About the Speakers

FRED BARNES
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard. From 1985 to 1995, he served as senior editor and White House correspondent for The New Republic. He covered the Supreme Court and the White House for the Washington Star before moving on to the Baltimore Sun in 1979. He served as the national political correspondent for the Sun and wrote the Presswatch media column for the American Spectator.

He is host, along with Mort Kondracke, of the Beltway Boys on the Fox News Channel. Mr. Barnes appears regularly on Fox's Special Report with Brit Hume. From 1988 to 1998 he was a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group. He has also appeared on Nightline, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Mr. Barnes graduated from the University of Virginia and was a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University.

JOHN S. CZWARTACKI
Coming Soon

JAMES DEMERS
Jim Demers serves as Executive Director of the National Card Coalition, an organization consisting of major national credit card issuers and related companies with an interest in state legislative, executive, and regulatory activities affecting the credit card industry in all 50 states. He also serves as President and Executive Director of the New England-New York-New Jersey Financial Services Association, an eight state trade group comprised of consumer finance lenders, mortgage lenders and credit card companies and he serves as President of The Demers Group, Inc., a Concord, New Hampshire based lobbying firm representing the legislative and regulatory interests of numerous clients. Jim is also a political commentator/analyst for WMUR-TV, New Hampshire’s ABC affiliate, where he appears Sunday mornings on a political news program called “Close-Up”.

Mr. Demers is a former three-term member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives where he served as the Assistant Minority Whip. Last year PoliticsNH.com named him the most influential lobbyist and the fifth most politically influential personality in the state of New Hampshire.

Mr. Demers is a graduate of the University of Miami and he holds an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University. In addition to his current work experience, he has served as Vice President of Government Affairs at Marine Midland Bank in New York and Vice President of Government Affairs at the Associates Corporation of America in Dallas.

DANIELLE FAGRE
Danielle Fagre is Vice President of State Government Affairs for the American Financial Services Association (AFSA), the national trade association for market funded financial services firms providing consumer credit. Its nearly 400 active member companies, which account for approximately $350 billion in outstanding consumer receivables, include auto finance companies, credit card issuers, mortgage lenders, and large and small consumer finance companies.

Prior to joining AFSA in late 2003, Ms. Fagre was Director of Government Affairs and Legislative Counsel for credit card issuer Metris Companies in Minnesota, where she developed and executed the company’s legislative and regulatory strategy, its new law compliance program and oversaw its Political Action Committee.

Prior to joining Metris, she was an associate with two Washington, DC law firms, Venable LLP and O’Connor & Hannan, LLP. As counsel under senior partners Thomas H. Quinn and Timothy Jenkins, she represented banks and major U.S. financial institutions, lobbying on their behalf in Congress on consumer privacy, bankruptcy, telemarketing, Internet and emerging technology policy, antitrust, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and other legislative initiatives related to banking and financial institutions. She also worked with Fortune 500 corporations in various industries on government ethics, corporate federal gift rules, campaign finance and election law, lobbyist registration and disclosure compliance.

Ms. Fagre was born and raised in Minneapolis. She holds a B.A. in Politics and Government from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, and she earned her J.D, cum laude, from American University in Washington, DC. She is admitted to the bar in Maryland (inactive), Washington DC and Minnesota.

LAURA FELDMAN
Ms. Feldman brings her skills as a teacher to educating senior groups and activists across the country. She is a native Washingtonian where politics is a local sport. Demystifying politics, personalizing it and making it fun is one of her goals.

She has been a grassroots organizer for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare for the past 15 years. The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare is a non partisan advocacy organization supported by membership. Prior to coming to the National Committee, she organized national programming for the National Science Foundation under a special education grant, which propelled her out of the classroom, and into the public arena. She is a professional advocate and lobbyist for older Americans. She brings her observations and perspective from "inside the beltway" on the politics of the 109th Congress.

Ms. Feldman graduated from American University. She is the past president of the Southern Gerontological Society, on the Board of Trustees for the Florida Silver Haired Legislature, was the first Policy Chair for GROWS, The (Grassroots Organization For The Well Being of Seniors,) was a Board member of the Maryland Gerontological Association, the Virginia Council on Aging and NANASP (the National Association of Nutrition and Service Providers.) She was appointed to the Seniors Cabinet of the Montgomery County Council of Maryland.

CHANTELE MACK
Chantele Mack is Manager for Government Relations for the Consumer Data Industry Association, headquartered in Washington, D.C. CDIA, is the international trade association representing more than 500 consumer information companies that provide fraud prevention and risk management products, credit and mortgage reports, tenant and employment screening services, check fraud and verification services, and collection services to hundreds of thousands of customers across the United States and the globe.

Ms. Mack works with CDIA members and state lobbyists to promote the CDIA Agenda in all 50 states.

Prior to joining CDIA, Ms. Mack worked with the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a trade association representing commercial building contractors, subcontractors, material suppliers and related firms, for five years. Prior to her position at CDIA, Ms. Mack served as Director of Government Affairs for the southern California chapter of ABC, where she implemented a government relations program that addressed issues affecting the industry from the local, state and federal arenas.

Chantele Mack has a bachelor of arts in International Relations and French from Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, West Virginia.

PAUL MILLER
Paul was born and raised in Racine, Wisconsin. He received a BS in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. Paul served as an aide to Les Aspin former U.S. Congressman and Secretary of Defense under President Clinton. After leaving U.S. Congressman Les Aspin's office, Paul was hired by the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company to handle state regulatory issues. From there, Paul left Wisconsin and headed to Washington and took a job with the law firm of Crowell & Moring, LLP, where he handled insurance and environmental issues. In 1996, Paul took a leave of absence from Crowell & Moring and went back home to Wisconsin to run for the Wisconsin General Assembly. On his return to Washington, Paul left Crowell & Moring and took the job as Manager of Government Relations and PAC Coordinator with the National Funeral Directors Association. Paul then moved to the Office Furniture Dealers Alliance to start the government affairs department for them. And now he is a founding partner at Miller/Wenhold Capitol Strategies, LLC.

In addition to his work for his firm, Paul serves as President of the American League of Lobbyists, an association representing the lobbying community. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors for ALL, its Strategic Planning Committee, and is Chairman of the Programs Committee. Paul also is the co-founder of the Hoops for Hope charity basketball event that pits members of Congress vs. lobbyists each year in an effort to raise money for children's charities in the Washington, D.C. area. In five short years this event has raised over $125,000 for some deserving children. Most recently Paul was invited by the U.S. State Department to travel to Peru to speak and work with the Peruvian government on drafting and implementing a lobbying disclosure law similar to that of the United States.

NED MONROE
Ned Monroe is the Vice President of Political Affairs for the National Restaurant Association. In this position, Ned is responsible for all aspects of the association’s federal political action committee.

Prior to this, Ned served as the Director of Political Affairs for Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a national trade association of commercial and industrial construction companies. As the national political director, Ned managed political activities and grassroots lobbying. He also served as the Treasurer for the ABC-PAC. Highlights of his tenure include doubling the amount raised for the ABC PAC from $500,000 to $1 million in two years, coordinating national issue advertising campaigns and successfully managing the start-up of the association’s political field representative program. Ned served in this position from 1997 until 2005.

Ned is also the Vice President of the National Association of Business Political Action Committees.

Ned has worked in numerous political campaigns around the country, was the Executive Director of the Republican Party of Florida, Deputy Regional Political Director for the Republican National Committee and the Virginia Campaign Manager for the 1988 George Bush for President Campaign.

Ned and his son Harry Lee live in Alexandria, Virginia. He is a native of Newport News, Virginia and is a graduate of The College of William and Mary.

JIM MULHERN
Coming Soon

ROBERT J. SCHLECHT
Robert (RJ) Schlecht is a graduate of University of Maryland with a degree Computer Science. Mr. Schlecht has experience with the Federal Government and large corporations working in their computer network divisions. In the mid 80s, he ventured into the world of public networks or the Internet. Mr. Schlecht engineered and managed the development TCP/IP. From there, his engineering experience included virtual private networks (VPN) software and participated in IETF. Mr. Schlecht has also been responsible for product marketing, security consulting, and Sales. He has over ten years experience with e-commerce identification & authentication (I&A) and Public Key services. In 2004, he was the Chair of the Credential Criteria & Assurance Levels Workgroup for the Electronic Authentication Partnership. His primary responsibility with the MBA has been the Secure Identity Services Accreditation Corporation (SISAC) and MISMO XML Compliance (MXCompliance) services.

AMY SHOWALTER
What do the American Heart Association, the National Association of REALTORS, Southwest Airlines, The Dow Chemical Company, Dell, and the National Federation of Independent Business have in common? They have all turned to Amy Showalter for her expertise and motivation to revitalize their grassroots advocacy and PAC programs. Amy is a grassroots and PAC productivity expert who founded The Showalter Group to help associations and corporations increase their grassroots and PAC effectiveness.

Amy has galvanized thousands of grassroots evangelists and staff for her clients who want to advance their cause politically. For nine years she directed the efforts of the highly acclaimed Nationwide Insurance Civic Action Program (CAP). During her tenure, over 2,000 public affairs professionals across the country ranked Nationwide’s program as one of the top two corporate grassroots programs in the country. (Ed Grefe and Martin Linsky, The New Corporate Activism)

She has published over 30 articles on grassroots and PAC best practices, and is a magazine columnist. Her insights have been featured in the Washington Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, and the Baltimore Sun, to name just a few. She is the author of “105 Ways to Build a Relationship with Your Elected Officials.”

Amy has worked “inside” the system as a Legislative Aide to Ohio Senate President Richard Finan. She then lobbied for the small business members of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. It was at the Chamber where she readily recognized her limitations as a lobbyist and talents as a grassroots motivator.

Amy is a faculty member of the U. S. Chamber’s Institute for Organization Management, as well as The Capitol.Net. She serves on the Board of the Washington Area State Relations Group and is Vice-Chair of the Government Relations Section Council of the American Society of Association Executives. Amy is also a member of the National Speaker’s Association, and the Society for the Advancement of Consulting.

Amy has a BA in Political Science from Wright State University and a Master's Degree in Human Resources Administration from Central Michigan University.

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