MEET OUR TEAM

Felicity A. Williams is a strategist, creative problem solver, and advocate for racial and economic justice whose work centers on building inclusive systems, advancing equitable public policy, and strengthening democratic participation. She is known for leading with authenticity and for building strong relationships across sectors to translate data, community voice, and advocacy into meaningful policy change.

Felicity currently serves as executive director of the Pennsylvania Policy Center, a statewide policy and research organization, and its affiliated advocacy organization, Pennsylvanians Together in Action. In this role, she leads work at the intersection of policy, research, advocacy, and organizing to advance shared prosperity, strengthen democracy, and break down structural barriers across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Previously, Felicity served as deputy chief of staff for the City of Pittsburgh, where she was the first Black woman and the youngest person to hold the role. In city government, she worked at the intersection of policy development, implementation, and public accountability, overseeing portfolios spanning communications, workforce development, intergovernmental affairs, youth and education, neighborhood services, business diversity, and immigrant and refugee affairs. Through this work, she regularly engaged with state and federal partners, regional institutions, and philanthropic stakeholders to advance policy alignment, secure resources, and coordinate cross-jurisdictional solutions.

During her tenure, Felicity led and supported policy initiatives that reshaped how public resources are allocated and governed. She was the architect behind efforts such as the Workforce Hub, Energize Pittsburgh, Procurement Modernization, and the reauthorization of the Stop the Violence Fund, advancing data-informed and equity-centered policy frameworks to ensure public investments support shared prosperity. She convened the largest public consortium in recent history to launch the first regional disparity study in more than twenty years and advanced policies to expand participation of minority-, women-, and LGBTQ-owned businesses. These efforts yielded the first certified LGBTQ-owned business subcontractors on City projects, annual diverse business participation exceeding 30%, and multiple projects with diverse participation above 50%. She also championed workforce diversity and job quality standards across publicly funded construction and development projects.

Felicity brings deep experience building coalitions and aligning policy, advocacy, and governance. She represented the administration on numerous civic and economic development boards, including InnovatePGH, VisitPittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, the Pennsylvania Municipal League, InvestPGH, and the Comprehensive Municipal Pension Trust Fund. As a member of the VisitPittsburgh board, she served on the steering committee for the region’s 10-year Tourism Development Plan, advancing strategies that elevate African American heritage, LGBTQIA+ cultural experiences, and emerging communities. As a trustee of the pension fund, she advanced policy reforms through the adoption of the City’s first Diverse Investment Managers Policy, increasing utilization of minority- and women-owned firms from zero to more than thirty percent.

Earlier in her career, Felicity led economic development and communications at the Hill Community Development Corporation, where she advanced community-rooted policy solutions, supported neighborhood restoration, and implemented a community benefits agreement with a national hockey team and public partners. She has also worked on efforts to expand voter engagement across western Pennsylvania and has consulted with organizations in the Washington, DC region on business development, valuations, and investment strategy.

Felicity earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and International Studies from Washington and Jefferson College and a Juris Doctor from the William and Mary School of Law, where she served as vice president of the Election Law Society and as a member of the Bill of Rights Journal. She is admitted to the Pennsylvania and Virginia bars.

Jeff Garis is the outreach and partnerships director at the Pennsylvania Policy Center, drawing on his quarter-century of experience working with advocacy organizations in Pennsylvania. For the decade prior to joining the Pennsylvania Policy Center, Jeff worked for the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and Keystone Research Center, coordinating advocacy campaigns focused on state and federal policy priorities. Previously, he worked with diverse coalitions for several years as the field director of Pennsylvania Voice, the state political director of America Votes, and the executive director of Penn Action. Jeff began his advocacy career in 1998, serving as the executive director of a statewide death penalty reform organization. He lives in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood, where he enjoys live music, standup comedy, cooking, and bicycling.

Before joining the Pennsylvania Policy Center as director of communications, Kirstin served as the communications director for both the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and the Keystone Research Center. She comes with over 25 years of experience in marketing, advertising, public relations, and crisis communications in the public, private, corporate, political, and nonprofit sectors. Some of her former roles are managing accounts for advertisers, including the Got Milk? campaign, FORD, Arby’s, the Beef Council, FILA, and McCormick. She was director of marketing and communications for Highmark Blue Shield; director of communications for Governor Ed Rendell’s administration; and a weekly columnist with a progressive perspective for the Patriot-News. She’s worked with progressive and high-level leaders, including President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, and President Bill Clinton.

Before joining the Pennsylvania Policy Center, Erica was deputy director of communications at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and Keystone Research Center. Previously, she’d spent years as a fundraising researcher in various Philadelphia nonprofits such as the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and The Curtis Institute of Music. She was a copy editor at The Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest, continuously Black-owned newspaper in the U.S., and then ran her own copy editing business, specializing in academic writing and both fiction and nonfiction writing translated from other languages.

From 2013 to 2021, she co-ran the blog Dark Matters about people of color and genre (horror, sci-fi, fantasy, science/tech, etc.) media. Dark Matters provided historical and current cultural information and was an online advocate for improving POC visibility in genre media and for people seeking information and safety while protesting the rash of police brutality during that time.

Adrienne Standley is the deputy design and digital director for the Pennsylvania Policy Center and a passionate harm reductionist and LGBTQ+ rights activist living in Philadelphia. They’re a policy nerd and community organizer with a fine art degree from Arcadia University and additional experience in small business operations, management, and e-commerce.

Dwayne J. Heisler serves as the campaign director for the Pennsylvania Policy Center, where he leverages more than two decades of experience in political organizing and progressive leadership. With deep expertise in state-level lobbying, legislative strategy, and coalition building, Dwayne has successfully led numerous campaigns focused on advancing key progressive policies in Pennsylvania.

Before joining the Pennsylvania Policy Center as director of policy and research, Laura served as a post-doctoral associate at the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University, where she conducted state-level research on child care policy, labor market outcomes, and gender equity. Previously, she was a fellow at Voices for Utah Children, where she worked on economic justice initiatives related to family well-being and early childhood education. Laura holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Utah and an undergraduate degree in quantitative economics and econometrics from the University of South Florida. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, and Œconomia.

Castin Stone is a policy analyst with the Pennsylvania Policy Center. Before joining the Center, he worked in Addison County, Vermont, in order to assess housing needs and water quality while working on his degree in environmental studies and geology at Middlebury College. Castin is passionate about geographic data analysis, best practices in data governance, and making opaque statistics into accurate and compelling stories.