Janis Clay

Janis Clay is an experienced attorney with a keen interest in public policy and corporate governance and many years of business and nonprofit board service. She became executive director of the Civic Caucus in 2017 and in 2020 became Chair and acting executive director. In addition to the Civic Caucus, her board service has included the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, North Shore Scenic Railroad, Red River Valley & Western Railroad, Twin Cities & Western Railroad, Minnesota Prairie Line, the Western Railroad Equipment Company, Way to Grow, Magnum Chorum, the Minnesota Zoo Foundation, the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota, the Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association, and the Woodbury Chorus and Orchestra. She graduated from St. Olaf College with a BA in economics and from the University of Minnesota Law School, where she was a staff member and a managing editor of the Minnesota Law Review. In private law practice, she has received the Martindale-Hubbell peer review rating of AV Preeminent for ethical standards and legal ability every year since 2001.

John Cairns

John Cairns is vice chair of the Civic Caucus and an attorney with John Cairns Law, P.A., in Minneapolis. He founded the firm, which focuses on charter schools, in 2008. Prior to 2008, he was a shareholder at Briggs and Morgan, P.A. During his 19 years with the firm, Cairns was a member of the Business Law Section and the Education/Tax-Exempt Organization Practice Group.

In 1969, at age 27, Cairns was elected to the Minneapolis City Council and in 1971, at age 30, he became the youngest-ever president of the city council. He was executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership from 1979 to 1984. He was a founding member of Public School Incentives, a nonprofit organization that helped raise over $25 million for school reform and restructuring in Minnesota. He served as a consultant for The Business Roundtable in its work to achieve public school reform on a national scale.

After Minnesota passed the nation's first charter school law in 1991, Cairns helped establish the nation's first charter schools and secured 501(c)(3) status for the schools. Today, he is widely recognized as the most experienced charter school attorney in the country. He has been published in Harvard Business Review and Education Week and has spoken at various conferences on the topics of education and school reform.

Born in Wilmington, Delaware, Cairns received his B.A. degree from Carleton College and his law degree from the Duke University School of Law.

Pat Davies

Long active in civic affairs, Pat Davies served on the Citizens League board as well as on many CL committees. She has also been a member of the Guthrie Board, president of state senate spouses club, state League of Women Voters board, chaired the Minnesota Zoo Board, supreme court appointee to Lawyers Trust Account board, attorney general's representative to the Gambling Control Board, gubernatorial appointee to the Environmental Quality Board and the Mississippi River and Recreational Commission. Political activities include Congressional District Vice-Chair, delegate to two national Democratic conventions and member of state DFL executive committee. Currently a member of state LWV Action Committee, Loring Greenway Board, and Civic Caucus.

Paul Gilje

Paul Gilje served as executive director of the Civic Caucus from 2005 to December 31, 2016. He served as executive director of the Presbyterian Homes Foundation from 2000 to 2005. From 1993 to 2000 he was a church fund-raiser. From 1988 to 1993 he was director of stewardship and administrator for Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Burnsville, MN. Paul served as research director and later associate director of the Citizens League from 1964 to 1988. He was a staff writer for the Minneapolis Star from 1960 to 1964. He has bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

Randy Johnson

Randy Johnson has worked in a variety of educational settings in elementary, secondary, and higher education organizations as a teacher, administrator, and consultant. He assisted in the planning, development and application of various information technologies at Hamline University, St. Paul, MN, the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido, Sapporo, Japan (2000-2004) and at Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya (2005 and 2014). He was a faculty member from 2002-2007 at Walden University, Minneapolis, MN, a leader in distance learning since 1970, in both the Schools of Education and Management.

While teaching at the University of Minnesota and in the Minneapolis Public Schools Johnson was involved in the very earliest application of "computers in the classroom" for teaching mathematics. As an assistant superintendent for instruction and as a technology consultant for two of the largest school districts in Minnesota he planned and designed many facilities and implemented several programs for the use of computers and multi-media technologies in all subject areas.

Currently, Johnson is a co-coordinator of the Minnesota Educational Fellowship Program with Dan Loritz, chair of the Civic Caucus. Johnson has a Ph.D. in mathematics education, curriculum, administration from the University. of Minnesota; a M.S. in mathematics and statistics from Purdue University, and a B.S. in physics and mathematics from Northern Illinois University.

Paul Ostrow

Paul Ostrow was named chair of the Civic Caucus effective January 1, 2017. Ostrow served on the Minneapolis City Council from 1998-2009. He was president of the City Council from 2002-2005 and the chair of the Ways and Means/Budget Committee from 2006-2009. During his service on the Council his efforts included the implementation of long term budgeting, service redesign, commercial corridor revitalization and partnerships with the business community including the development of Target Field.

Ostrow is currently an assistant Anoka County attorney. He serves on several other boards including Grace Center for Community Life and the Northeast Minneapolis Artists Association. He received his bachelor's degree from St. Olaf College with a major in political science and his J.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Clarence Shallbetter

An original member of the Civic Caucus, Clarence Shallbetter, in his retirement, is a deacon in the Catholic church, where he was ordained in 2001. This followed many years of working in public policy for a number of organizations, including the Citizens League. As a deacon, he visits youth at the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center and men in three state prisons at Lino Lakes, Stillwater and Rush City.

His public-policy activity significantly focused on transportation, as a promoter of ride-sharing, the largest form of "transit" in the Twin Cities. He also worked in Transportation Demand Management with the Metropolitan Council, on the CORE Commission, as a fiscal analyst of transportation budgets with the Minnesota House of Representatives and in promotion of ridesharing with Ridesharing,Inc., during the energy crisis of the 1980s. Before that, he was a 10-year staff person with the Citizens League—a citizen-based, public-policy research group—in the 1960s and 1970s. He joined the Navy to see the world as a supply corps officer on the USS LIttle Rock.

Growing up in North Minneapolis, he worked with his father, who owned a popular meat market, "Shallbetter's Better Meats." Married in 1969, his wife, Barbara, died in 1978 leaving him and two daughters, Sarah and Ann. In 1996, they urged him to take the TEC-Together Encounter Christ retreat that led to his becoming a deacon. He is the grandfather of Ben, born in 2016, the son of his daughter Ann and Enrique Rivera.

Shallbetter is a political science graduate of the University of Minnesota and a graduate of De La Salle High School in Minneapolis.

T. Williams

Theartrice ("T") Williams, MSW, is an independent consultant; former executive director of Phyllis Wheatley Community Center and, more recently, its interim executive director; former Minneapolis School Board member; former senior research associate at Rainbow Research, Inc.; and former Minnesota Ombudsman for Corrections. Williams has taught courses at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs and at Augsburg College.

Williams specializes in questions of social and distributive justice, with particular emphasis on community economic development and education issues affecting minority populations. He has been the principal investigator on Rainbow Research evaluations of several local community-based organizations and has conducted program and organizational assessments at the national level. For six years, Williams was evaluation consultant and technical assistance provider to 10 local community-based organizations funded by the Minnesota Health Department's Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative.

Williams' recognitions and awards include The Bush Foundation Leadership Fellows award; Outstanding Achievement Award, Minnesota Chapter National Association of Social Workers; Outstanding Service in Criminal Justice Award, National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice Award; Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota Service Award; Outstanding Alumni Award, University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work.

Williams holds a B.A. degree from the University of Illinois and an M.S.W. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and has done graduate work at the University of Illinois, University of Chicago, DePaul University Law School and Northwestern University.

Janis Clay

Janis Clay is an experienced attorney with a keen interest in public policy and corporate governance and many years of business and nonprofit board service. She became executive director of the Civic Caucus in 2017 and in 2020 became Chair and acting executive director. In addition to the Civic Caucus, her board service has included the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, North Shore Scenic Railroad, Red River Valley & Western Railroad, Twin Cities & Western Railroad, Minnesota Prairie Line, the Western Railroad Equipment Company, Way to Grow, Magnum Chorum, the Minnesota Zoo Foundation, the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota, the Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association, and the Woodbury Chorus and Orchestra. She graduated from St. Olaf College with a BA in economics and from the University of Minnesota Law School, where she was a staff member and a managing editor of the Minnesota Law Review. In private law practice, she has received the Martindale-Hubbell peer review rating of AV Preeminent for ethical standards and legal ability every year since 2001.

Dana Schroeder

Dana Schroeder writes the summary notes of the weekly Civic Caucus interviews, which are then sent out by e-mail to the 5,500 people on the Caucus's reader list. She is a self-employed consultant who does writing, editing and research work. Her clients have included a broad variety of organizations and individuals, mostly active in the field of public affairs. Most recently, she assisted former State Senator Ember Reichgott Junge by doing research and interviews for Reichgott Junge's book, Zero Chance of Passage: The Pioneering Charter School Story. She served as editor of the Citizens League's Minnesota Journal from 1991 to 2001. From 1977 to 1984, she and her husband, Jon, were owners and publishers of the Grant County Herald, a weekly newspaper in Elbow Lake, Minn.

She has been an active member of a number of volunteer and civic organizations in both the Twin Cities area and in Elbow Lake. Among others, she has served on the Citizens League Board of Directors and co-chaired a League study committee on property taxes, was chair of the school board of Christ the King School (now Carondelet Catholic School) in Minneapolis, was an active volunteer at Minneapolis Southwest High School and was president of the Elbow Lake Civic and Commerce Association.

Schroeder has a B.A. degree in Urban Studies from the University of Minnesota and an M.A. in Public Affairs from the University's Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

Helen Baer

Helen Baer is a communications and digital content professional with a background in public policy and government, social innovation, sports merchandising, education and foreign language and literacy. She joined the Civic Caucus in 2020 as Communications and Digital Content manager. A linguist by trade, she is comfortable speaking German, French, and Spanish, and has studied Swahili and Yiddish. She maintains a private practice in foreign language tutoring and personal digital consulting.

Baer has previously worked as Legislative Intern in the US House of Representatives, Merchandising Manager in Women's professional soccer for FC Kansas City, Intern in Museum Experience with the Minnesota Children's Museum, and German Camp Counselor at the Concordia Language Villages.

Baer graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Canada with a BA in Linguistics, and minor in Social Entrepreneurship

Jacob Tosto

Jacob Tosto is a senior undergraduate student at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, and is majoring in history. His primary interests are in American history, including the Civil War, U.S. presidents, national elections, and America's military aid around the world.

Tosto is a student of the news. He watches the "NBC Nightly News" and the "PBS NewsHour" every evening and "60 Minutes" every week. He serves as breaking news announcer to everyone on his family's text string. He is interested in politics because he cares deeply about democracy and social issues. Two areas of particular passion are gun control, specifically a permanent national ban on assault weapons, and ensuring all our elections are fair and free. He closely watches the presidential debates every four years, and likes to discuss candidates' policy proposals and strategies. But he does not tell who he votes for.

Tosto volunteers every Friday at the Good Grocer, a nonprofit store in an underserved Minneapolis neighborhood that relies primarily on volunteer labor. While in high school, he also volunteered regularly at Simpson Shelter in Minneapolis, serving hot meals to guests.

Tosto suffered a traumatic brain injury at age 4, so he processes information more slowly and works at a slower pace than others. He attended Groves Academy and then transferred to Hill-Murray School after his high school sophomore year. He graduated from Hill-Murray in 2019.

He absolutely loves physical and slapstick humor shows, including "America's Funniest Home Videos (AFV)" and "SpongeBob SquarePants." A few game shows he also favors are "Fear Factor" and The Weakest Link."

Luka Jacobi-Krohn

Luka Jacobi-Krohn has a passion for public policy and has lived in three countries where he explored each political system, which started his interest in politics. He was born in Mainz, Germany. He has a passion for public policy, having advocated/lobbied at the local level for policies ranging from Juvenile probation to electric buses.

On the national level, he has advocated for policies ranging from the READ Act to tuberculosis. He has loved working on campaigns, having had the opportunity to work in virtually every role in a campaign, from door knocker to manager. His favorite part in each of these experiences has been connecting with people, especially those in his community, and having meaningful discussions about change. His favorite experience has been serving as a youth representative from District Five as the chair of the Juvenile Justice committee for the Minnesota Youth Council where he met other like-minded youth from all across Minnesota and where they advocated for legislation and provided feedback about bill language for the Minnesota Legislature.

He has worked for the Civic Caucus for several years now and has loved being able to work with such a dedicated bipartisan group. He is excited to study political science in college and hopes to continue to have meaningful conversations that lead to meaningful change.