About Us

Barry Bluestone is the Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy, the founding Director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, and the founding Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Before assuming these posts, Bluestone spent 12 years at the University of Massachusetts at Boston as the Frank L. Boyden Professor of Political Economy and as a Senior Fellow at the University's John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs. He was the Founding Director of UMass Boston's Ph.D. Program in Public Policy. Before coming to UMass in the Fall of 1986, he taught economics at Boston College for 15 years and was Director of the University's Social Welfare Research Institute. Professor Bluestone was raised in Detroit, Michigan and attended the University of Michigan where he received his Ph.D. in economics in 1974.

At the Dukakis Center, Bluestone has led research projects on housing, local economic development, state and local public finance, and the manufacturing sector in Massachusetts. At the School of Social Science, Urban Affairs and Public Policy, he has co-taught the Open Classroom Policy Series, a graduate seminar on critical social issues open free to the public each semester. He has also been part of the Policy School team developing our new Masters Program in Urban and Regional Policy.

As Executive Director John manages fundraising, marketing, and program development for the Policy School.

John has over 20 years of experience in non-profit management and higher education. He worked for 12 years with City Year, a national service program that engages young adults for a demanding year of full-time community service, leadership development, and civic engagement. John served twice as a local City Year executive director (San Jose/Silicon Valley and Boston) and as a national vice president. He developed several national program models at City Year including the Whole School, Whole Child model for transforming public schools and improving the academic, socio-emotional, and civic development of students.

Prior to City Year, John worked for the Campus Outreach Opportunity League, a national organization that promotes and supports college student involvement in community service. John has visited over 300 colleges and universities and provided consulting to dozens on how to build and strengthen student-led community service programs.

John serves as a trustee of the Hyams Foundation. He previously served on the boards of Massachusetts Stand for Children, Asian Americans for Community Involvement, Campus Outreach Opportunity League, the Coro National Alumni Association, and KaBoom!

John is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles and the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs.

Heather Seligman
Associate Director, Administration and Finance
School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
and the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy

Heather began her tenure at the Dukakis Center in the fall of 2000. As our Associate Director of Administration and Finance, she is currently responsible for all grant financials, with annual funds over $2 million. Additionally, she is in charge of the Dukakis Center operations, responsible for project management, budgeting, accounting, human resources, and payroll systems. She works closely with Barry Bluestone on strategic planning and development for the Center. She also assists with marketing and management of events and conferences.

In May 2008, Seligman completed her Masters in Business Administration at Northeastern. During the course of her academic experience, she discovered her interests lie in entrepreneurship, which is closely related to her current position and the attitudes of the Center. She currently lives near the water in Chelsea, MA with her yellow lab, Ivy.

Terry Dolan is the Executive Assistant for the Dukakis Center. Her background includes 25 years working in the public sector for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts initially as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Commissioner of Public Health, with a focus on fiscal and management issues at the public health hospitals. She joined the State House staff of Governor Michael Dukakis in 1985 as Director of Administration for the Executive Office of the Governor, a position to which she was subsequently re-appointed by Governors Weld, Cellucci, Swift, Romney, and Patrick.

Active in community affairs, she serves as an officer and member of the Executive Board of the Lower Mills Civic Association, Vice President of the Lower Mills Village Association, a member of the Community Advisory Council for the restoration of the Lower Neponset River, and the Civic Engagement subcommittee of the Boston Civic Summit working group. Additionally, she is a Playspace Volunteer with the Horizons for Homeless Children Initiative.

A graduate of Regis College, she holds an MBA from Simmons College. Terry lives in the Baker Square complex in Dorchester Lower Mills, the site of nineteenth and early twentieth century mill buildings of the former Baker Chocolate Company, which have been rehabbed and restored as housing.

Laurie Dopkins provides management and coordination for academic programs within the Policy School, particularly the new Master's in Urban and Regional Policy. She also serves as a Senior Associate in the Dukakis Center, leading projects related to non-profit capacity building, outcomes measurement and evaluation. Laurie is conducting a university-wide inventory of all community-partnerships and programs on behalf of the Stony Brook Initiative.

Immediately prior to moving to Boston in 2008, Laurie was Associate Research Professor at George Mason University where she taught evaluation research methods and led community-based action research projects involving collaborations between nonprofit organizations, government agencies, businesses, private foundations, and multiple units within the university.

Before joining the faculty at Mason, Dopkins had her own consulting firm in Atlanta where she worked with public sector agencies, foundations, and nongovernmental organizations on policy research and program evaluation in a wide range of areas including children and youth, community and economic development, maternal and child health, education, and immigration. Dopkins has broad experience in the management, analysis and evaluation of policies and programs, including the development of accountability and outcomes monitoring systems. She has specialized in developing collaborative evaluation techniques that enhance evaluation capacity and utilization among diverse stakeholder groups, including policymakers and program managers, service providers and clients, community leaders and advocates.

Dopkins has published dozens of evaluation and research reports for foundations, government organizations, nonprofit agencies, and community groups. Her specific areas of interest in the field of evaluation are social indicators, organizational learning, program theory and logic models, evaluation capacity building, evidence based policy and practice, and the translation of knowledge to action. Dopkins received her Ph.D in Sociology from Rutgers University in 1984. She lives in Brookline with her husband, Steve Vallas, and has two grown daughters, Rebecca and Kaitlin.

As Executive Director of the World Class Cities Partnership within the Policy School, Michael establishes and develops relationships with municipal governments and universities around the world, creating a global network of partner cities dedicated to implementing public policy to address shared challenges facing 21st century cities.

Michael's career in public service has spanned service to two United States Presidents as Special Assistant for White House Operations as well as serving the former Prime Minister of Ireland as a policy research analyst. Most recently he served as Director of Development for United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley.

A native of Melrose, Massachusetts, Michael was the first and only graduate in history from Northeastern University or the state of Massachusetts to have completed five undergraduate degrees simultaneously. He graduated summa cum laude studying Finance, Political Science, Communications, Entrepreneurship and Management Information Systems. Michael also serves as a board member for the Neighborhood Organization for Affordable Housing (NOAH), the Boston Representative for the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Cities Network, a member of the Boston Public Library's Young Professionals Committee, the Executive Director of Northeastern's College of Business Talent Development Committee, and as an Alumni Mentor.

Stephanie Pollack
Associate Director of Research,

Stephanie Pollack is Associate Director of the Dukakis Center, overseeing the Center's research agenda as well as conducting her own research projects in the areas of transportation policy and sustainable and equitable development. She also serves as a Professor of Practice in the Law, Policy and Society program, teaching core courses in public policy strategies and law and legal reasoning.

Pollack is a nationally-known environmental attorney with more than 25 years of policy and advocacy experience in the environmental, energy, smart growth, environmental health, and transportation fields. Before coming to Northeastern in 2004, Pollack was a senior executive and attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation, New England's leading environmental advocacy organization. During her two-decade career at CLF, Pollack worked on issues including smart growth and sustainable development, affordable housing, childhood lead poisoning, and transportation and transit policy and planning.

Stephanie is active in public policy issues affecting sustainable development, environmental and energy policy and transportation in Massachusetts. She co-chaired Governor Deval Patrick's 2006 Transition Working Group on Transportation and currently serves on the boards of the Alliance for Healthy Housing, Boston Society of Architects, Charles River Watershed Association and The Medical Foundation.

Stephanie was recently appointed by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to the Boston Climate Action Leadership Committee, charged with charting Boston's collective response to climate change.

Stephanie received both a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a BS in Public Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by a JD from Harvard Law School.

Jay Kaufman
Director, Center for Leadership and Public Life

Jay Kaufman has served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives since January 1995 and now chairs the legislature's Committee on Revenue. He had, for two terms, chaired the Committee on Public Service and led the effort to develop and pass major pension reform initiatives.

His primary legislative interests are education, health care, campaign reform, environmental protection, and social and economic justice. He led the fight to pass and implement the state’s campaign finance reform law, and has chaired special task forces on medical records privacy, the social and ethical implications of genetic technology, and alternatives to property taxes to fund public schools. During his freshman term, he broke a six-year logjam to win passage of the Rivers Act, a major environmental protection bill. He is currently leading the effort to pass the Act for Healthy Massachusetts, a bill that would encourage the substitution of safer alternatives to commonly-used toxic chemicals. He has sponsored legislation aimed at tax fairness and has consistently secured major budget increases for METCO, the state’s premier racial desegregation program.

His monthly “OPEN HOUSE” public policy forum, now in its fourteenth season, has been recognized with the prestigious Beacon Award as the nation’s best televised government relations series. Jay was appointed founding director of Northeastern University’s new center for Leadership and Public Life where he now teaches and leads leadership development workshops for those in or aspiring to public life.