John P. Bailey ’95 has entered the top echelon for individuals engaged in public policy. The former policy management major was recently appointed by President George W. Bush to the prestigious position of special assistant to the president for domestic policy.

In his new post, Bailey manages the development and utilization of policy on human services, housing and health care issues, and oversees the administration’s efforts to increase the number of minority homeowners in America.

Before his appointment, Bailey was a senior policy officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he focused on ways to improve public schools. One program that he worked on was Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ Strong American Schools project, a nonpartisan public awareness and action campaign that advocates rigorous national debate and strives to make education a leading issue in the 2008 presidential election.

Ian Wilhelm of The Chronicle of Philanthropy describes Bailey’s jump from the Gates’ Seattle-based nonprofit to a government job in Washington D.C. as “unusual,” but the position is certainly fitting considering Bailey’s career progression in domestic policy.

In 2002, Bailey was named director of educational technology for the U.S. Department of Education, for which he advised officials on educational technology policy. And not so coincidentally, Bailey’s former political science professor, Eugene Hickok, was Bush’s undersecretary of education at the time.

Bailey began his career as special assistant to the secretary of education for Pennsylvania’s Department of Education, working directly with Hickok as well. A part of the administration of former Gov. Tom Ridge, Bailey was Pennsylvania’s first director of educational technology, and he was a chief designer of the governor’s internationally recognized Link-to-Learn initiative—a five-year, $200 million project.

After graduating from Dickinson, Bailey worked as director’s assistant for the Clarke Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Contemporary Issues—now the Clarke Forum.

Written by Spencer Bailey ’08

Back to For Alumni