Levin Senior Fellows

Levin Senior Fellows have extensive professional expertise and have made a lasting impact in Northeast Ohio and beyond. They work in collaboration with the faculty and staff to advance the collective mission and impact to advance societal and civic improvement.

Leigh R. Anderson

Originally from Saint Louis, Missouri, Dr. Anderson graduated, summa cum laude, from Howard University with two Bachelors of Arts Degrees in Administration of Justice and Spanish. She went on to graduate from John Jay College of Criminal Justice's Masters of Public Administration-Inspector General Program, and then obtained a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management from The John Glenn College at The Ohio State University. By way of certifications, Dr. Leigh R. Anderson is a Certified Inspector General Auditor (CIGA), a Certified Inspector General Inspector/Evaluator (CIGE), both through the Association of Inspectors General, and a Certified Homicide Investigator through the North East Multi-Regional Training® Police Training Institute.

Dr. Anderson's work lies at the intersection of theory and practice. She is currently the Executive Director of the Police Accountability Team for the City of Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Anderson came to Cleveland as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice Studies at Southern Illinois University as well as a Contractual Chief of Staff for the City of Oakland Office of the Inspector General under the City's Police Commission. She is also an instructor for the Association of Inspectors General - Inspector General Institute® Certified Inspector/Evaluator Course, certified by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA). Dr. Anderson consults with a number of police departments to assist with the formulation of concepts, methods, and techniques related to organizational theory and administrative processes for public safety policy creation and implementation. Recently, she led an audit of the City of Gary Police Department in conjunction with the Joyce Foundation and Benchmark Analytics where the overall goal was to assist the leadership of the Gary Police Department with developing a set of policies and procedures that are in line with best practices and the objectives of procedural and organizational justice. Learn more. »

Brian Balogh

Brian Balogh is Professor of History Emeritus in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. He founded and recently stepped down as director of the Jefferson Scholars Foundation National Fellowship Program which has funded 185 dissertation completion fellowships for scholars from some of the top Ph.D. programs in the world, studying American politics and public policy from an historical perspective.  He was a cohost of the popular public radio show, then podcast, Backstory with the American History Guys.  Balogh focuses on 20th Century U.S. Politics, Environmental History, the history of Science and Technology, and the history of Media and Politics.

Balogh is the author of The Associational State: American Governance in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, Politics and Culture in Modern America Series, 2015),  A Government out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge University Press, 2009)  and Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power (Cambridge University Press, 1991).  He is co-editor with Bruce Schulman, of Recapturing the Oval Office: New Historical Approaches to the American Presidency (Cornell University Press, 2015).  Balogh is currently completing Not In My Front Yard: How A Political Novice Beat the Machine (Yale University Press, 2023).

Balogh is the recipient of the American Historical Association's 2015 Nancy Lyman Roelker Award honoring those "who taught, guided, and inspired their students in a way that changed their lives."  He also received the Z Society Distinguished Faculty Award for 2010-2011, and the Raven Society's Faculty Award.  He has taught a variety of undergraduate courses, including: "Viewing American, 1940-1980;"Digitizing America, 1980 to the Present;" and the Distinguished Majors Colloquium.

Balogh received his B.A. from Harvard and his Ph.D. in history from The Johns Hopkins University.  Before entering graduate school, he served in Massachusetts and New York City government for eight years where he was a budget analyst, advisor to New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, and associate director of income maintenance programs for the New York City Department of Social Services.  He currently lives Cleveland Heights with his wife Kathleen Craig, who is an accomplished painter.  They are in striking distance of their two grandchildren and their son and daughter-in-law in Solon.

Thomas Bier

In November of 2009, Gregory L. Brown became the executive director of PolicyBridge a 501c (3) non-partisan public policy research and advocacy think and action tank based in Northeast Ohio. PolicyBridge monitors urban policy issues and inform regional public policy debates by framing issues of relevance to African American and other underserved communities. Mr. Brown is also president of Brown & Associates Consulting Services which provides consulting services to philanthropic, public and nonprofit organizations in the areas of strategic thinking and planning, program and project development and management, organizational development and leadership, community building and organizing, youth development, meeting facilitation, public policy and advocacy, governmental relations, survey research, data analysis and evaluation,

Prior to Brown & Associates Consulting Services, Mr. Brown was executive director and president of The Center for Community Solutions. Under Mr. Brown's leadership, Community Solutions strategically sparked and promoted an understanding of the critical link between human service and economic development. He articulated a message throughout northeast Ohio that Human Capital Development—"building an environment that helps and allows all people to reach their full potential and participate in the economic revitalization of the region--is the most important investment that can and should be made." Today, human capital development is on the lips of government officials, community leaders, funders and service providers around the state. Similarly, Mr. Brown played a key role in helping Greater Cleveland's human services community change the way it viewed the circumstances of young people, moving away from looking solely at their needs and problems and, instead, using an asset-based approach to Youth Development.

Prior to joining Community Solutions, Mr. Brown served as associate director of the Cleveland Community-Building Initiative where he was responsible for operational and program-related activities in four Cleveland neighborhoods. Mr. Brown has also served as the founding executive director of the Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation, a non-profit neighborhood revitalization organization focusing on new home construction, home repair, commercial and economic development, and land usage. While executive director of Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation, Mr. Brown was a member of the team that developed the City of Cleveland's federal Empowerment Zone proposal which successfully resulted in more than $190 million being awarded to the City of Cleveland to revitalize existing housing and initiate new housing construction and economic development. Before Mr. Brown led the Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation, he was employed as housing management director for the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. In his role as housing management director, Mr. Brown was responsible for the ongoing operation and day-to-day management of more than 20,000 public housing units throughout Cuyahoga County.

Mr. Brown is currently serving on several boards of nonprofit organizations. Mr. Brown is a graduate of the 2006 class of Leadership Cleveland and the 2008 recipient of the Cleveland State University Levin College of Urban Affairs Distinguished Alumni Award. He was inducted into the Cleveland State University Levin College chapter of Pi Alpha Alpha honor society in 2004. Mr. Brown is also an adjunct instructor at the Levin College of Urban Affairs at the Cleveland State University. Mr. Brown holds a Master of Science in Urban Studies and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science degrees from Cleveland State University.

Kirby Date

Kirby Date, AICP, is principal of KM Date Community Planning, LLC. and a former longtime member of the professional staff at the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs at the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education. She specializes in helping urban neighborhoods and small towns to develop and implement revitalization strategies. After leading the local government working group of the Ohio Balanced Growth Blue Ribbon Task Force, Ms. Date was the statewide local government outreach coordinator for the Ohio Balanced Growth Program, under the Ohio Lake Erie Commission. She has also served as the leader of the Western Reserve RC&D's Countryside Program, serving small town and rural communities in Northeast Ohio.

Ms. Date's areas of expertise include revitalization planning and community engagement, as well as technical studies in housing, economic, fiscal, and retail analysis. She collaborates with local governments, nonprofit community development corporations, full-service planning and engineering firms, and colleagues at Cleveland State University. Recent work has included revitalization strategies for the town of Greenville, PA, and the West Akron neighborhood in Akron, OH, as well as comprehensive planning for the City of Oberlin. Ms. Date has completed housing studies for the Cities of Lorain and Oberlin and Kent State University. She's developed a revitalization strategy for Kenmore Boulevard in Akron and an economic and fiscal analysis for redevelopment in Cleveland's Westown neighborhood.

As part of the Levin Chair Group at the Levin School of Urban Affairs, Ms. Date co-authored a fiscal impact model for local governments to help them evaluate alternative development schemes in revitalization. Ms. Date has provided community engagement support for the City of East Cleveland and the Cleveland 10-year Housing Plan. She's worked with the University of Pennsylvania's Housing Initiative team and for a streetside planning project in an Amish community in Holmes County, in conjunction with OHM Advisors, LLC.

Ms. Date holds a BS in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University, and an MS in Urban Studies with a Community and Neighborhood Development focus from Cleveland State University. She is the author/editor of Best Local Land Use Practices, the Ohio Balanced Growth Program's suite of policy tools and resources for Ohio communities. Her work may be found on Cleveland State's Engaged Scholarship web site, at Kirby Date Author Publications; at www.kmdateplanning.com; and at the Ohio Balanced Growth Program's Best Local Land Use Practices website.

Bob Jaquay