Bryna Towb Works for the Jewish Child

Bryna Towb works for the Jewish Child and Family Services (JCFS) but her lobbying activities for education go beyond that.

As veteran educator, Bryna has a way with children and adults that have long inspired me. She has been promoted from position to position starting off as a worker in special education and as a nursery teacher. Somewhere along the road, concerned at the apathy towards children and the gaps in special education, she started her lobbying career approaching senators and congress people in her area. Her diplomatic skills became known. She became renowned as the person who left no child behind, and the one who could get any child into any school regardless of difficulties with child or parent. She has been awarded and recognized four years in a row (and time and again before that), and familiar with her success, I decided that Bryna Towb was the person to interview for this assignment.

Discuss the role of the lobbyist as a social advocate.

How do their positions as lobbyists affect social policy changes?

Lobbyists work by approaching people of Congress or anyone involved with the Government (or influential people) in order to effect change in a given area. They may be associated with public positions or may work as private individuals.

Lobbying involves more than simple legwork and persuading legislators:

Professional lobbyists research and analyze legislation or regulatory proposals, attend congressional hearings, and educate government officials and corporate officers on important issues. Lobbyists also work to change public opinion through advertising campaigns or by influencing 'opinion leaders'. (About.com)

3. How are dollars for human services acquired? What role do they play?

Within Bryna's work, she sometimes encounters parents who have a hard time making ends meet or parents who have severely disabled learning kids and need special programs for them which they can barely afford. Bryna lobbies influential people for the money and also has a network of executives and wealthy people whom she approaches for funds when needed

4. Does the interviewee see his or her role as a policy changer or funding advocate? Why?

Bryna sees her role more as policy changer, although she humbly admits that she works in the other activity too. Even as a policy changer, she is modest never having laid claim to having changed any policy per se but rather as always attempting to change.

5. What does he or she envision as the future for human services? Are we as a society, funding more or less to those in need in the future?

Bryna finds this question difficult to answer since she deals only with a regional sample of people (from her local region) and cannot answer a generalized question. She does however see progress in human services. Take her field (or interest) for instance. At one time, special education was an embarrassing field for involved parents and a "back-in the forest" field for human services that was mainly focused on general education.