Staff

Who We Are Staff

Staff

Louise Dubé Contact

Chief Executive Officer, iCivics

Louise Dubé serves as the Chief Executive Officer of iCivics. Louise discovered the power of education in the early 1990’s as a co-founder of CASES, a New York alternative-to-incarceration program where education helped re-shape lives. Inspired by a deep commitment to learning, she has devoted her career to ensuring that all students are prepared for active and thoughtful citizenship and life.

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Louise has successfully led growth organizations that make and deliver engaging educational technology. Most recently, she was the Managing Director of Digital Learning at WGBH. At WGBH, Louise helped launch PBS LearningMedia, a platform reaching over 1.5 million educators. Previously, Louise served as President of Pangea Tools, an educational software start-up successfully acquired by Houghton Mifflin. As President of Soliloquy Learning, Louise structured the sale of the company to Scientific Learning where she served as Vice President and General Manager of Speech Products.

Louise began her career as an attorney in Montreal, Canada, and holds a law degree from McGill University, as well as an MBA from Yale University. Louise has been recognized as a Draper, Richards, Kaplan Social Entrepreneur. During her tenure, iCivics won the MacArthur Foundation’s Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

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Shawn Healy Contact

Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy

Shawn Healy, PhD, Senior Director, State Policy and Advocacy, leads iCivics’ state policy and advocacy work through the CivXNow Coalition and oversees civic education campaigns in several key states. He plays an active role in recruiting supporters to fund policy, advocacy, and implementation efforts in the states to ensure impact.

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Healy chaired the Illinois Task Force on Civic Education in 2014 and later led separate, successful legislative campaigns for a required civics course in Illinois in middle and high school, respectively. He also led the Illinois Social Science Standards Task Force. Its recommendations were adopted by the Illinois State Board of Education in 2015.

Healy makes regular appearances as a guest speaker and panelist at academic and professional development conferences across the country, is a frequent contributor to local and national media, and produces original scholarship in the area of political participation and civic education. Healy also serves as an adjunct professor in Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is a Serve Illinois Commissioner.

Before joining iCivics, Healy worked for fifteen years at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation in various capacities, most recently serving as Democracy Program Director. He began his career as a social studies teacher at West Chicago Community High School (IL) and Sheboygan North High School (WI). A 2001 James Madison Fellow from the State of Wisconsin, he holds a MA and PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in political science and earned a bachelor’s degree with distinction in Political Science, History and Secondary Education from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His dissertation is titled “Essential School Supports for Civic Learning.”

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Lisa Boudreau Contact

Director of State Policy

Lisa Boudreau joined iCivics in 2022 as the State Policy Director where her role is to primarily support state policy and advocacy work through the CiviXNow Coalition and State Policy Task Force.

 

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Lisa has 20 years of experience in policy making. She has held staff positions in the offices of two United States Senators and at the St. Louis Board of Aldermen. Lisa spent 8 years at a national nonprofit organization as the Director of Advocacy and Strategic Messaging. While there, she supported four successful reauthorizations of a federal program, and worked on 15 different state coalitions to secure an estimated $800M in state funding to scale and grow maternal-infant health programs.

Lisa currently serves as an advisory council member for the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) and is a national law fellow in the the Culture of Health Leaders Institute for Racial Healing. In past years, Lisa served as a steering committee member of Missouri Child Advocacy Day, hosted by the Alliance for Children and Families. Lisa got her start in policy as a lived-experience advocate for foster care policy issues at the state and federal level.

Ms. Boudreau holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy Administration and is a resident of St. Louis, Missouri.

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Ace Parsi Contact

Director of Coalition Engagement

Ace Parsi serves as the Director of Coalition Engagement at iCivics. He first got exposed to iCivics through serving on the Steering Committee and the Implementation, Pedagogy, and Curation Task Forces of the Educating for American Democracy project. 

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Prior to this role, Ace held a number of policy, research, and school-based positions including as Director of Innovation at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, Director of Deeper Learning at the National Association of State Boards of Education, and Director of Policy at the National Service-Learning Partnership.  Other organizational stops on that journey included equity-focused work at the Alliance for Excellent Education, Policy Analysis for California Education, and Fair Oaks Community School in Redwood City, California.

Ace’s civics journey began when he and his family immigrated to the US from Iran when he was eight. His own experience as an English language learner and free and reduced price lunch student led him towards a passion for utilizing education as a driver for greater equity and inclusion.   He holds a Masters in Public Policy Degree from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.  He is a proud resident of Morgantown, West Virginia where he resides with his wife, Clare, and daughter, Ella.

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Abbie Kaplan Contact

Associate Director of Federal Policy

Abbie Kaplan joined the iCivics policy team in the fall of 2021 working with the organization’s CivXNow Coalition, primarily focusing on executing federal policy and advocacy strategy. Abbie also manages the CivXNow policy and advocacy affinity group, and supports broader field-building, social media, and communications efforts. Prior to joining iCivics, Abbie worked at Partners In Health on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, coordinating state-led management of COVID-19 relief and response efforts. Abbie previously worked in government relations and public policy at two large DC firms, McDermott Will & Emery and Bracewell LLP.

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Abbie earned her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Psychology from George Washington University. A proud native Bostonian, Abbie resides in the District where she enjoys playing tourist, cheering on her New England sports teams, taking part in her synagogue’s young professionals network, and petting every dog she sees.

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Patricia Leslie Contact

Director of Field Building Operations

Patricia serves as Director of Field Building Operations managing work that elevates civic education and engagement as a national priority in order to protect and strengthen America’s constitutional democracy.

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Through the Educating for American Democracy initiative and CivXNow Coalition, these efforts reimagine, promote, expand, and deliver relevant, inclusive, and engaging civic learning to ensure all students have access to quality civic education and are prepared with the knowledge and skills necessary to assume their rights and responsibilities to participate in civic life in our increasingly dynamic, polarized, and digital society. Prior to joining iCivics, Patricia studied Political Science, with a concentration in American Government, and Public Administration, with a concentration in State and Municipal Government Management, at American University in Washington, DC. Following grad school, she returned to her native Massachusetts and served as Field Director, Campaign Manager, then Chief of Staff to State Representative Michael S. Day. Outside of the office, she spends her time crafting, volunteering with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) and Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC), and binge watching bad reality tv.

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Natacha Scott Contact

Director of Educator Engagement

Natacha worked with the Boston Public Schools for the past 14 years beginning her journey as a third grade teacher at the Josiah Quincy Elementary School after she graduated from Northeastern University with a Masters in Teaching and a Bachelor’s concentrated in Public History. She then continued her growth in leadership by participating in a principal internship through the Center for Collaborative Education Principal Residency Network.

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Prior to transitioning to her role as K-12 Director of History and Social Studies, Natacha worked with the History Department in several different capacities including curriculum writer, elementary coach, and assistant director in order to develop curriculum resources and professional development to support teachers with designing engaging and meaningful learning experiences for students.

Beyond the classroom, Natacha had served as a review panel member supporting the revision of the Massachusetts History and Social Science 2018 Curriculum Framework. She also contributed to the design and development of the Civics Project Guidebook used to frame the expectations of the Action Civics Projects aligned with the 2018 Massachusetts law on civic education. Natacha also serves as a Steering Committee member and Educator Workshop Lead for the Educating for American Democracy Roadmap project. She is also a part-time lecturer at Northeastern University, facilitating a course on history and social studies pedagogy. Additionally, Natacha also presents at both local and national history and social studies conferences to share best practices in the field.

When Natacha is not diligently working on supporting teachers, curating resources, and developing curriculum, she enjoys spending time baking delicious treats and chauffeuring her 8 year old boy – girl twins to sports practice. Follow Natacha on Twitter @natacha_scott.

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Andrea Benites Contact

Policy Coordinator

Andrea joined iCivics in December of 2023 to support the CivXNow coalition and its state and federal policy initiatives. Her passion for civic education sprouted in a course during her graduate studies called Good Government Reform. In this course, she realized that civic education can play as a solution for our nation’s polarizing issues.

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Prior to joining the team, Andrea recently earned her MBA and Master of Public Policy from the University of New Mexico, after earning her Bachelor’s degree in Human Resource Management. In New Mexico, she did work for a congressional office, a graduate student association, Project ECHO, and other policy related efforts for environmental causes. She was also an NCAA athlete for UNM’s track and field team.


Andrea is currently based in Brooklyn, New York, but is from a suburb just outside of Philadelphia. She is passionate about efficient governance and providing a seat for all backgrounds at the table of that conversation. Since her parents immigrated to the US from Peru, she is a first-generational student and advocate in these policy conversations. In her free time, she enjoys painting, cooking vegan food, and being an advocate in the issues she is passionate about.

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