Executive
Director
United States Interagency Council on Homelessness
Mr. Mangano was recently nominated as one on TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. In 2006 he was named by Governing Magazine as the first and only Federal official ever to be honored with its Public Official of the Year Award. He has been recognized by mainstream and business media in the United States for his leadership on the issue of homelessness and new results in ending homelessness being achieved in cities across the country through the National Partnership created by the Council. Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government last year named the Council one of the "Top 50 Government Innovations" in the nation.
Recent affirmations of the work of the Council and Mr. Mangano have come from diverse quarters. The National Human Services Assembly recognized Mr. Mangano in September 2006 with its "Essence of Leadership" Award for excellence in national public sector leadership. In 2006, he was also recognized with the 2006 HOME magazine annual "Shelter" award for his work in "enriching community spirit and well-being by fostering a sense of home."
The Commonwealth of Kentucky presented Mr. Mangano with the Kentucky 2006 Spirit of Unity Honor of Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award. Also in 2006, he was recognized with the Rev. Canon Brian S. Kelley Public Servant Award by the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, which acknowledges a public official who has demonstrated leadership in addressing the needs of the poorest. Mr. Mangano was recognized with the 2001 National Alliance to End Homelessness Private Sector Award. The Associated Press presented him with its National "Hero" Award; he was named a "City Light" by The Boston Globe; a "Local Hero" by The Boston Phoenix; and a "face to watch" by Boston Magazine. He is the recipient of numerous proclamations from the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate, and commendations from the Massachusetts Departments of Mental Health and Public Health and from cities throughout the Commonwealth for the state-wide impact of his work on homelessness. Additionally, Mr. Mangano holds several community service awards from the United Way and clergy organizations.
In March 2002 Philip F. Mangano was appointed to lead the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. As Executive Director of the Council, Mr. Mangano has engaged every level of government and the private sector to constellate a National Partnership to end homelessness. The priority of the Council has been to ensure that the President's commitment to ending chronic homelessness achieves realization.
The Interagency Council is comprised of 20 Cabinet Secretaries and Federal agency directors who convene regularly at the White House to ensure that Federal resources are more available and accessible to homeless people. For the past seven years, the Federal budget has included consecutive record years of resources targeted
to homelessness.
The mission of the Council is to coordinate the Federal response to homelessness and to create partnerships throughout government and the private sector that end homelessness. The Council has led the creation of a national partnership that now includes 20 Federal agencies, 49 states, three territories, the District of Columbia, and over 320 local communities. Through the Council's leadership, unprecedented interagency and community collaborations have taken place. Ensuring that jurisdictional CEO's extend political will to the issue of homelessness, Mr. Mangano has focused the partnering of the Council with Governors, Mayors, and County Executives. The prioritization of the Council on the prevention of homelessness and rapid re-housing of homeless people has focused Federal policy and encouraged local plans and investments from the public and private sectors.
These partnerships have led to unprecedented state and local investments across the country. Additional collaborations with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, and the National Governors Association have resulted in new visibility on the issue of homelessness across the country.
Mr. Mangano brings to his role more than 25 years of experience in the issue of homelessness, both in public policy and solution-oriented programs. In his work in Massachusetts, Mr. Mangano originated the abolitionist notion of changing the verb and intent of homelessness from managing the response to ending the disgrace by moving beyond a status quo that was well intentioned to innovations that are results oriented.
Prior to his appointment, Mr. Mangano was the founding Executive Director of a regional advocacy alliance which became the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance (MHSA), a statewide coalition of 80 agencies which operate more than 200 programs. During his 12-year tenure, MHSA developed statewide strategies to reduce and end homelessness in Massachusetts which influenced the national dialogue in Washington and throughout the nation. His continuing commitment to the abolition of homelessness began in his work in Boston and continues in Washington.
Mr. Mangano began his work in homelessness in the 1980s, starting as a full-time volunteer on a Boston breadline, and then working with African-American churches in responding to homelessness, and eventually serving as Director of Homeless Services for the City of Cambridge. He worked with Children's Services of Roxbury, Massachusetts to create housing programs for homeless families.
Throughout his career, Mr. Mangano has initiated involvement with many faith-based organizations on the issue of homelessness. As Director for the family homelessness and housing programs operated by St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, Mr. Mangano worked closely with the historic African-American Church and the Cambridge Black Pastors' Conference. Mr. Mangano was also responsible for the creation of Cambridge Clergy for Affordable Housing, a multi-congregational effort to respond to homelessness issues.
Prior to his work at MHSA, Mr. Mangano participated in the creation and development of a variety of community-based organizations including as a founding member of a social justice group in Los Angeles and as President of Social Action Ministries of Greater Boston.
Under Mr. Mangano's leadership, the Council has prioritized the President's Management Agenda to encourage strategies that are evidence-based, customer-centric, and results-oriented. Focused on performance and accountability, the Council has initiated strategies that, as Mr. Mangano has characterized them, "move beyond funding to investing, beyond inputs to outcomes, and beyond managing the crisis to ending the disgrace."
He has led the application of cost benefit analysis and business planning to the issue of homelessness. The Christian Science Monitor credited the Council for "taking a business-school approach to the problem,"
and financial magazine Fortune, commenting on the Council's work, said that "while applying the metrics of business to homelessness may sound icily clinical, ultimately this is the language of hope." Bloomberg News
noted that the new approach "offers practical solutions to a costly problem."
The work of the Council has gained the attention of mainstream media and some of the foremost business thinkers of our day, including best-selling authors Malcolm Gladwell and Jim Collins. The New York Times described
10-Year Plans encouraged by the Council as a "burst of effort [that] has buoyed a field long accustomed to futility and part of an accelerating national movement that has reduced the numbers of the chronically homeless."
The San Francisco Chronicle called the Council's work the "most aggressive nationwide strategy in a generation to solve homelessness." The Weekly Standard noted that "somebody has finally found something that works."The Washington Times dubbed Mr. Mangano "one person working overtime to bulldoze misconceptions" about homelessness. The Atlantic Monthly noted that "this hard numbers approach [is] a radical shift." And Governing Magazine wrote, "Nobody has done more than Mangano to change the national dialogue on homelessness."
Although Mr. Mangano's non-stop travel schedule includes visits to every state to Mayors, County Executives, Governors, and innovative programs, he is most at home speaking with homeless and formerly homeless people. Wherever he travels, he takes time to meet with the "consumers and customers of all our planning, resources, and partnership" to ensure that "our poorest neighbors" are central to the creation of policy and the investment of resources.
Mr. Mangano has spoken across the country on the abolition of homelessness and has been invited to speak at United Nations and European Union sponsored events and national meetings in a number of countries. In 2004 he initiated international dialogue on homelessness with the creation of the Tri-Partite Meetings, which now include Canada and several European countries.
Through his historical and theological training, Mr. Mangano's work has been inspired by the words and actions of the abolitionists, particularly William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. He credits the lives and writings of
St. Francis Assisi and Simone Weil for spiritual inspiration in his work.
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