Joe Kennedy is a lifetime basketball play and coach. He is a 2007 graduate of Northwestern with a bachelor’s degree in education and social policy. As a four-year letterman on the Wildcat’s basketball team, he was named a team captain his senior season and received Academic All Big Ten Recognition three times.
After graduating, Kennedy was a special assistant for the Office of Public Engagement at the White House, where he served as a liaison to key national organizations that helped promote and implement the administration’s legislative priorities. He also built a coalition of sports organizations, including the NBA, WNBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, MLS, PGA, USOC, and the NCAA, to promote the First Lady’s “Let’s Move!” campaign against childhood obesity, and coordinated and executed championship visits and other sporting events at the Obama White House.
In the years following, Kennedy spent three seasons as the director of men’s basketball operations at Northwestern, was the director of player personnel at Oregon State, and served as a video coordinator for the Sacramento Kings. For the previous seven years, Kennedy was an assistant coach at the College of the Holy Cross men’s basketball team. He helped the Crusaders win the Patriot League Championship and advance to the 2016 NCAA Tournament. During his 12 year coaching career, Kennedy has been an active member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC).
Most recently, in September of 2022, Kennedy became the first Executive Director of The Team. During the 2020 election cycle, Kennedy connected with Coach Eric Reveno, where they became a major force leading a new college athletics movement to expand student-athlete voter registration and create civic resources for coaches and teams. Coach Joe Kennedy is working towards a future where all student athletes and athletic departments establish civic engagement as a priority. and he believes The Team can make that dream a reality.
Joe leads a Team project in partnership with the Bridge Alliance started in the fall of 2023. This fellowship empowers student athletes from across the country to strengthen non-partisan civic participation on their teams, on their campuses, and in their broader communities.
Connect with Joe and David on LinkedIn
As one of the initial driving forces behind the Bridge Alliance and as chairman of the board, David Nevins brings business acumen, vision and a tireless this-must-and-can-be-done zeal to the burgeoning movement to bridge divides to transform the political process.
As a business leader, Nevins excels at building bridges between people and organizations from the right, left and center for civilized conversation and then action.
He co-founded the Bridge Alliance because, as he says, “No matter how well managed and how well funded any one organization is, significant political reform will not happen without an alliance to further collaborative interactions. Together we can and will raise the collective impact of all.”
Nevins is also co-publisher of The Fulcrum, a daily new publication committed to protecting democracy by educating the public on issues that matter. The Fulcrum is a key piece of a larger strategy to build a pro-democracy constituency of millions of Americans by making it easier to find and act on civic engagement opportunities. The Bridge Alliance, The Fulcrum, and Citizen Connect are all interconnected in their support of the ecosystem of our community of pro-democracy organizations and concerned and engaged citizens.
He established and continues to work with The Nevins Fellow program at The Mccourtney Institute of Democracy at Penn State University. The Nevins Fellows program allows students to complete internships at organizations that bring people together to solve common problems. In this program students begin by taking a Democratic Leadership class that introduces them to a different side of democracy—one that focuses not on campaigns and elections, but on bringing people together to work on common problems. Students learn about organizations doing this kind of work, and develop the skills necessary to facilitate conversations about community issues.
He is a member of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, with a focus on the Aspen Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership.
Nevins graduated with honors in economics from Penn State in 1969 and received an M.B.A. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. He continues as President of Nevins Real Estate Management. Nevins is married to Catherine Moyal Nevins. They currently reside in Palm Beach Gardens Florida and Cape May New Jersey.
