2009 Board Members
The following slate of directors was approved by member vote at the 2008 Annual Meeting on November 20th.
Acooa Lee
Acooa is the Legislative Aide to Saint Paul City Councilmember Melvin Carter (Ward 1). Previously, she was a Planning Analyst with the Hennepin County Department of Housing, Community Works & Transit, where she worked to engage the housing development community and elected officials in updating the department's strategic direction, created tools and processes for project regulation compliance, and provided various development technical assistance. Prior to that she was chosen to be a HUD Community Development Fellow -- a program which provided a well-rounded perspective of community development issues, programs and solutions. She is on the City of Lakes Community Land Trust's Board of Directors Finance Committee, the Multicultural Endowment Fund of the St. Paul Foundation's Advisory Board, and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta. Acooa has been involved in the emerging leader program work of the Citizens League.
Kathy Mock
As vice president of public affairs for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, Kathy Mock is responsible for public relations, internal communications, and policy and legislative affairs. In her role as CEO of Blue Plus, she provides strategy and operational oversight for the health plan, which has approximately 180,000 members and more than 7,500 in-network physicians. Mock also serves on the Blue Plus board of trustees. As a Blue Cross executive leader, Mock is a frequent presenter on a wide range of health care topics at civic and industry meetings.
A licensed attorney, Mock has more than two decades of experience in law and public policy. Before joining Blue Cross in 1992, she served as government affairs counsel and director of administration and research for the Insurance Federation of Minnesota. Mock is chair of the board for the Citizens League and serves on the boards of the Minnesota Comprehensive Health Association, the Minnesota Council of Health Plans, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation, and the Alliance for Advancing Nonprofit Health Care. She also served as a 2004-2005 policy fellow with the Humphrey Institute Policy Forum. Mock is a graduate of the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul and the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota.
Jeff Peterson
Jeff is Director of Government Relations for Ecolab, and is responsible for direct lobbying at the federal level, policy development on issues, and administration of their federal political action committee. He has been with Ecolab since 1979. Jeff has been a member of numerous trade associations, and has been the lead Deputy to the Minnesota Business Partnership on behalf of Ecolab. He is a Board member of the History Theater, a volunteer a Humboldt High School in Saint Paul, and one of the most active Citizens League event attendees in the last two years. Jeff has helped to organize two recent Pizza and Politics conversations at Ecolab, and is interested in helping to recruit and engage additional corporate members.
Zach Pettus
Zach Pettus is currently Co-Chair of the Emerging Leaders Membership and Engagement Committee of the Citizens League. In his professional life, Zach works as a broker with NorthMarq, formerly United Properties. He has professional experience in both politics and professional sports, having served on the management team of numerous campaigns at the state level, including as candidate manager for Peter Hutchinson, and as a team leader in corporate sales with the NFL. Zach is active in committee work with multiple professional associations, and he is a native of Minneapolis with a bachelor's degree from Emory University.
Jennifer Ford Reedy
Jennifer is vice president of strategy and knowledge management for Minnesota Community Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation. In this newly created role, Jennifer is charged with driving the foundations' strategy development and implementation across all areas of the Foundations. In addition, she oversees marketing and communications and information technology functions for the Foundations.
Prior to joining the foundations, Jennifer was a consultant with McKinsey and Company for nine years. At McKinsey, she worked primarily with clients in financial services and nonprofit organizations with a focus on economic development and opportunity creation in developed countries. From 2003-2007, Jennifer was "on loan" from McKinsey to direct the Itasca Project, a CEO-led regional economic development initiative in the Twin Cities. In that capacity, she helped to develop and lead community initiatives on topics ranging from transportation to financial literacy. Jennifer holds a Masters degree in social policy from the University of Chicago and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Kansas where she received a national Truman Fellowship for Public Service. Jennifer has been involved in Citizens League work on transportation, poverty and policy innovation and development.
Judith Titcomb
Judy is the primary architect of ethnographic research at Pulse Innovation. She began her career as a tax lawyer and later worked as a lobbyist. While earning a Masters in Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, she became interested in the use of ethnographic research tools in business and specifically in the product development setting. She has completed a wide range of ethnographic studies from a study of the commercialization process at the University of Minnesota to a usability analysis of an implantable device.for a medical device company. She is interested in and learning about water issues. She is on the Board of the Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundations, Twin Cities Public Television, and Common Bond, and she is a member of the Citizens League's Water Policy Study Committee. She has a JD from William Mitchell College of Law and a MPA from the University of Minnesota.
Diane Tran
Diane is project coordinator with the Dakota County Smoke-Free Communities Partnership. Her background in tobacco control includes work with Target Market, Minnesota's former grassroots tobacco youth movement, which helped reduce teenage smoking by 21% statewide in two years. She received the 2002 Dakota County Youth Public Health Achievement Award and was recognized that same year by then-Minnesota State Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm for her youth tobacco prevention work. She graduated with honors from the College of St. Scholastica with a self-designed international social policy degree and a double major in the humanities. Tran was a 2006-2007 Humphrey Policy Forum Fellow and serves on the boards of Kids 'n Kinship, the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, and the National Association of Asian American Professionals - Minnesota. Diane has been active in the Citizens League's Policy Advisory Committee, as well as our member recruitment, young adult "action groups," and emerging leadership development efforts.
Board Members returning in 2009:
Lee Anderson, CHAIR, General Mills
Laura Bishop, Best Buy
Judy Blaseg, Development Consultant
Steve Dornfeld, Metropolitan Council
Nate Garvis, Target
Jennifer Godinez, Minnesota College Access Network
Kevin Goodno, Fredrikson and Byron
Peggy Gunn, Wells Fargo
Tom Horner, Himle Horner
Robert Josephson, US Bancorp
Katie Kelley, Marshall and Ilsely Bank
Leslie Kupchella, Carlson Companies
Sarah Lutman, Minnesota Public Radio
Lily Moua, Graduate Student and DOVE Research Fellow, Humphrey Institute
Jonathan Palmer, Hallie Q. Brown Center
Karri Plowman, Central Corridor Partnership
Kathryn Roberts, Ecumen
Carolyn Smallwood, Way to Grow
Nena Street, Dorsey and Whitney
Tom Teigen, Minnesota Business Partnership
Rebecca Wallin, Wallin Scholarship Program
Donna Zimmerman, HealthPartners