Please take a minute to read this wonderful letter from Laura Chasin – founder of one of our long-standing members, the Public Conversations Project – endorsing the value of an NCDD membership. As we’ve recently mentioned, NCDD is in the midst of an important membership drive. If you are a non-dues member of NCDD, if your dues have lapsed, or if you’re not a member at all, we hope this letter encourages you to support our work!
We encourage you to look yourself up in the NCDD member directory at to find out your membership and dues status and join or renew today!

PCP Founder and D&D Leader Laura Chasin

Hello NCDD Community,

I am an extremely grateful to NCDD for its having been central to my professional life and critical to the work of numerous esteemed colleagues.

As the founder of the Public Conversation Project, I’ve derived ever-increasing benefits from my involvement with NCDD since it began. Sandy Heierbacher’s high-energy, deft, walk-the-talk leadership has fostered unusual loyalty and exceptional growth. NCDD conferences are highly relevant and stimulating; the resources and the exchanges accessible through its website are amazing in size and scope, and the diverse colleagues I meet through NCDD venues keep putting my work in valuable contemporary perspective.

In addition, NCDD has made Public Conversations’ work more visible across the US and abroad. My colleagues and I are particularly excited that NCDD will likely soon be housed with us here in Boston.

Speaking as a citizen, I experience NCDD as a nodal point in a growing, largely under-the-radar, multi-silo network of antidotes to the polarization and cynicism that haunt and hobble US politics and civil society. Knowing that I am doing my bit to help this vital coalition reach its full potential helps me to remain hopeful on days that the headlines would otherwise tempt me to despair.

I hope you’ll join with me in investing in NCDD’s future by becoming a dues-paying member today. 

In grateful solidarity,

Laura Chasin

Roshan Bliss

An inclusiveness trainer and group process facilitator, Roshan Bliss serves as NCDD's Youth Engagement Coordinator and Blog Curator. Combining his belief that decisions are better when everyone is involved with his passion for empowering young people, his work focuses on increasing the involvement of youth and students in public conversations.

Tags: civic infrastructure, member benefits, NCDD projects, public participation

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