NCDD's Board of Directors

Lori Britt, Board Chair
Lori L. Britt, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at James Madison University also serves as the Director of the Institute for Constructive Advocacy and Dialogue (ICAD), which seeks to serve as a resource for the study and practice of public engagement in public problem-solving. Through ICAD, she trains and engages students as public process facilitators to design and facilitate productive conversations to help address complex community and organizational needs. Britt has been a learning partner with the Kettering Foundation conducting applied research on public deliberation and is working on pedagogical resources for dialogue with the Interactivity Foundation. She has published numerous book chapters and journal articles on engagement, public processes, and pedagogy, and serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Deliberative Democracy (formerly the Journal of Public Deliberation).

Kyla Epstein
Kyla Epstein (she/her) lives with her child on the stolen territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations, also known as Vancouver, BC, Canada. Kyla is thrilled to be serving on the NCDD board as part of her own learning and development and strives to be curious while working to decrease isolation and foster community through relationships built on trust, connection, accountability and shared values. As the Manager, Stakeholder Relations for the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), Kyla works to advocate for amazing people who are working every day for high-quality, applied, public post-secondary education. Kyla is an active volunteer having served on many nonprofit boards and is the past Chair of Vancouver Public Library. Kyla currently serves on the Vancouver Writers Festival board, the Laurier Institution board, is an active member of the Parent Advisory Committee for her child’s school, and in 2017 she was selected to attend the Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference (GGCLC).
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Simone Talma Flowers
Simone Talma Flowers is the Executive Director of Interfaith Action of Central Texas (iACT), whose mission is to cultivate peace and respect through interfaith dialogue, service and celebration. Simone Talma Flowers brings over 26 years of extensive experience in non-profit management.
Simone promotes a culture of high performance, support and collaboration. She advances the mission of the organization by bringing people of diverse faiths, cultures and backgrounds together, to break down the barriers that divide us. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion and believes everyone should have access to opportunities, so they can live up to their fullest potential. Simone has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Business Administration from St. Edward’s University.

Betty Knighton
Betty Knighton is president of the National Issues Forums Institute and a senior associate of the Kettering Foundation. Since her connection with Kettering and National Issues Forums began in the early 1990s, she has been keenly interested in exploring practices that support public deliberation in communities, in campuses, and in classrooms. Betty has worked extensively within the National Issues Forums network to foster practices that incorporate deliberative discussions of public issues into the life of the community and to create opportunities for ongoing learning and sustainable civic engagement. For two decades, Betty served as the Director of the West Virginia Center for Civic Life, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes civic engagement throughout West Virginia. A primary focus of her work has been the development of a collaborative network of educational, civic, faith-based, and governmental organizations interested in working with the public to address public issues in democratic ways.

Jeff Prudhomme
Jeff Prudhomme, Ph.D., is a Vice President and Fellow at the Interactivity Foundation (IF), a non-profit devoted to using facilitated small-group dialogues to explore diverse perspectives and generate alternative possibilities. Over the past two decades he has worked to develop and put into action IF’s three mission areas: sustained dialogue projects with invited participants, shorter community conversations open to the public, and dialogue process trainings in educational settings. Prudhomme came to this work from a background of teaching philosophy and religious studies. He sees his current work as a way to move both philosophical thinking and political thinking beyond the realms of academia and policy-making and into the world—to engage the capacity of all people to explore alternative possibilities for society through generous, bold, and collaborative conversations. 

Norma Ramos
Norma Ramos is the Associate Director for the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE) at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she is responsible for leading strategic direction, initiatives and management related to the Institute’s core areas of research, education and public discourse. She manages the Institute's research projects, educational and leadership programs, public discourse and dialogue initiatives. She is also responsible for building and maintaining civic, community and educational partnerships, media partners, and local and state government relations related to the program development and administration functions of the Institute. She is a trained facilitator, manages training programs and opportunities utilizing various dialogue methods to enhance deliberative democracy and civic and public engagement.

Larry Schooler
Larry Schooler is a Director at Kearns & West, a national firm specializing in public engagement and consensus building in the public sector. He holds an MA/PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and his experience ranges from assisting local, state, and federal agencies to nonprofit and faith-based organizations worldwide in resolving disputes, building consensus, and engaging the public in the decision-making process. He specializes in land use mediation, strategic planning, and visioning and has extensive experience in energy, water, community and regional planning, transportation, housing, health and human services, and technology. Larry is on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin where he teaches Facilitative Leadership and Conflict Resolution and serves as a senior fellow at the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life. 

Logan Steppan
A master strategist and expert facilitator, Logan Steppan —founder and CEO of Creek Consulting— developed his skills while studying at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. An Ozark Missouri born Midwesterner with entrepreneurial roots, Logan’s passion for facilitation has long been connected to government, community and policy conversations at state, local and national levels. Armed with a dual-degree in Political Science and Criminal Justice, Logan honed his craft while working with the Center for Public Deliberation and formally launched Creek Consulting in April 2015. Logan and his family, have just recently relocated to the Denver Metro in order for his wife, Madison to pursue a PhD program at the University of Denver.

Quixada Moore-Vissing, PhD
Quixada Moore-Vissing is a civic researcher and designer of participatory engagement processes, both in the United States and around the world. She directs engagement for North America at Modus in Vancouver, Canada. Moore-Vissing is co-author of two civic health indexes and speaks regularly about concepts of civic infrastructure and civic health. She founded Public Engagement Partners and has worked in leadership roles at Public Agenda, Everyday Democracy, and the University of Richmond's Bonner Center for Civic Engagement. Moore-Vissing is a fellow at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey School of Public Policy with New Hampshire Listens as well as the University of Maine's George Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and Salem State University's Center for Childhood and Youth Studies. She trained in principles of nonviolence and peace with Kingian civil rights leaders and Gandhian scholars at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Cal Poly Pomona's Ahimsa Center for Nonviolence, and the International School for Jain Studies in Delhi, India. Moore-Vissing is a former educator and serves on her community's school board. 

Previous Board Members

Paul Alexander, Former Director of the Institute on the Common Good at Regis University
John Backman, Principal, Backman Writing & Communications
Martín Carcasson, Director, Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University
Lucas Cioffi, Founder, QiqoChat
Susan Stuart Clark, Founder, Common Knowledge
Marla Crockett, Dialogue & Deliberation Consultant
Jacob Hess, Author, You’re Not  as Crazy as I Thought, But You’re Still Wrong
Martha McCoy, Executive director, Everyday Democracy
Ambassador John McDonald, Co-founder of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy
Diane Miller, Owner, Civic Collaboration
Leanne Nurse, Program analyst for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Barbara Simonetti, Meeting Design Consultant
Najeeba Syeed-Miller, Associate Professor, Muslim and Interreligious Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary
Taylor Willingham, Founder, Texas Forums 
Wendy Willis, Executive Director of Deliberative Democracy Consortium, Director of Oregon’s Kitchen Table
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Members of NCDD’s Original Steering Committee

Before the Board of Directors was in full swing, we had a very active and incredibly helpful Steering Committee. NCDD deeply thanks all of the people listed below. They are listed with the organizational affiliations and positions they had at the time.
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Tom Atlee, Founder, The Co-Intelligence Institute
Andy Fluke, Creative Director, NCDD
Nancy Glock-Grueneich, President, HIGHER Edge
Sandy Heierbacher, Director, NCDD
Leilani Rashida Henry, Founder, Being and Living Enterprises
Pam Korza, Co-Director, Animating Democracy Initiative of Americans for the Arts
Leah Lamb, Founder, The Performance Initiative
Amy Malick, Communications Director, Study Circles Resource Center
Diane Miller, Project Coordinator, Envision Central Texas
Priya Parker, Program Director of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network, International Institute for Sustained Dialogue
Susan Partnow, Director of Conversations, Let’s Talk America
Barbara Schaeffer-Bacon, Co-Director, Animating Democracy Initiative of Americans for the Arts
David Schoem, Faculty Director, Michigan Community Scholars Program
John Spady, Director of Research, Forum Foundation
Lars Torres, Researcher, AmericaSpeaks
Taylor Willingham, Director of Texas Forums
Miriam Wyman, Co-Director, Canadian Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation
Sandra Zagon, Co-Director, Canadian Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation