Honorary Co-Chairs
Norton Bonaparte
Norton Bonaparte, Jr. has served as city manager of Sanford, Florida since September 2011, a position appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the Mayor and City Commission. As the City’s chief administrative officer, he is responsible for overseeing all city operations, which includes a $190 million budget and more than 540 employees. Prior to Sanford, he served as the city manager of Topeka, Kansas; Plainfield, New Jersey; Camden, New Jersey; Willingboro, New Jersey; and Glenarden, Maryland. He is a member of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and has earned its credentialed manager designation. He currently serves as vice chair of the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Public Administration and is a board member of the Florida Tri-County League of Cities, the Seminole County Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Sanford Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Sanford Rotary Club. He is a member of the Florida City and County Management Association, the National Forum for Black Public Administrators and the University of Central Florida’s School of Public Administration Advisory Board. He has been elected president of both the New Jersey Municipal Management Association and the Maryland City/County Management Association and was a board member of the Florida City and County Management Association and the Kansas Association of City/County Management. He has been a speaker at various city management conferences throughout the United States and China and has taught graduate public management courses at Rutgers University and undergraduate courses in management at National-Louis University’s School of Management and Business. He holds a BS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an MPA from Cornell University’s Graduate School of Business and is a graduate of Harvard University’s Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program.
Robert Behn
Robert Behn is senior lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and faculty chair of the school’s executive education program, “Driving Government Performance: Leadership Strategies that Produce Results.” He focuses his research and teaching on the leadership challenge of improving the performance of government jurisdictions and public agencies. He earned a BS in physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in applied mathematics from Harvard. He has served on the staff of Massachusetts Governor Francis W. Sargent, as a scholar in residence with the Council for Excellence in Government, on the faculty of the Harvard Business School and of Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, where he was director of its Governors Center. For more than 25 years, he has taught numerous executive education programs at Duke and Harvard and conducted executive-education seminars for public agencies in half of the states. He also has led sessions at retreats for gubernatorial staff and cabinets in Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Washington; and has led executive seminars on six continents in Bangkok, Berlin, Bogatá, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Guatemala City, Kuala Lumpur, Lisbon, Madrid, Melbourne, Monterrey, Oslo, Ottawa, Reykjavik, Sydney, and Wellington.
Laura Bloomberg
Laura Bloomberg has served as dean of the Humphrey School since June 2017. Prior to her appointment, she served as associate dean for four years, during which time she led efforts to support the global expansion of the school, establish a national pathway program for college students underrepresented in public affairs programs, launch a Master of Human Rights degree program and develop the Mandela Washington Fellowship program to support young leaders from countries across Africa. Bloomberg’s research focuses on community-based leadership, program evaluation, public value creation, cross-cultural dialogue and educational policy. She has consulted on program evaluation and education policy initiatives in Canada, China, Cyprus and in countries across Africa and the European Union, as well as across the United States. Bloomberg is president-elect of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and a fellow with the National Academy of Public Administration.
Sachi Hamai
Sachi Hamai is CEO of Los Angeles County, responsible for managing the strategic direction and day-today operations of the nation’s largest municipal government, including the oversight of LA County’s $36.1 billion budget. Her strong fiscal management has led the county to achieve the overall highest credit rating in its recorded history, including its most recent S&P Global Ratings increase to AAA, the highest possible credit rating available in the financial markets. LA County has achieved four credit upgrades under her leadership. As CEO, she is instrumental in developing, implementing and advancing the Board of Supervisors’ key priorities through strategic partnerships, cross-sector collaboration and using technology to leverage progress. These include the unprecedented response to the region’s homeless crisis, streamlining access to health services, justice reform, child protection, immigrant rights protection, sustainability and environmental monitoring and oversight. A champion of transformative change within local government, she has successfully challenged the county’s workforce of more than 112,000 employees to break down barriers, collaborate and innovate across a broad range of society’s most challenging issues. In 2019, she was named one of LA’s Top 500 most influential leaders for the fourth consecutive year by the Los Angeles Business Journal. Most recently, Innovate@UCLA announced that she would receive the 2019 Public Sector Executive Leadership Award for her innovative use of technology. She also is the 2018 winner of the Clarence A. Dykstra Award for Excellence in Government. In 2017, she cofounded WomenLeadLAC as a forum for up-and-coming managers to network with LA County’s top executives. She serves on the board of United Way of Greater Los Angeles and is a member of the U.S.-Japan Council.
Joseph Heck
Joseph J. Heck is chairman of the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service, an 11-member bipartisan commission tasked by Congress in 2017 to review the Selective Service System, along with military, national and public service. Heck served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (2011-2017), representing the 3rd District of Nevada. During that time, he was a member of the Armed Services Committee, where he chaired the subcommittee on Military Personnel; the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he chaired the subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence; and the Committee on Education and the Workforce. He served in the Nevada State Senate (2004-2008), where he was vice chair of the Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, and a member of the Commerce and Labor, Natural Resources and Human Resources and Education committees. A graduate of the Pennsylvania State University with a degree in health education, he received his medical degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine; he completed his Emergency Medicine Residency at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Board-certified in emergency medicine, he is a fellow of both the American College of Osteopathic Emergency Physicians and the American College of Emergency Physicians. He was the operational medical director for the Southern Nevada Health District in Las Vegas and served as the medical director for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Heck was the founder and president of Specialized Medical Operations, Inc., a corporation dedicated to providing cutting-edge emergency response training, consulting and operational support to law enforcement, emergency services, military special operations, and business and industry. Previously, Heck was the medical director of the Casualty Care Research Center of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. An active member of the United States Army Reserve, he holds the rank of Brigadier General and currently is assigned as the Commanding General, 807th Medical Command. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College with a master’s in strategic studies. He currently serves as president of RedRock Government Relations, where he oversees a team that provides insightful and innovative strategic guidance to help clients achieve their public policy goals.