Josh Wise is the Director of Outreach and Partnerships at Public News Service and on the faculty of the Public and Nonprofit Administration program at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, MN, where he teaches fundraising and communications. Josh got his start working at nonprofits when his mom gave him baseball card money for helping with a fundraising mailing when he was 6. He still has an affinity for putting labels on envelopes. Since then Josh has held leadership positions in the sector for over a decade including as the Director of Development and Communications at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Executive Director of One Voice Mixed Chorus – North America’s largest LGBTQ mixed choir, and Executive Director of the Minnesota and Illinois Fair Trade Coalitions. In 2011, with MN Citizens for the Arts, Josh put over 10,000 miles on his car and traveled the state to show the value of public funding for the arts in rural communities with recently elected Tea Party legislators. He has taken that learning and used it to bridge divides and find common ground across the spectrum of public interest issues. Josh has a BA from Macalester College and Masters in Public and Nonprofit Administration from Metro State, and a Special Engineer’s license from the state of Minnesota which means he can operate low-pressure commercial boilers. It’s a long story.

Location: Saint Paul, MN

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