When she was 16, Andrea Batista Schlesinger represented every public school student - 1.1 million then - on New York City on the Board of Education. Her job as a nonvoting member was to represent the concerns of her peers, and not make too much fuss. The latter was impossible. It was there that Andrea fell in love with the world of public policy, but also came to understand some simple truths about how it is made. She learned that effective public policy is made when the people affected by it are around the table, that the disconnect between people and their policy that governs their lives is dangerous, and that sometimes the most effective way to advocate for change is to offer a question - not an answer. "Hear Us Now" is the award-winning documentary about her tenure there; Andrea was also profiled by the New Yorker and the New York Times for her efforts.

After graduating from the New York City public school system, Andrea went to the University of Chicago to study education and public policy. She continued her commitment to involving young people in decision-making, helping to organize the First National Youth Convention that took coincided with the 1996 Democratic National Convention and teaching young people media literacy. After leaving the U of C to return home on the first possible flight, Andrea ran a campaign for two years for the Pew Charitable Trusts to engage young people in the discussion about Social Security reform, a conversation from which they were too long ignored. Soon afterwards she was hired by Fernando Ferrer, the Bronx Borough President and a candidate to become New York City's first Latino mayor, to serve as an education policy analyst.

In 2002, Andrea Batista Schlesinger found her dream job helping to turn the Drum Major Institute, originally founded by an advisor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement, into a progressive policy institute with national impact. First as Chief Policy Analyst and then as Executive Director, Andrea has tried to implement the lessons she learned back at the Board of Education. During her tenure as Executive Director, DMI has released several important policy papers to national audiences and aggressively marketed them to influencers and regular people, believing that "if it isn't read, it wasn't written," ; produced the only progressive analysis of the immigration debate addressing the concerns of the squeezed middle-class; created its Marketplace of Ideas series, which highlights successful progressive policies from across the country; launched two policy blogs that reach several thousand readers each day; created a Fellows program to bring grassroots organizers and advocates into the policy discourse; and, launched a national program to connect college students from under-represented communities to careers in policy. Andrea has tripled DMI's staff, capacity and budget, making it a leading source for progressive ideas.

Andrea believes strongly that so much of the policy debate is won in the framing. How are issues discussed? Through what lens do we approach debates about government and its role in our lives? For that reason, she takes to the airwaves as often as possible to offer a progressive counterweight to the right-wing frames that have dominated the public discourse. In media outlets from NPR to The Huffington Post, Andrea is turned to for her forward-thinking analysis on America's greatest challenges. She has appeared on television shows including CNN's 'Lou Dobbs Tonight' and has been published in publications including The Nation, NewYork Newsday, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Mississippi Sun Herald, New York Daily News, Alternet.com, Tom Paine.com, New York Sun, Colorlines Magazine, The Chief-Leader, and City Limits magazine. She was named a '40 under 40 Rising Star' by Crain's New York Business in 2007, a "Next Generation of Political Leaders in New York' by City Hall Newspaper, and received a LatinaPAC Dolores Huerta Award for 'making great strides in promoting progress in our community.' She serves on the Editorial Board of The Nation, and the boards of the Campaign for America's Future, Sadie Nash Leadership Project, the Applied Research Center.

In 2009, Andrea's first (and maybe only) book will hit the stands. Called "The Death of Why: The decline of questioning and the future of democracy" (Berrett-Koehler, July 2009) the book explores whether we are creating the capacity/will/desire in our young people to question. In a democracy, how else can we exercise our power as citizens but to ask questions? Inquiry is less valued, however, as our society values quick answers, manifested in increased ideological segregation - real and virtual, the outsized role of Google in our lives, the decline of civics education where young people were taught to question their democracy, and as consumerism grows.

As the 2009 New York City elections approached, Andrea took a leave of absence from DMI to serve as a senior policy advisor to the re-election campaign of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, working on the same issues of social and economic policy that have always motivated her.

The daughter of a Dominican immigrant (Isabel Batista) and a Brooklyn native (Robert Schlesinger), Andrea grew up in Brooklyn and lives in Astoria, Queens.

To contact Andrea, please email abschlesinger@gmail.com.

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