council has earned its reputation.

Driven to spend her life making a difference, former Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire started life from humble beginnings and went on to impact tens of millions of lives not only in her home state, but across the nation. During her two terms as governor she was constantly seeking facts and drove results across state agencies through routine business reviews that dug into problems.

Arizona Dept of Environmental Quality has dramatically increased environmental outcomes, delivered award-winning online services, and kept agency costs flat because of a deep commitment to implementing Lean. Misael Cabrera, joined in 2011 as deputy director, became director in 2015, and has been instrumental in the success of Governor Doug Ducey’s national model the Arizona Management System. Passionate and articulate, Misael believes that excellence is every public servant's calling, and that excellence must be measurable to be real.