President-elect Barack Obama recently selected a member of Tufts' Board of Trustees to help his transition team review a federal agency that oversees government community service funding.
Along with dozens of others, trustee Deborah Jospin (LA '80) will advise Obama as he considers reforms to the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a quasi-public federal agency that oversees AmeriCorps and various other volunteering and grant-making initiatives.
Jospin is an attorney who co-founded a Washington-based consulting firm, where she is a partner. She will work with two other attorneys to review the government corporation.
She said her role in the process is to determine the capacity for change at the CNCS, where she previously served as associate general counsel and as chief of staff. In 1997, then-President Bill Clinton appointed her as the first director of AmeriCorps.
"We are fact finders," Jospin said of her agency review group. "We are working with the agency to make sure it's poised for passable growth in the new administration."
Obama has created an array of groups to assist him and key advisors in making decisions regarding federal agencies as he transitions into the presidency. Obama has called for a greater focus on community service, adding to the importance of Jospin's task.
"President-elect Obama has proposed a significant expansion of national service," the Tufts trustee said. "We're helping to ensure the agency has the capacity to support that growth."
Jospin serves as president of the Daniel A. Dutko Memorial Foundation, which provides 10-month internships in Washington to Tufts graduates. The foundation partners with the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service to administer the program, called the Dutko Fellowship Program. Sixteen students have taken internships with support from the program.
Jospin worked as an attorney in private practice until 2001, when she founded the consulting firm sagawa/jospin.
Her partner at the firm, Shirley Sagawa, was also selected to advise the Obama transition team on the CNCS.
A member of the Tufts board of trustees since 2002, Jospin also chairs the Board of Advisors at the Tisch College.
She said her experiences at Tufts contributed to her readiness for the transition-team position.
"My time at Tufts certainly prepared me to be an active, engaged citizen," she said. "I would say that Tufts in general has supported me as an undergraduate and a post-graduate. Tufts has supported me my whole life in my passion for civic engagement."
