New Urban Progress Steering Committee
Editorial Team
27. November 2019
The Steering Committee gathers representatives of all three Project Partners and ensures a timely and effective implementation of the initiative.
Dominic Schwickert has been the Executive Director of Das Progressive Zentrum since 2012. He has proven expertise in the field of political and strategic consulting. Dominic worked i.a. for Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Bertelsmann Stiftung, IFOK GmbH, Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, German Bundestag as well as for the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. He was John F. Kennedy Memorial Policy Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University in fall 2017.
Dr. Maria Skóra is Head of Programme International Relations at Das Progressive Zentrum. She is also actively involved in the Progressive Governance (#PGS) event series. She holds a master’s degree in Sociology and a PhD in economics. 2018 Alumna of Young Leaders Program of the Aspen Institute Central Europe in Prague. 2019 Visiting Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and AICGS, John Hopkins University in Washington DC. She formerly worked for the Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform, Berlin and supported the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions as an expert. Earlier, she was also involved in the activities of the United Nations Development Programme Project Office in Warsaw.
Elisabeth Mansfeld has been responsible for the project area Cities since 2017. Prior to this, she spent nine years as project manager in the Chief Operating Office of Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management division. And as an expert for microfinancing, she has supervised projects in China and Mexico.
Dr. Claudia Kristine Huber has been in charge of the project area Europe since 2018. Prior to this, she was responsible for the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft’s former project area International Relations. The mediatisation of European politics has long been a key interest, both as a master’s student at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and while studying for her doctorate at the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences (HU Berlin) and Hamburg University. Previously, Claudia Huber held positions at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at Google Germany.
Neel Brown is the Director of External Affairs at The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) in Washington, DC. Neel engages stakeholders and decision makers to facilitate policy discussions on federal, state, and local issues. Before joining PPI, Neel was the President of Legis Media, an advocacy communications firm that he founded in 2004. He has extensive experience in advocacy advertising, grassroots organization, and coalition building. He spent over seven years working on Capitol Hill and political campaigns. Neel lives in Arlington, VA with his wife and daughter and spends his spare time teaching music and performing in a local bluegrass band.
Dane Stangler joined the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) as Director of Policy Innovation. He is the Head of Policy for Startup Genome, a global leader in ecosystem research and evidence-based policy making which uses a holistic model to assess and grow the economic success of startup ecosystems around the world. Formerly the Vice President for Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation, he has written and published in the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Washington Monthly, and more, and is a trusted expert in the United States Senate on the topics of entrepreneurship and economic growth. At Startup Genome, Mr. Stangler is working to enhance their Lifecycle Model which aims to develop entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world, inform policies to strengthen them, and overall improve the policy environment for startups and entrepreneurship.
