Consensus Building Institute
MENU
Español
  • Who We Are
  • Expertise
    • Agriculture & Commodities
    • Climate
    • Coasts & Oceans
    • Social & Economic Policy
    • Energy
    • Global Development & Peacebuilding
    • Land Use & Transportation
    • Natural & Cultural Resources
    • Water Resources
  • News
  • Resources
    • Case Studies
    • CBI Reports
    • Big Ideas
      • Breakthrough Collaboration
      • Mutual Gains
      • AARC
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Information
    • Careers

Social & Economic Policy

Featured Cases:

  • Reimagining the Future of Education in America

  • Building Public Housing and Education Partnerships in the U.S.

  • Advancing Economic Opportunity in North Carolina

The Challenge

On economic and social policy questions, perceptions about the “right” answers are often embedded in moral beliefs and backgrounds. Even when leaders and citizens have broadly shared goals—expanding economic opportunity, improving public education, increasing health insurance coverage, decreasing gun violence, reducing crime, or creating affordable housing—differences in experience, values, and perspectives can create conflict over how to achieve them. Analysis and public engagement are important, but expert-led decision-making and traditional public engagement processes—voting, public meetings, advocacy—are often ineffective at building consensus on these issues.

Our Approach

CBI has extensive experience with interrelated economic and social policy challenges. Our mediators build shared vision, agreements, and effective partnerships at every level from local to global, seeking a shift from polarized positions to a search for solutions that support common and complementary goals and values. In process-design and in our work with decisionmakers, advocates and citizens, we:

  • Help stakeholders understand not only each other’s policy goals, but also the values that underpin those goals
  • Create a joint search for new possibilities, driven by shared values and complementary interests
  • Use future visioning to break through current impasses and the status quo
  • Build mutual respect and relationships along with analytic rigor and policy feasibility
  • Ensure that stakeholder dialogue and formal policymaking processes inform and influence each other

With this foundation, CBI helps increase the chances of finding common ground on the most challenging economic and social issues. 

Areas of Expertise
  • Economic opportunity and mobility
  • Public and affordable housing
  • Community integration and development
  • Criminal justice, re-entry, and reintegration
  • Health care and long-term care reform
  • Public education and learning
View cases & related resources
  • CBI was instrumental in helping those of us involved in Education Reimagined come together around a shared vision for education. The mediator was an incredible listener and brought deep knowledge of the issues, people, and organizations, which helped to advance the conversation. When we narrowed in on any decisions, he pushed us to explore if that was really the best of what all intended, which led to a stronger collective statement and agreement.

    Marla Ucelli-Kashyap

    Assistant to the President, Educational Issues

    American Federation of Teachers

Get In Touch

CBI Experts:

  • David Fairman Senior Mediator
  • Stacie Nicole Smith Managing Director
  • Linkedin

Sign up to receive regular updates on our work and insights.

Stay up to date and get in touch

  • Cambridge, MA
  • Washington, DC
  • New York, NY
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Denver, CO
  • Portland, ME
  • Santiago, Chile
  • Montréal, Canada

© Copyright 2023 - Consensus Building Institute

This website uses cookies to collect information and to improve our service. Please accept cookies in order to view this website.