Guest Speaker
David Thornburgh
Senior Advisor to the Committee of Seventy
Chair of BallotPA
David Thornburgh is a nationally recognized “civic entrepreneur” who, in the
course of his career, has launched a series of innovative high impact initiatives to tackle tough community problems.
He was named President and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, the Philadelphia-based good government group, in November, 2014.
Thornburgh came to Seventy from the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government, where he had served as Executive Director since 2008. While at Fels he doubled applications to the program, launched an innovative hybrid Executive MPA program and, during Fels’ 75th Anniversary campaign in 2012 quadrupled alumni giving and carried out 12 public programs that attracted over 1,200 alumni and political and community leaders. He also created a national Public Policy Challenge student competition in partnership with Governing magazine that drew teams from 12 top universities.