Community Advocates Public Policy Institute

David Riemer
Director
Community Advocates Public Policy Institute

As Director of the Community Advocates Public Policy Institute, David is responsible for developing and advancing policies to greatly reduce poverty. David has been active for many years in reshaping Wisconsin and U.S. policies on welfare, poverty, health care and education. He was recently chosen to serve as a member of the Wisconsin Legislative Council Special Committee on Health Care Reform Implementation, which will study and make recommendations to the State Legislature on what changes Wisconsin should make in response to recently enacted federal health care reform legislation. It will also study all aspects of the federal legislation that affect Wisconsin including insurance market reforms, coverage for uninsured persons, preventive care and quality improvement.

David is the author of The Prisoners of Welfare and several articles on poverty, health care reform and public administration. He is one of the co-founders of The New Hope Project.

David served from 2004-07 as Director of the Wisconsin Health Project to lower the number of Wisconsin’s uninsured and control health care costs. The project was responsible for developing bipartisan legislation (Assembly Bill 1140) to tackle the state’s two biggest health care problems.

In 2004 David campaigned for Milwaukee County Executive. He received 101,000 votes, or
43 percent of the votes cast. During 2003, David served as Budget Director for Wisconsin
Gov. Jim Doyle. His primary responsibility was to solve the State’s projected $3.2 billion deficit. The resulting balanced budget preserved vital services without raising taxes. David worked as an Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy in London and Oxford, England, in 2002; his research focused on supplementing low-income workers’ earnings through the tax system.

From 1988-2001, David held several high-level jobs for the City of Milwaukee, including Budget Director, Administration Director and Chief of Staff for Mayor John O. Norquist. For most of this period, he was responsible for overseeing the central fiscal, purchasing, IT and intergovernmental functions of the City’s 7,500-person, $700 million government.

From 1975-88, David held several positions in government and the private sector. He was legal advisor to Wisconsin Gov. Patrick Lucey, worked for Sen. Edward Kennedy’s Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, developed health policy options for the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, prepared a report on Wisconsin’s uninsured for the state Department of Health and Social Services, and worked on health care cost containment issues for Time Insurance Company. David received an AB degree from Harvard College in History and Literature (1970) and a law degree from Harvard Law School (1975).

Debra J. Kraft
Deputy Director and Counsel
Community Advocates Public Policy Institute

As Deputy Director and Counsel, Debra is responsible for assisting the Director in the development and advancement of policies to reduce poverty and its effects in both Milwaukee and Wisconsin, such as initiatives for health care reform, mental health, substance use disorder treatment and supportive housing. Her duties also include the provision of legal counsel and research; federal, state and local advocacy; and operations oversight.

Before joining the Public Policy Institute, Debra was the General Counsel of the Wisconsin Department of Regulation and Licensing, the state agency responsible for the licensing and enforcement of most regulated professions in the state. As its chief legal advisor and member of the senior management team, she rendered advice and opinion on administrative, legal and policy matters for the agency while also overseeing the department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Debra has extensive experience in the private corporate sector, where she concentrated her legal practice in the general business and real estate areas in both law firm and in-house settings, including a position as Corporate Counsel at the world’s largest privately held printing company. She began her career as an Assistant District Attorney in Milwaukee County.

Debra received her undergraduate degree, with honors, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She continued her studies in public international law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Jason Brame
Communications Coordinator
Community Advocates Public Policy Institute

Jason is responsible for media relations, public messaging and external communications. Jason has worked at Milwaukee-area non-profit organizations since 2000. He received a BA in English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh in 1996 and an MA in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2000.

Robert Cherry
Public Health Systems Coordinator
Community Advocates Public Policy Institute

Robert coordinates the Milwaukee Tobacco Prevention & Control Program and the Milwaukee Addiction Treatment Initiative.

Robert coordinates the Milwaukee Tobacco Prevention & Control Program and the Milwaukee Addiction Treatment Initiative. He was formerly Associate Outreach Specialist of Community Based Initiatives at the Milwaukee office of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Urban Population Health. Robert, who has strong interests in public health and systems design, also worked in the central intake unit at M&S Clinical Services and Wisconsin Community Services. He received a BS in criminal justice from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Genyne Edwards
Advocacy Consultant
Community Advocates Public Policy Institute

As an attorney Genyne has been actively involved in policy, politics and social advocacy. While Deputy Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Tourism she successfully advocated for an increased role for cultural and urban tourism in statewide economic development policy. Genyne is the Program Director for Milwaukee Mosaic Partnerships Program and Commissioner for the City of Milwaukee-Equal Rights Commission. She is a graduate of Marquette University Law School and received a BS in Organizational Leadership and Supervision from Purdue University.

Andrea Gouin
Trinity Fellow, Marquette University

Andrea is currently pursuing her MA in Public Service, with a specialization in criminal justice administration. While at Justice 2000 she is researching national criminal justice policies and programs, such as the Community Corrections Act and community courts. She is also working with a variety of criminal justice and community planning groups dedicated to criminal justice reform.

Prior to beginning her studies at Marquette, Andrea completed two years of service with AmeriCorps. She served one year as an AmeriCorps*VISTA at St. Norbert College where she helped organize an academic service-learning program, and served as a liaison for volunteer coordination and management between SNC and the Boys and Girls Club of Green Bay.

She also served one year with the Massachusetts Legal Assistance for Self-Sufficiency AmeriCorps Program in Holyoke, Mass., as an advocate at a legal services agency, and managed a weekly, in-court volunteer program providing legal assistance to tenants on the day of their eviction hearing.

Andrea received a BA in Sociology with a human services concentration from St. Norbert College in 2007. At that time she was also inducted into Pi Gamma Mu, the International Honor Society in Social Sciences. In 2009 she was the recipient of a PGM academic scholarship in support of her graduate work.

Bob Sayner
Co-Founder and Former Chief Executive Office
Justice 2000

Bob Sayner is co-founder of Justice 2000, a division of Community Advocates established in 2001 to promote the expansion of opportunities for the safe release and community reintegration of criminal offenders. This mission is based on the belief that social services and treatment interventions, when combined with community supervision, can be useful, effective alternatives to incarceration and should be considered for wider application in Milwaukee, and throughout the state of Wisconsin and the nation.

From 1971-97 he served as Assistant Executive Director of Wisconsin Correctional Services (now known as Wisconsin Community Services [WCS]). During his tenure at WCS, Bob provided the leadership needed to develop, establish and manage Circuit and Municipal Court Intervention Services in the Milwaukee area for criminal offenders and indigent ordinance violators with mental health and substance use disorder problems, a program that evolved into a comprehensive Milwaukee County Pretrial Services Program. In 1994 and 1995, the Pretrial Services Program, operated by WCS was nationally recognized as an “Enhanced Model Pretrial Services Program by the Federal Bureau of Justice Assistance, deemed worthy of replication in other jurisdictions throughout the nation.

Bob also provided the leadership to develop, establish and manage a comprehensive Mental Health Community Support and Treatment Program designed to assist offenders with mental illness and co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorder to function and live independently in the community as an alternative to institutionalization. In 1994, the WCS Community Support Program received national honors as a finalist for the Harvard Kennedy School of Government “Innovations in Government” award and was the subject of a National Institute Journal profile published by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In 1998, Bob received the “Olgiatti” award presented in Philadelphia by the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies for lifetime achievement “in recognition for continuing outstanding contributions to the furtherance of the principals of pretrial justice.”

Bob is currently collaborating with the Community Advocates Public Policy Institute to support the Community Justice Project, designed to reduce spending on corrections, control growth in Wisconsin’s prison and jail populations, hold offenders accountable and increase public safety.

Marilyn Walczak
Community Justice Project Coordinator
Justice 2000

Marilyn Walczak, co-founder and Community Justice Project Coordinator for Justice 2000, has over 33 years of experience working with local justice systems, and creating innovative and high-impact programs. She has done program development and has management experience in providing successful treatment intervention and pretrial services for criminal offenders. She served on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies (NAPSA) for six years. Additionally, Marilyn served NAPSA as the Service Coordinator for six years providing support to the Board for Directors and membership. Marilyn currently serves on a variety of criminal justice and community planning groups dedicated to criminal justice reform.

Conor J. Williams
Economic Policy Analyst
Community Advocates Public Policy Institute

Conor J. Williams is the Economic Policy Analyst for Pathways to Ending Poverty. He also operates a family-owned stone fabrication business which he helped to found. Conor holds an honors BA in Economics from University College Dublin in Dublin, Ireland. Conor started work doing econometric modeling at the Department of Transport in Sydney, Australia followed by a number of years as an economic analyst for an aircraft leasing company in Shannon, Ireland. Subsequently he worked as an economic policy analyst for the Department of Commerce and Industry, Gaborone, Botswana, facilitated through the Irish aid agency APSO. Conor is active in MICAH (Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope), where he leads the TIP Initiative (Treatment Instead of Prison), which offers an alternative to criminalization and incarceration through seeking to send non-violent offenders suffering from the disease of substance use disorder to supervised community treatment programs.