Jerry Regier

Dr. Regier has a distinguished career in public service having formerly served as Secretary in the Cabinet of two state Governors, and as a policy leader for three U.S. Presidents. In past years he was appointed to serve on the National Commission on Children; the Medicaid Commission; and the Virginia Juvenile Justice Commission.

He is in his 7th year as a contributing faculty at Walden University where he Chairs and serves as second committee person on dissertation committees (PhD and DPA). His research interests are public administration, public policy development and leadership, transformational leadership in the public sector, and public administration in international and developing countries. His PhD dissertation was on transformational leadership in public administration of Kenya in East Africa. He has traveled and consulted extensively in Africa and Southeast Asia. He travels to Kenya regularly as a visiting professor at the Kenya School of Government in Nairobi and consultant to government officials.

Dr. Regier presently serves as a Senior Fellow of the Geneva Institute for Leadership & Public Policy, an international forum for policy officials from developing countries meeting each summer at the U.N. in Geneva, Switzerland. This has led to teaching and consulting opportunities worldwide on leadership, public policy development, and governance training with Members of Parliament and policy leaders in several countries.

He formerly served as Senior Project Director at Public Strategies, a federal contracts firm where he directed several federal contracts with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Secretary Regier had previous appointments in state government include Secretary of the Florida Department of Children & Families where he led a department of 25,000 employees, and Secretary of Health & Human Services in the state of Oklahoma. The American Society of Public Administration (Oklahoma Chapter) honored him as administrator of the year for his work of restoring integrity and trust in a crisis at the Oklahoma State Department of Health (documented in an Academic Journal publication at http://arp.sagepub.com/content/34/1/20.abstract). He concurrently served as state director of the Office of Juvenile Affairs for three years. Noteworthy accomplishments as Secretary: 1) privatized the child welfare system in Florida, 2) developed a juvenile justice system in Oklahoma that reduced recidivism from 60% down to 21%, and 3) developed in Oklahoma the first public sector marriage initiative in the country which is still active.

Appointments in the federal government were as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (A) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS); Director (A) of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the U.S. Department of Justice; and Associate Commissioner for Family and Youth at the Administration of Children, Youth & Families also at HHS.

In prior years Secretary Regier conducted research, analysis, and evaluation of nonprofit organizations in Africa and India for the philanthropic foundations, high net worth families, and government agencies that funded them in order to determine program impact. Earlier, he was the founder and first President of the Family Research Council, a public policy research and educational organization in Washington, DC., and led this think tank for 5 years. Dr. Regier lives with his wife Sharyn in the Washington, DC Metro Virginia suburbs. They have four children and fourteen grandchildren.

Education

BA, Michigan State University

MA, Int'l School of Theology (now The Kings University)

MPA, Harvard University

PhD, Walden University