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CityAndStatePA .com
March 7, 2022
EDITOR’S NOTE
Introducing City & State’s
PA’s 2022 Advisory Board
LINDY LI
This 19-person panel helps us select our power lists each month. MICHAEL DAYS
Editor-in-chief
W
E DECIDED TO seek out a wide variety of voices in 2022 and look for proven experts in a wide range of fields to help us pick the people who make our power lists. This panel is part of our continuing commitment to reflect and represent all of Pennsylvania’s diverse communities. This board will offer valuable insights, including those that go towards shaping City & State’s power lists.
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BOARD CHAIR
MICHAEL DAYS Now retired from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Michael Days last served as Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion at the paper, where he led cultural literacy programs. He spent 10 years as editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, which, under his leadership, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for investigative reporting. Days is the author of “Obama’s Legacy – What He Accomplished as President.” He is now a partner in Editorsoncall LLC, an editorial
services company founded by his spouse, Angela P. Dodson, which links freelancers to clients in need of writing, editing, graphic and editorial services.
LINDY LI After working for the CFO of Merck and then for Morgan Stanley investment banking, Lindy Li – endorsed by 18 members of Congress – was the youngest female congressional candidate in U.S. history at age 25. In 2020, she successfully ran to be a DNC delegate for PresidentElect Biden, garnering 108,556 votes from Philly alone, which was one of the state’s highest delegate vote totals. Lindy works as a political commentator for news outlets like MSNBC and NBC and hosts her own show on cable TV in the Philadelphia metropolitan area called “Listening with Lindy Li.”
DENNIS OWENS Since 1993, Dennis Owens has been a part of the ABC27
DENNIS OWENS team and he’s played many roles at the station. He began as a weekend sports anchor at WHTM under legendary Sports Director Gregg Mace. In that position, he reported on Super Bowls, World Series, bowl games, NASCAR races, baseball’s Spring Training and Penn State football. But he’s most proud of co-creating “Friday Night Football,’’ a show that celebrated its 25th year in 2021. The show continues to showcase high school athletes, cheerleaders and bands that make Friday nights special across Central Pennsylvania. In 1999, Dennis switched to news and coanchored “Live at Five,” which spotlighted his ability to connect with viewers and the community.
AL SCHMIDT Al Schmidt joined the Committee of Seventy as President & CEO in January 2022 after serving 10 years as a City Commissioner of Philadelphia. The Committee of Seventy is a nonprofit and nonpartisan good
government organization focused on strengthening democracy and combatting political corruption. As a City Commissioner, Al was one of three members on the bipartisan Board of Elections where he served as vice chairman. Al is a former senior analyst at the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and served as a policy analyst for the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets in the U.S.
BRIAN TIERNEY Brian Tierney is a serial entrepreneur who has built and sold three advertising/ strategic communications firms to publicly-traded companies; he led the group that purchased and ran the Pulitzer-Prize winning Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com, where he served as CEO and publisher. He launched a fourth agency specializing in digital marketing and strategic communications, Brian Communications, where
JOSEPH GIDJUNIS/VERACITY STUDIOS; MICHAEL GRAY/TML COMMUNICATIONS; RYAN DUNLEVY URBAN AFFAIRS COALITION; JOEL THOMAS
By Jenny DeHuff
