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Our Board

Victoria Reggie Kennedy

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Prior to serving as Maryland’s first woman Lieutenant Governor, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States. In that position, she helped design and launch the nationally acclaimed Police Corps, a program that gives college scholarships to young people who pledge to work as police officers for four years after graduating. She also founded the Maryland Student Service Alliance to make Maryland the first, and still only state that requires young people to engage in community service as a condition of graduation.

She is the chairman of the Global Virology Network, affiliated with the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland. She has served on the board of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Points of Light Foundation, National Catholic Reporter, and the Character Education Partnership, among others. While serving as the chairman of the board of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, she created the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Mrs. Townsend is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves as Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy. She is an honors graduate of Harvard University, and holds a law degree from the University of New Mexico where she was a member of the law review.

Thomas P. O’Neill III

Thomas P. O’Neill III is chief executive officer of O’Neill and Associates, a government and public relations firm in Boston, MA. Mr. O’Neill was president of McDermott/O’Neill & Associates as well as FH/GPC. Prior to forming McDermott/O’Neill, Mr. O’Neill served as president of Bay State Investors using his 13 years of government experience to advise clients on all aspects of government relations at the local, state and federal levels. Mr. O’Neill sits on the board of trustees of Boston College and on the board of directors of CareGroup, Inc., New England’s second largest health care service provider. He also serves on the boards of Mount Auburn Hospital and the Bunker Hill Community College Foundation.

From 1975 to 1983, Mr. O’Neill served as lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. During his term of office, Mr. O’Neill created and administered the Office of Federal-State Relations in Boston and Washington, D.C. Prior to becoming lieutenant governor, Mr. O’Neill served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He received his bachelor’s degree from Boston College and earned his master’s in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

James Roosevelt, Jr.

James Roosevelt, Jr. joined Tufts Health Plan in 1999 as senior vice president and general counsel and held that position until June 2005, when he became president and chief executive officer. As the general counsel, he presided over the legal department and the company's compliance, privacy and government relations functions.

Before joining Tufts Health Plan, Mr. Roosevelt was the associate commissioner for Retirement Policy for the Social Security Administration in Washington, D.C. He has also served as chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Democratic Party and is co-chair of the Rules and By-laws Committee of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Roosevelt spent 10 years as partner at Choate, Hall and Stewart in Boston. He is past chairman of the board of trustees for the Massachusetts Hospital Association, past president of the American Health Lawyers Association and past chairman of the board of trustees for Mount Auburn Hospital. Currently, Mr. Roosevelt serves as chairman of the board of directors for Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, and as a member of the board of directors at America's Health Insurance Plans, Emmanuel College and the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center. He is also co-chair of the board of directors for the Tufts Health Care Institute.

Mr. Roosevelt received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his A.B. with honors in government from Harvard College. He has also completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

William D’Antonio, PhD

William V. D’Antonio joined the sociology faculty of Catholic University as a visiting Research Professor in 1993. He is a Fellow at the Life Cycle Institute at Catholic University of America. He is the co-author of eight books and co-editor of four. His most recent co-authored books include American Catholics Today: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church, and Voices of the Faithful, a study of a Catholic Lay Social Movement striving to help change the Church. He is co-author of seven other books, and co-editor of four. He has an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from St. Michael's College in Vermont, and was a Fulbright Senior Fellow in Italy in 2004.

He earned a BA from Yale University, a Masters Degree from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. in sociology and anthropology from Michigan State University. After two years on the faculty of Michigan State, he joined the faculty of the University of Notre Dame as Assistant Professor. He served as Professor and Chair of the Department there from 1966-71. He moved to the University of Connecticut in 1971 as Professor and Chair. In 1982 he took a leave from Connecticut to become the Chief Executive Officer of the American Sociological Association, where he served until his retirement in 1991. He received Emeritus Professor Status from the University of Connecticut in 1986.

Lisa Schare

Lisa Schare served as the state Chair of the Catholic Democrats of Ohio in the run up to the 2008 election, and is currently an educator in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ms. Schare received a BFA in Drawing from The College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at The University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Pratt Institute. She began teaching Studio Art and Art History at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky University and The University of Cincinnati. In 2006, Ms. Schare earned her MA in Art Education. Ms. Schare also maintains an art studio and exhibits her paintings and drawings both locally and nationally and has completed 3 large scale outdoor murals with at-risk teenagers in urban Cincinnati through the Citizens’ Committee on Youth and The Urban Appalachian Council.

Ms. Schare has served on her Parish Council and was active with the Peace and Justice Committee. She has been active in the Democratic Party in the Clinton, Gore and Kerry campaigns in Ohio.

Patrick Whelan, MD, PhD

Patrick Whelan MD PhD is on the Pediatrics Faculty at Harvard Medical School, and a childhood arthritis specialist at the MassGeneral Hospital for Children. He is also Clinical Assistant Professor at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. He has been active in efforts to represent the concerns of people of faith within the state and national Democratic Parties, and has written widely on the medical ethics issues that dominate the interface between religion and politics. He was a national co-director of the Catholics for Kerry, and was founder and president of the Catholic Democrats. He served for three years on the DNC Faith Advisory Council for Governor Howard Dean, and spoke at the Interfaith Prayer Service that opened the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008. Earlier in his life he taught CCD at Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, volunteered with the Catholic Worker communities in Los Angeles and Houston, and was co-director of Pax Christi Massachusetts (part of the national Catholic peace movement). He is a founding member of the Dominican Lay Scholars in Boston and is the author, with Douglas Kmiec and Edward Gaffney, of "America Undecided: Catholic, Independent and Social Justice Perspectives on Election 2012."

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Our Officers

Patrick Whelan MD PhD, Board Chair

Suzanne Morse, Secretary

Suzanne Morse is a senior director in O’Neill and Associates’ communications practice. She started her career as an intern in the White House Office of Media Affairs and then worked for Senator Edward M. Kennedy in his Boston office, coordinating constituent outreach and the resolution of issues between constituents, community organizations, and the federal government.

After receiving her Master's Degree from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, she worked at both the Brookings Institution and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where she designed and implemented media strategy for research findings for those think tanks. Prior to coming to O’Neill and Associates, Ms. Morse was the communications manager for the Voice of the Faithful, a group formed in response to the crisis in the Catholic Church. While there, she oversaw the development of strategies and campaigns to create greater public awareness of the issues facing the Church, as well as promoting greater responsibility in the Catholic Church. Ms. Morse holds a degree in journalism from the University of Massachusetts where she was a Phi Beta Kappa and member of the national communications honor society.

Steve Krueger, President

Steve Krueger became the National Director of Catholic Democrats in August 2008, and President in 2012. Prior to joining Catholic Democrats, Mr. Krueger was the founding Executive Director of Presentation School Foundation in 2007 and a leader of the Coalition to Reform Sex Abuse Laws in Massachusetts. In 2002, Mr. Krueger became the founding Executive Director of Voice of the Faithful, a grassroots lay organization that formed in response to the clergy sexual abuse crisis. As Executive Director he directed the growth of the organization to establish VOTF as a leading international voice of the laity in the Catholic Church.

Prior to VOTF he established the consulting firm of KRUEGER & COMPANY, which provided management, strategic and financial planning, and investment banking services to start-up and mid-market companies, and acted as a change agent for both internal transitions within the organization as well in response to external factors facing these organizations.

Mr Krueger is active in church affairs and has served on his Parish Pastoral Council, Parish Finance Committee, helped to form an AIDS Outreach Ministry and Parish Outreach Commission and served on the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council under Bernard Cardinal Law. He has a BA in Economics from Allegheny College and an MBA from Boston University.

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