Leisha DeHart-Davis Selected as NAPA Fellow

Faculty member Leisha DeHart-Davis has been elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Among a group of 41 distinguished practitioners of public administration recognized this year, DeHart-Davis will be officially inducted into the Academy in Arlington, VA, this November. She will join fellow School of Government colleagues Carl Stenberg and David Ammons in NAPA fellowship.

The Academy is a prestigious, non-partisan, nonprofit organization that recognizes individuals with distinguished contributions to the field of public administration through service and scholarship. Its more than 850 Fellows range from professors to Congress members to business executives. DeHart-Davis will be in the company of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. In addition, Leon Panetta, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and CIA Director, will join her as an inductee to the class of 2018.

For 51 years, the Fellows have leveraged their expertise to advise government leaders on addressing the issues and ever-changing discourse surrounding American governance. In the words of the Academy, they are the “primary vehicle for addressing current and emerging issues and contributing to the intellectual and popular discourse on government.”

Leisha DeHart-Davis is a professor of public administration and government, having joined the School’s faculty in 2012. She directs the Local Government Workplaces Initiative, which conducts organizational research for improving city and county workplaces, and is also a faculty partner in Engaging Women in Public Service, a program that seeks to equip women to pursue public service leadership positions. She teaches in the Carolina MPA program, and has been published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, International Public Management Journal, Administration and Society, and Review of Public Personnel Administration. Her book, Creating Effective Rules in Public Sector Organizations, was published by Georgetown University Press in 2017. DeHart-Davis holds a PhD in public policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology.