|
| |
William R. Potapchuk
Bill Potapchuk is President and founder of the Community Building Institute
(CBI). CBI helps communities improve the way they conduct public business to be
more inclusive, more collaborative, and more effective. CBI believes that
efforts to build vibrant, sustainable, and healthy communities must involve
citizens and a wide array of public and private institutions to achieve real
change. CBI works directly with communities as well as with federal and state
agencies and national foundations with efforts that serve multiple communities.
Potapchuk
specializes in the design and conduct of inclusive large-scale community
change initiatives, efforts to strengthen civic capacity, creating and
managing negotiated approaches to intergovernmental relations, resolving
community conflicts, and reinventing local government to more effectively
engage in collaborative efforts. He has worked on major projects for the Annie
E. Casey Foundation; the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Maryland Governor’s
Office for Children, Youth, and Families, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau
of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Transit
Administration; the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, the Community
Building Initiative in Multnomah County, Oregon; and the Healthy Neighborhood
Initiative in Hampton, Virginia, among others.
Potapchuk is an
experienced trainer and an accomplished public speaker, delivering workshops
and speeches for groups ranging from the National League of Cities and
International City/County Management Association to state-local negotiation
teams in Maryland and the Annual Leadership Symposium of the Institute for
Portland Metropolitan Studies. He also has served as a facilitator and
mediator in a wide range of settings including successful efforts to merge
school systems in Durham, North Carolina; build a new zoning ordinance in
Loudoun County, VA; and strengthen a partnership among national associations
focused on children and family issues.
Potapchuk is the
former Executive Director of the Program for Community Problem Solving (PCPS)
of the National Civic League. While director, Potapchuk led PCPS’s efforts
to apply collaborative strategies to the resolution of significant community
issues. He also served as Associate Director of the Conflict Clinic, Inc., now
the Applied Practice and Theory Program at the Institute for Conflict Analysis
and Resolution at George Mason University. He is currently pursuing his
doctorate in conflict resolution at George Mason University. He received his
BA in Urban Studies from Case Western Reserve University and his MA in
Political Science from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Potapchuk also
completed a nine-month, post-baccalaureate Public Affairs Fellowship with the
Coro Foundation in 1983.
Potapchuk is widely
published. He has worked with co-authors on Pulling Together: A Planning
and Development Consensus Building Manual, Negotiated Approaches to
Environmental Decision Making in Communities: An Exploration of Lessons
Learned, and Building Community: Exploring the Role of Social Capital
and Local Government; written numerous articles; and edited an issue of
the National Civic Review focused on social capital. Most recently he
co-authored an article on implementation for the Consensus Building
Handbook, an 1,100 page reference guide published by Sage on the use of
collaborative processes.
|
