Policy Entrepreneurship

Examining the impact of policy entrepreneurs at all stages of policymaking

Public policymaking in the United States is a dynamic, complex, and even circuitous process. That’s where policy entrepreneurs come in. These critical catalysts and shapers of change are the engines that drive the whole policy process. Lynn C. Ross, Director of the Master of Policy Management Program (MPM) at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy and an executive branch veteran, lays out what it takes to be a policy entrepreneur.

Building from John W. Kingdon’s classic streams model (Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies), Ross uses prominent case studies to assess the impact of policy entrepreneurs on policy change and shares their strategies. Learn how to:

Gather resources for a cause.
Recognize choice opportunities to connect policy solutions to policy problems.
Spot an auspicious moment—a window of opportunity—and strike while the iron is hot.

Anyone who hopes to have any impact on policymaking will benefit from learning how to think and act like a policy entrepreneur.

About the Author

Lynn C. Ross is director of the Master of Policy Management Program (MPM) and associate teaching professor at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy. She has also taught at the U.S. State Department’s National Foreign Affairs Training Center and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Senior Leader Development Program. In a public policy career spanning fifteen years, Ross served in the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget. She has worked on Capitol Hill with the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, as well as with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense. She has received more than a dozen professional awards in government for outstanding service and special achievement.

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