Walter Broadnax

Walter Broadnax, professor of public administration, has had a long and distinguished career in public administration and public policy as both a practitioner and as an academic.Before joining the Maxwell School, he served as president of Clark Atlanta University and a dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University and professor at the University of Maryland, where he directed the Bureau of Governmental Research. Broadnax was Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the Department of Health and Human Services from 1993 to 1996, overseeing the Social Security Administration restructuring. He also has held key positions in state government, as President of the New York Civil Service Commission and as the Director of Children, Youth, and Adult Services for the State of Kansas. While teaching at Harvard University's Kennedy School during the 1980s, Broadnax served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Executive Development Program, advising the Governor on effective strategies for strengthening his leadership team while promoting a new way of training senior executives.He was founding director of the Innovations in State and Local Government Program which became a model for governments worldwide and eventually secured a $50 million endowment from the Ford Foundation. In 2015 Walter Broadnax was appointed a Life Trustee on the Syracuse University Board of Trustees. Broadnax earned a Ph.D. from the Maxwell School in 1975.