Seanmoore.ca


May 10, 2013

Click Here for a Shorter Version of This Biography (suitable for oral introductions)

Sean Moore is one of Canada’s most experienced practitioners, writers and teachers on public-policy advocacy. He has more than three decades of experience in public-policy and advocacy related to local, provincial/state and federal government affairs. He is the Founder and Principal of Advocacy School (www.advocacyschool.org) and the Principal Author / Editor of a soon-to-be-launched  "on-line-book-in-progress,"  How the System Works and How to Work the System

For more than 12 years, he was the Ottawa-based Public-Policy Advisor and Partner at the national law firm of Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP. Before joining Gowlings he co-founded and edited The Lobby Monitor, a publication that continues today, under other ownership, to track and assess lobbying activity. Prior to that he had served as president of what was then Canada’s largest government-relations consulting company. He has also worked as a Washington, DC-based government-relations advisor on state and federal issues in the United States.

Today, Sean has a limited consulting practice and is involved in on-going study and exploration of the nuts and bolts of organized attempts to influence decisions of government by all elements of society.

Sean also serves as a SiG Fellow in support of the Social Innovation Generation (or “SiG”) Initiative, a collaboration of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and its partners, The PLAN Institute of Vancouver, the University of Waterloo and the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto.

Though not a lawyer, he has become an authority in this country on the laws as well as the rules and customs of lobbying and advocacy and the evolution of the ways in which private and public interests interact - and compete - to shape public policy. He is an advisor to numerous Canadian companies, NGOs, trade and professional associations on their compliance with federal and provincial rules and  laws dealing with lobbying and advocacy.

He creates and delivers courses, training programs and facilitated strategy workshops for organizations of all sizes – including professional associations and NGOs - on the art and science of how to influence decisions of government.  He has taught courses on Public-Policy Advocacy in the Executive MBA Program at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, at Carleton University’s Graduate School of Public Policy and Administration and at the Maytree Foundation’s Public Policy Training Institute.  In early 2011, he launched Advocacy School, a social enterprise aimed at improving the capacity of Canadian organizations to engage constructively and effectively in public-policy advocacy.

He informally advises several national and local community non-profit organizations and charities. He previously was a member of the advisory board of Media Magazine - a publication of the Canadian Association of Journalists - and was a member of the board of directors of the Vancouver-based NGO, IMPACS - Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society.

Sean is a graduate in political science from Carleton University as well as from Carleton's Graduate School of Public Policy and Administration.

Sean is also the recipient of the 2013 Bissett Distinguished Alumni Award from Carleton University's School of Public Policy & Administration (SPPA).

He is the author of “Improving the Voluntary, Non-Profit and Charitable Sector’s Effectiveness in Influencing Decisions of Government” a discussion paper prepared for the Muttart Foundation. (available as a PDF at http://www.seanmoore.ca/downloads/MuttartPaperAdvocacy.pdf) and has written or co-authored numerous other articles on lobbying and advocacy (see “Articles” at www.seanmoore.ca ).