Author: Pennsylvania Press Club

Guest Speaker
US Rep. Madeleine Dean

Born and raised in Glenside, PA, to Bob and Mary Dean, Madeleine Dean got her start in politics around the dinner table with her five older brothers and one older sister. She graduated from Abington High School, and at age 18 won election to serve as a local committee-person.

Rep. Dean completed her undergraduate studies at La Salle University in Philadelphia, and earned her law degree at Delaware Law School of Widener University. She returned home, practicing law in a small Philadelphia firm and with the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association and eventually serving as executive director. She then opened a small, three-woman law practice in Glenside.

From 2001 until 2011 she was a member of the English Department at LaSalle University, teaching composition, persuasive writing and rhetoric, business writing, legal writing, and ethics. She also contributed to The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily News, The Patriot-News, and other publications.

In 2011, she ran for and served as Abington Township commissioner, before winning a special election to the Pennsylvania State House in 2012.

In 2015, Governor Tom Wolf appointed her to the Pennsylvania Commission for Women, advising the Governor on policies and legislation to improve the lives of women and their families.

She decided to run for congress in 2018, when Pennsylvania had 18 Congressional seats — and 0 women. She ran for the Fourth Congressional District seat and won.

Rep. Dean is a lifelong parishioner of St. Luke the Evangelist Church in Glenside, and has served as a board member for the St. Vincent de Paul Society. She and her husband PJ Cunnane have three grown sons – Patrick, Harry and Alex; two daughters-in-law – Stephanie and Juliet; and two granddaughters and one grandson – Aubrey, Ella, and Sawyer.

 

Guest Speaker
Sen. Ryan Aument
Republican Caucus Chair

A lifelong resident of Lancaster County, Sen. Aument received his bachelor’s degree in Education from The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He served as a U.S. Army captain in Operation Iraqi Freedom, briefly commanding an infantry company of 150 soldiers after the company commander was wounded in combat. Throughout his military service, he earned the Bronze Star Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, and the Army Parachutist Badge.

Sen. Aument spent three years as a production supervisor at ICI Paints in Reading, while also winning a seat on the Quarryville Borough Council. He later managed the state House campaign of a high school friend, Bryan Cutler. After Cutler won office, he hired Aument as a key aide.

Aument then won office as Lancaster County Clerk of Courts and went on to win two terms in the State House and later, two terms in the State Senate, where he served as chair of the Senate Education Committee and the Senate Communications and Technology Committee.

Along with representing the constituents of the 36th State Senatorial District, Aument also formed and chairs the first ever Nuclear Energy Caucus in a state legislature in the nation and serves as Majority Caucus Secretary for the Senate Republican Caucus.

During his tenure, Aument helped to establish the Office of State Inspecror General, an office tasked with preventing, detecting, and eradicating fraud in Pennsylvania government. Aument also introduced legislation, signed into law by Gov. Wolf, promoting stronger restrictions and penalties for the misue of SNAP benefits, protecting dollars meant to feed hungry Pennsylvanians.

Aument lives in West Hempfield, Lancaster County, with his wife, Kate, a teacher at Mt. Calvary Christian School, and their two children, Jack and June.

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.

 

Guest Speaker
Berwood Yost
Director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll

Berwood Yost is the Director of the Center for Opinion Research and the Director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy at Franklin & Marshall College. He is also the Director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll, which tracks public attitudes toward public policy issues and political campaigns. His scholarship is multidisciplinary and has appeared in journals that include the fields of criminology, human rights, political science, psychology, and public health.

Mr. Yost frequently writes about the results and implications of political campaigns in the state and has closely followed changes within the state’s electorate. His recent work has attempted to identify ideological and partisan patterns among the state’s voters and his forthcoming book, a co-edited volume from Temple University Press, “Are All Politics Nationalized? Evidence from the 2020 Pennsylvania Campaigns,” explores how political campaigns communicate with voters about the issues that are most important to them.

Mr. Yost also began publishing a newsletter about state politics in February of 2021 and regularly writes about state politics, polling, and public policy for a general audience.