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Expert Advisory Panel

David Beito is an associate professor of history at the University of Alabama. Much of his research has focused on the history of the non-governmental provision of public services. He wrote Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression (1989), From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fratermal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 (2000), and edited The The Voluntary City: Choice Community, and Civil Society (2002). He has also published articles in Journal of Urban History, Critical Review, the Journal of Policy History, the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, and the Journal of Southern History. He is currently writing (with his co-author Professor Linda Royster Beito of Stillman College), a biography of Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a black civil rights pioneer, entrepreneur, and mutual aid leader. He was recently appointed Chairman of the Alabama State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He contributes to the Liberty and Power Group Blog at the History News Network (http://hnn.us/blogs/4.html). Professor Beito, a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Rodney Clifton is a professor of Sociology of Education, at the Centre for Higher Education Research and Development at the Department of Educational Administration, Foundations, and Psychology, University of Manitoba. He has held academic positions at Memorial University in Newfoundland, the University of Stockholm in Sweden and the Australian Council For Educational Research, Melbourne, Australia. He has been extensively published in various academic and policy journals, including Policy Options, the Canadian Journal of Education, Sociology of Education, and the International Encyclopaedia of Education. Dr. Clifton is a native of Jasper, Alberta. He has a M.Ed. from the University of Alberta, a Ph.D from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D from the University of Stockholm.

Wendell Cox, Senior Fellow, is principal of Wendell Cox Consultancy, an international public policy, demographics and transport consulting firm. He has developed a leadership role in urban transport and land use and the firm maintains three internet websites: www.demographia.com, www.publicpurpose.com and www.rentalcartours.net . Wendell Cox has completed projects in Canada, the United States, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Africa. He is author of "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life" and a co-author with Richard Vedder of "The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy." He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission which oversaw highways and public transit in the largest county in the United States. He was also appointed to the Amtrak Reform Council. Wendell Cox is visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (a national university) in Paris.

Brian Lee Crowley is the founding president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax, an economic and social policy think tank that encourages broad debate on strategies for economic development in Atlantic Canada and nationally. Dr. Crowley has been extensively involved in government and political reform and has published many books and articles in the field. He has advised several provinces on constitutional and electoral reform. He was Manitoba Premier Howard Pawley's Constitutional Advisor during the Meech Lake negotiations. He has lectured on economics, politics and philosophy at Dalhousie University (Halifax), the University of Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg and le College universitaire de Saint-Boniface. Dr. Crowley was born and raised in British Columbia. He holds degrees from McGill and the London School of Economics, including a doctorate in political economy from the latter.

Sir Roger Douglas Sir Roger Douglas was Finance Minister in New Zealand's Labour Government from 1984 to 1988. Sir Roger was responsible for one of the most comprehensive restructuring program ever attempted by a government anywhere. The program included cutting income tax rates in half, deregulating wide sectors of the New Zealand economy, ending farm and business subsidies, and restructuring and privatizing most state owned enterprises. Most significantly, Sir Roger overhauled the operating philosophy of government agencies and departments to make them run as competition-oriented, bottom line business enterprises that are fully accountable for resources they receive from taxpayers. Sir Roger retired from politics in 1990 and now operates an international consulting firm based from Auckland, New Zealand where he lives. In 2008 he was re-elected to the New Zealand parliament with the party he founded, the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers. See more at www.rogerdouglas.org.nz.

Johan Hjertqvist is the founder and president of the Health Consumer Powerhouse in Brussels, the European do-tank for better healthcare by consumer information and knowledge. Before the Powerhouse, Mr. Hjertqvist was the manager of Timbro Health Policy Unit, a division of the Timbro Policy Group in Stockholm, Sweden. Mr. Hjertqvist has a background in health care policy and welfare entrepreneurial activities. Beginning in 1999 he led a four-year project to analyze the transformation of health care in the Stockholm region which resulted in three comprehensive reports. His “The Stockholm Health Care Revolution” published in 2000 is an internationally well-known inspiration to reform. During the 1990’s, Mr. Hjertqvist played an active role in the transition of internal market ideas to a number of countries, UK, Norway and Canada not the least. Mr. Hjertqvist has also acted as an advisor to the Greater Stockholm Council, specializing in market infrastructures where purchasers and providers can meet and the focus of his projects between 1995 – 99 was on creating new arenas where private health care entrepreneurs and contractors could come together to strengthen the impact of market pluralism. Mr. Hjertqvist has a Master of Laws degree from the University of Stockholm and is a member of international health care networks and institutions such as the Stockholm Network in London and the Centre for the New Europe in Brussels and also serves on the Board of Research Advisors at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Ronald Jensen has been called one of the true pioneers of entrepreneurial government by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, the authors of the best-selling book "Re-inventing Government". Ronald Jensen became known as "the father of the Phoenix Model" after he, as Director of Phoenix Public Works, pioneered the concept of public-private competition at the City of Phoenix in 1978 in which city crews compete against private vendors. He holds a BS in Civil Engineering from California State University and completed the Management Institute at Arizona State University and The Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was national president of the American Public Works Association in 1990-91. He has been on the Board of Directors of the National Council for Public-Private Partnerships and the National Research Council Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment. He also was an advisor to U.S. Vice-President Al Gore on his Re-inventing Government project. He retired from Phoenix in 1996 and now operates the management-consulting firm Ron Jensen & Associates that specializes in managed competition systems and local government re-engineering.

Owen McShane is Director of the Centre for Resource Management Studies (www.RMAStudies.org.nz), a privately sponsored New Zealand-based “think tank” specialising in resource management matters. The Centre’s activities are funded by the Centre for Resource Management Studies Trust, which is registered as a charitable trust for educational purposes. He has New Zealand degrees in Architecture and Town Planning and also studied Urban Economics at UC Berkeley towards a Masters Degree in City and Regional Planning. He writes a fortnightly column for New Zealand's National Business Review, titled “Straight Thinking” and has been published in many magazines and newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review

Harold Bjarnason , recently retired Dean, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba, has enjoyed a distinguished career in corporate, academic and public service. His experience has been focussed on the food and agriculture sectors, including marketing, management, transportation and handling, international policy development, research and education. During his 12 years in Ottawa, he was Canada’s highest-ranking federal government official for grains and oilseeds, serving from 1987 to 1997 as Associate Deputy Minister, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. In this capacity, he was at the forefront of all domestic and international policy and program development. He assumed broader responsibility for all agriculture, food and beverages during extended periods as acting Deputy Minister. Dr. Bjarnason holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin, a M.Sc. from South Dakota State University and a B.A. from the University of Manitoba. He has authored numerous publications and delivered speeches throughout North America and abroad. Prior to assuming the role of Dean, he was on the board of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, served as an Adjunct Professor with the Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Manitoba, and while with the federal government, as an Executive-in-Residence for two academic years at the University of British Columbia.

Ruth Richardson established her reputation as an advocate for change during the remarkable reform era in New Zealand from the mid-1980's to the mid-1990's. As New Zealand's Minister of Finance from 1990–1993, she was the principal architect of New Zealand's second wave of reform, complementing the first wave of reforms initiated in the mid 1980s by New Zealand's other well-known Minister of Finance, Sir Roger Douglas. Her institutional framework for the conduct of fiscal policy, the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994, is widely regarded as setting international best practice, and is a cornerstone of New Zealand's economic framework. She is a director of the Mont Pelerin Society, an elite group of classical liberal thinkers that was started by Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek. Ruth has established a substantial private sector practice in corporate governance and holds directorships throughout a wide spectrum of business activity on three continents.

Alex Avery has been the Director of Research and Education at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues since 1994. The Center conducts research and analysis on environmental concerns surrounding food production, and uses its worldwide overview of food and farming to assess policies, improve farmers’ understanding of the new globalized farm economy and heighten awareness of the environmental impacts of various farming systems and food policies. His numerous publications (listed at www.hudson.org) include papers on eco-friendly farming and the effects of nitrates in drinking water on infant children. Avery holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from Old Dominion University and has conducted basic plant research on drought-resistant sorghum varieties for the Sudan as a McKnight Research Fellow at Purdue University.

David Henderson is an associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He also has a number of prominent affiliations with prominent think tanks around the United States including Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, California; Adjunct Fellow, Center for the Study of American Business, Washington University, St. Louis; Adjunct Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C.; and a Senior Fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis, Dallas, Texas. His most recent work is on the economics of health care and health insurance. He is the editor of The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, now in its third printing that communicates to a lay audience what and how economists think. His award-winning articles have been published in a wide variety of publications, periodicals and newsletters. Dr. Henderson, a native of Carman, Manitoba, earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Winnipeg and his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA.

Niger Innis currently serves as the National Spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, one of the oldest African-American anti-poverty groups. It was founded in 1942 as one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement in the United States. Its national Headquarters is located in New York City. From there a network of local affiliates and chapters radiate across the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Central and South America. He works closely with the National Chairman and represents CORE across the United States and around the world. In addition to his role with CORE, Innis is on the Advisory Committee member of the National Center for Public Policy Research Project 21. In 1993, Mr. Innis served as campaign manager for the Roy Innis for Mayor campaign in New York City's Democratic Party primary. Although the candidate was outspent $3.5 million to $100,000 by the incumbent Mayor David Dinkins, the Innis campaign was able to garner more than 25% of the vote in the primary. Mr. Innis’ Civil Rights and political activities led to regular and various television and radio appearances around the world. Mr. Innis has been a guest on CNN, BBC, CBC, Al-Jeezera, Fox News Channel, ABC News, CBS News and MSNBC. He attended Georgetown University and pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science. Innis, born and raised in Harlem, New York, currently lives in Westchester, New York and North Las Vegas, Nevada.

Kenneth P. Green is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute where he analyses public policy relating to energy and the environment. An environmental scientist by training and experienced policy analyst, he has authored numerous policy-oriented publications including monographs, magazine articles; newspaper columns; encyclopedia and book chapters; and even a textbook for middle-school students entitled Global Warming: Understanding the Debate. Prior to joining AEI, Dr. Green analysed environmental policy for 8 years with California's Reason Foundation, and analysed Canadian policy issues for three years at The Fraser Institute.

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