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Staff Bios
Esther Handy, Josh Fogt, and Rashad Morris.
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Esther Handy, Legislative Aide
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Esther Handy came to Councilmember O'Brien's office from the Office of the King County Executive where she served as a policy analyst under Executives Ron Sims and Kurt Triplett. As staff to the County's Equity and Social Justice Initiative, Esther worked across departments and with communities to begin applying an equity lens to County policy and decision-making. Most recently she coordinated the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine plan for Public Health, Seattle and King County. Esther has a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College. In her free time, you can find Esther running, biking, or swimming in the Green Lake neighborhood, organizing for racial justice with some of Seattle's finest activists, or relaxing inside with a knitting project. Born and raised in Olympia, she is happy to be back living and working in the Pacific Northwest.
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Josh Fogt, Legislative Aide
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Josh Fogt joins Councilmember O'Brien's office having served as Public Policy Manager for the statewide hunger relief organization, Northwest Harvest. There he helped develop a new advocacy program that engages state and federal lawmakers in support of policies to fight hunger and poverty. Josh is originally from Minnesota where he attended Macalester College and received Bachelors degrees ineconomics and philosophy. He spent four years in Washington, DC working for Peter D. Hart Research Associates, a leading public opinion research firm. In 2007 Josh moved to Seattle to pursue a Masters in Public Health at the University of Washington. In the community-based public health practice track, he studied the social determinants of health and health disparities while organizing for health, equity and social justice. In his free time, Josh is active in Seattle's anti-racist organizing movement and likes to spend weekends biking, playing soccer or hiking and exploring the beauty of the Northwest.
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Rashad Morris, Legislative Aide
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Rashad Morris joined Councilmember O'Brien's office in 2012, having spent the past few years working on climate and clean energy policy at the Washington Environmental Council. At WEC, Rashad helped develop and successfully advocate for legislation: to shutter Washington's only coal-fired power plant, protect the state's Clean Energy Initiative, and to limit the amount of greenhouse gases generated by Washington's power utilities. Prior to his work at WEC, Rashad advised members of the Washington State Legislature as a Policy Analyst. While there, his portfolio included a wide array of issues from green jobs and broadband internet deployment to elections, early learning, and prisons. Outside of the office, Rashad's interests include social & economic justice and environmental sustainability: he sits on the boards of local nonprofits focused on diversifying the environmental movement and private commercial lending in support of economic development in the Northwest. Rashad holds a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a bachelor degree in Business Administration from Loyola Marymount University.
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