Constitution Day 2022: California Conference on Citizenship

What’s connecting people in solving the problems their communities face? A Cross-Sector Approach to Civic Leadership

The California Conference on Citizenship will bring together leaders from around the state to assess civic health and explore civic innovations that can improve the quality of life for all Californians. 

The conference will highlight successful examples of public engagement and civic innovation, strengthen connections between people working to improve local democracy, and inspire planning for stronger civic infrastructure in the state. The event will also generate discussion on the civic health research needed in California, and explore ways to understand how the pandemic, partisan polarization, and other factors have affected how Californians are connecting and working together.

The conference will begin with a keynote presentation by Josh Fryday, California’s Chief Service Officer, followed by a plenary panel exploring the research on civic health. A number of concurrent sessions will be held in the afternoon, followed by a reception. 

Agenda

• 10:30 AM:  Check-in
• 11 AM- 11:45 AM: Welcome and Keynote Address
• 11:45 AM- 12:30 PM: Lunch
• 12:30 -1:30 PM: Panel 1: Cross Sector Approaches to Public Engagement 
• 1:30-1:45 PM: Break 
• 1:45 -3 PM: Panel 2: Building Bridges, Inclusion in Public Engagement
• 3 - 3:15 PM: Closing 
• 3:15-4:15 PM: Networking Reception (optional) 

Speakers

Jarrett Barrios

Barrios serves as the senior vice president of strategic community & programmatic Initiatives for the California Community Foundation. At the Foundation, he oversees organizational strategy and leads all CCF programmatic initiatives, marketing, communications, policy, and advocacy.

Prior to CCF, Barrios served as CEO of the American Red Cross of Los Angeles, the Massachusetts Red Cross, GLAAD, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation. From 1999 to 2007, he served in the Massachusetts legislature with a focus on progressive policy issues including affordable housing, community safety, health access, and consumer protection. Barrios is an appointed member of the Covered California Board of Directors, is the immediate past president of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, and serves on the boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation in New York City, the Center on Law and Social Policy in Washington, DC, and the Online Progressive Engagement Network (OPEN) in Barcelona, Spain. He has previously served as vice-chair of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in New York, and on the boards of Families USA, the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, and Preservation of Affordable Housing, Inc.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith

Briscoe-Smith is a child clinical psychologist.  She has focused her learning and service on issues of trauma and race. She has served as a professor, director of diversity equity and inclusion, and director of mental health programs for children and families impacted by trauma.  As a senior fellow with UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, she has written about issues of race, and difficult conversations and served as a lead instructor on an edex course on Bridging.  She is the principal and founder of Soft River Consultation where she provides training, consultation, and facilitation to schools, higher ed, health care organizations, nonprofits, and philanthropy.  She currently serves as the Project Lead for the "Connecting Californians through Service" grant which brings together UC Berkeley's Othering Belonging Institute, Center for Greater Good, and the states California Volunteers program to create a curriculum with a focus on bridging the state Americorps programs.

Josh Fryday

Fryday serves as California’s Chief Service Officer within the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom to lead service, volunteer, and civic engagement efforts throughout California. As a member of the Governor’s Cabinet, Fryday led the COVID-19 Task Force to support food insecure communities and food banks across the state. Since his appointment, California Volunteers has launched the nation’s first statewide Climate Action Corps, #CaliforniansForAll volunteer initiative, a statewide Neighbor-to-Neighbor campaign, and the #CaliforniansForAll College Corps to help thousands of Californians who commit to serving for a year pay for college, and #CaliforniansForAll Youth Jobs Corps, a program to employ underserved youth across the state in critical issue areas.

Fryday is a military veteran and the former Mayor of Novato, his hometown. He also served as president of Golden State Opportunity (GSO), leading the expansion and implementation of the California Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC). Prior to GSO, he served as chief operating officer for NextGen Climate, a leading national organization focused on climate change. Fryday served in the military as an Officer in the United States Navy (‘09-‘13) as a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG). Fryday received his law degree from the UC Berkeley School of Law.

He currently serves on the Board of Trustees for Demos, a national think-tank focused on issues of economic, racial and political inequality, and is a founding Board Member of Amazon Frontlines, a leading organization to protect indigenous communities and territories in the Amazon. 

Gustavo Herrera

Herrera was appointed as arts for LA’s CEO in December 2018.  Prior to working with us, he was the Western regional director for Young Invincibles (YI), where he was responsible for leading YI’s California offices, including its West Coast expansion. As the director, he set strategic direction and advanced YI’s policy priorities on health care, higher education, jobs, and civic engagement for the region.

Before starting at Young Invincibles, Gustavo was the chief operating officer of L.A. Plaza de Cultura y Artes (LAPCA), overseeing the day-to-day operation of a county museum, including the oversight of a master plan committee responsible for strategically developing three acres of the additional museum campus. From 2010-2012, Gustavo led the Maestro Foundation, a classical music and performance arts foundation, as the director of organizational development. Between 2007-2010, he assessed and recommended business growth strategies in the US marketplace for the global Fortune 500 Company, American Honda Motors, Co.

Gustavo served on the Board of Directors of the Create: Fixate Arts Organization (2006-2010). He is a current Strong Workforce Implementation Advisory Board Member for the California Community Colleges, and Advisory Board Member for the California Physician’s Alliance. He serves on the Leadership Council of CA Forward and is the Vice President of California Arts Advocates.

Deidre Lind

Lind is an award-winning philanthropic leader with effective, impact-driven results.  Lind currently serves as the founding President of the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles created to build impact-driven public/private partnerships focused on innovation and impact, including leading the organization in its unprecedented COVID-19 response efforts.  To date, the Fund has spent more than $100 million on direct programs impacting Angelenos. Lind also currently serves as the part-time founding executive director of the California Volunteers Fund in partnership with the California Volunteers Department of the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom.

Lind has built her career over two decades leading corporate responsibility and philanthropy programs, including serving for a decade as Mattel’s chief global social impact strategist where she launched their two-percent pre-tax profit annual commitment, and delivered the Company’s first global sustainability assessment. Lind has also served as the President of a private foundation and consulted with a number of corporate clients and government entities. She currently serves on the Forbes Nonprofit Council, the Boards of Directors of the Social Impact Fund and Accelerator for America Action, and the Public Policy Committees of LA’s BEST, an afterschool enrichment program, and Southern California Grantmakers following her term as a Board Member there. In 2021, Lind served as co-chair of the council on the Foundation’s virtual Annual Conference, Leading Together. Lind joined the diplomatic policy delegation to Monterrey, Mexico sponsored by the US Mexico Foundation and Meridien Center in May 2022. 

Rhianna C. Rogers

Rogers is the Center's inaugural director to Advance Racial Equity Policy at the RAND Corporation. Before RAND, Rogers held administrative/teaching appointments in Higher Education and Tribal government (2002–2021).

Rogers is an expert on cultural and ethnic studies, intercultural competencies and diversity education, cultural mediation, and virtual exchange programmatic development and implementation. Rogers has successfully built and implemented DEI programming for over a decade in higher education, private/public corporations, and NGOs. For eleven years, Dr. Rogers created and ran the SUNY Empire State College-supported Buffalo Project, a longitudinal participatory action research project focused on using cultural data as the baseline for programmatic development and implementation. With numerous awards, Dr. Rogers grew the program, forming state-wide and international partnerships, and co-created Sustainable Progress and Equality Collective (SPEC) with advocates across the US. This work led Rogers to be featured as part of the United—Geneva Forum in 2020 and 2021.

Rogers has supported Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in a variety of capacities, including running training for Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS)/German NATO DEU Air Command (2022), participating in the White House—Year of Evidence in Action Forums (2022) as well as sitting on the New York Board of Regents and the New York State Education Department Digital Equity Summits advisory group (2021), the Lumen Circles/Gates Foundation DEI Faculty Development Project (2021), and the Kettering Foundation Civic Engagement and Deliberative Dialogue International Institute consulting team (2020-2021).

Before RAND, Rogers held administrative appointments and taught in Higher Education spaces (2002–present). She was most recently an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies (history and anthropology) and the program coordinator at the State University of New York (SUNY), Empire State College. At SUNY, Rogers held two systems appointments, one as the Ernest Boyer Presidential Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government (2019–2020) and the other as a SUNY Center for Online Teaching Excellence Fellow (2014–2021). Rogers was also a Visiting Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Technology in Lebanon (2017–2018) and served two terms as the Coordinator of Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies (2017–2019 and 2014–2017). 

Cosponsors