W.T. McCullough Lecture
Robert Greenstein

Robert Greenstein is the founder and Executive Director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He is considered an expert on the federal budget and a range of domestic policy issues including low-income assistance programs, various aspects of tax policy, and Social Security.

Greenstein has written numerous reports, analyses, op-ed pieces, and magazine articles on budget- and poverty-related issues. He appears on national television news and public affairs programs and is frequently asked to testify on Capitol Hill.

In 2008, Greenstein received both the Heinz Award for Public Policy in recognition of his work to “improve the economic outlook of many of America’s poorer citizens,” and the John W. Gardner Award from Independent Sector for playing “a defining role in how people think about critical budget and tax policies.” In 1996, Greenstein was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. The MacArthur Foundation cited Greenstein for making "the Center a model for a non-partisan research and policy organization."

In 1994, President Clinton appointed him to serve on the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform.

Prior to founding the Center, Greenstein was Administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he directed the agency that operates the federal food assistance programs, with a staff of 2,500 and a budget of $15 billion.

Eugene H. Freedheim Lecture
Malaak Compton-Rock

Malaak Compton-Rock is an activist and philanthropist whose favorite motto comes from Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund: “Service is the rent we pay for living.”

Compton-Rock’s service has included causes ranging from beauty makeovers for women entering the workforce, to fighting a rare form of breast cancer and helping AIDS orphans in South Africa. She is the author of a forthcoming book on volunteering geared toward families.

CNN special correspondent Soledad O’Brien described her as a tireless advocate and fund-raiser for impoverished children in a February, 2009, report on Compton-Rock’s Journey for Change trip to South Africa. Compton-Rock and her staff, along with a group of college-age mentors, took 30 at-risk youths, ages 11 to 16, from Bushwick, Brooklyn, to Johannesburg, South Africa, for two weeks in August, 2008.

In South Africa, the Bushwick volunteers and their mentors bought food, clothes, and household items and delivered them to impoverished families in Soweto and a nearby slum. Back in New York, the children stayed involved with Compton-Rock’s program by volunteering and sharing their experiences with friends.

Compton-Rock also partners with the Safe Horizon Expert and Compassionate Services Program to help children in Brooklyn, where her husband, comedian Chris Rock, was raised.

The umbrella organization for Compton-Rock’s various initiatives is called The Angelrock Project (www.angelrockproject.com ). She updates the project’s Web site with details of her favorite causes and provides links to help visitors find volunteer opportunities in their communities.

Address to be followed by opportunity to meet Compton-Rock at book signing; new book to be published in April, 2010: If It Takes A Village, Build One.