Will Friedman, Ph.D.
Will Friedman joined Public Agenda in 1994, founded our public engagement department in 1996 and has overseen a steady and expanding stream of work aimed at helping communities build capacity to tackle tough issues in more inclusive, deliberative and collaborative ways. In 2006, he established Public Agenda's Center for Advances in Public Engagement, which conducts action research to assess impacts and improve practice.
Dr. Friedman is the author or co-author of numerous publications including "Beyond Debate: Impacts of Deliberative Issue Framing on Group Dialogue and Problem-Solving;" “Reframing Framing;” “Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of Scope,” and “Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of Power.”
Previously, Dr. Friedman was senior vice president for policy studies at the Work in America Institute, where he directed research and special projects on workplace issues. He was also an adjunct lecturer in political science at Lehman College, a research fellow at the Samuels Center for State and Local Politics, and a practitioner in the field of counseling psychology. He holds a Ph.D. in political science with specializations in political psychology and American politics.
