Laurie Maak

Laurie Maak, who joined WestEd in 2004, manages WestEd’s WebDialogues development and production at www.webdialogue.net. Her current focus is on using Web-based communication to help policymakers inform and involve members of the public, including young people, throughout the policymaking process. She has evolved a successful development and production strategy based on dialogues she produced in conjunction with the National Science Foundation, the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and members of the U.S. Congress and the California legislature. The dialogue process, coupled with WestEd’s information management tools, creates a powerful resource for lawmakers, agencies, and organizations to engage the public.

Maak's dialogue work integrates prior experience conducting human relations training, developing extracurricular classes for gifted students, creating a transportation alternatives program for the University of California at Berkeley, managing the Consortium for School Networking, and developing online dialogues with Information Renaissance.

A chapter describing her dialogue work entitled, "Bringing the Public and Government Together Through Online Dialogues" is included in, The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century, edited by John Gastil and Peter Levine. Her work with legislative committees in California is described in the June 2005 National Civic Review article, "WebDialogues Facilitate Citizen-Lawmaker Communication in California."

Maak holds a BA in psychology from the University of New Mexico and an MEd in educational psychology from the University of Georgia.