Judy Meredith is the founder and executive director of the Public Policy Institute. A veteran lobbyist, Judy has worked for more than thirty years creating change through legislative advocacy.

Judy's lobbying experience in Massachusetts began in 1969 when she became a volunteer lobbyist for her adoptive and foster parent group. After ten years of working as an advocate inside and outside of state government, she founded Meredith and Hall, a political consulting firm known for its work with nonprofits.

Over the years, Judy's lobbying work evolved into a coaching model in which she guides clients through the process of developing their own internal capacity for advocacy by mentoring staff, building leadership skills of volunteers, and helping to broker constructive and positive working partnerships with policy makers.

Judy has served as a national consultant to the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO, and the Public Affairs Division of the United Way of America. She is currently coaching community activists nationwide for The Access Project and the Community Health Leaders Program.

With her husband Peter Rider she shares the occasional company of 5 patient grown children, 3 good-natured children in law, and ten perfect-in-every-way grandchildren.

Yawu Miller is a community organizer working on One Massachusetts and the Boston Foundation Youth Development Project. He also serves as a senior editor at the Boston Banner, which for 40 years has been Boston's African American newspaper.

Yawu's writing has chronicled the political and social justice movements in the Greater Boston area for the last 16 years, forging relationships with activists from communities in Boston and across the state. Additionally, he is an advisory board member of the Ethnic Media Project, an initiative of UMass Boston's Center for Media and Society aimed at building greater cooperation between news outlets serving the state's communities of color.

A life-long Boston resident, Yawu graduated from Dartmouth College in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature.

Harmony Blakeway serves as The Public Policy Institute's Communications Associate, focusing primarily on the ONE Massachusetts Project. Harmony earned both an MS in Information Systems and an MBA in Public and Nonprofit Management at the Boston University Graduate School of Management, where she consulted for both local nonprofits and socially-responsible corporations, including the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Hasbro's CSR Department, and Recycline, Inc.

Prior to joining PPI, Harmony developed a business plan for the Medical Access Program at the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT). Currently in the process of gathering funding, the organization will bring non-resource-intensive, best-in-class, locally-manufactured neonatal incubators to Sub-Saharan Africa, designed to utilize existing supply chains. The project will bring educational opportunities, local jobs, and medical technology to the region, and serve as a case study of "organic resourcing," solving problems with locally-available resources.

Cynthia Tschampl is a consultant working on the ONE Massachusetts Network at The Public Policy Institute. Hailing from a long history of service, Cynthia Tschampl officially began her Peace and Justice advocacy career in 2000 with NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby where she honed both organizing and lobbying skills. While there she educated on a range of issues, including: livable wages, access to benefits, sanctions on Iraq, affordable housing, elections in Haiti and military aid to Colombia.

Prior to joining the PPI team, Cynthia spent nearly five years immersed in immigrant issues and communities as the Senior Legislative Organizer for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) and the Youth Arts and Leadership Program Director for Centro Presente, Inc. She also serves as Boston Global Leader for RESULTS, an international grassroots organization dedicated to creating the political will to end world hunger and poverty, and as a member of the Medical Advisory Committee for the Elimination for Tuberculosis.