Steve Brigham is a leader in the public engagement field who, for the past twenty-four years, has known great success as a facilitator, consultant, and designer of complex public meetings and community-building processes on critical public policy issues. He is known for his role from 2001 to 2013 as Chief Operating Officer and then President of AmericaSpeaks. He co-founded Public Engagement Associates in 2014, a firm well known in the metro DC region for outstanding community and stakeholder engagement.
He has led or managed more than 75 large-scale public and stakeholder engagement projects in cities across the country and internationally.
Since 2010, his bread-and-butter consulting has focused primarily on local and metro D.C. like land use policy, affordable housing, transportation, support for BIPOC business owners in jeopardy of displacement, economic development, public school redistricting, and community college issues, to name a few.
Over time, Steve’s work has increasingly tackled racial equity and equitable development issues in his work and volunteer time.
His
local clients have included the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), the Mayor's Office in D.C., WMATA (the regional transit authority), the Purple Line Corridor Coalition, Prince George's County Public Schools, Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC).
Steve's facilitation and consulting has also included strategic retreats for Mayors' offices, annual staff retreats for national nonprofit organizations, stakeholder summits for a national education association, consensus building for a national agenda on a youth obesity initiative, and strategic planning exercises with a regional science museum. Over time, Steve's work has increasingly tackled racial equity and equitable development issues in his work and volunteer time. He is well-published in the field of civic engagement and stakeholder participation.
Steve also sits on the Board of Directors for the Housing Initiatives Partnership (an affordable housing nonprofit serving Prince George's and Montgomery counties) and on the Advisory Board of RISE Prince George's, a Coalition for Smarter Growth initiative. He formerly sat on the boards of the Higher Achievement Program and the Prince George's County Social Innovation Fund (PGCSIF), and led the Fairwood Education Task Force to bring an elementary school into his neighborhood. In 2021, he was named one of ten recipients of the 2021 PGCSIF's Founder's Award.
Steve is incredibly grateful for his two bi-racial children, aged 20 and 15, who bless his life daily.
