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U.S. House Speaker McCarthy removed in historic vote

A new kind of think tank launches in Northampton

Based in Northampton, the Western Massachusetts Policy Center looks to allow historically disenfranchised people to lead in shaping public policy.
Western Massachusetts Policy Center
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WMPolicy.org
Based in Northampton, the Western Massachusetts Policy Center looks to allow historically disenfranchised people to lead in shaping public policy.

Western Massachusetts Policy Center aims to flip the traditional think tank model

A new think tank has launched in western Massachusetts with a mission to upend the status quo.

Based in Northampton, the Western Massachusetts Policy Center touts itself as a grassroots, antiracist think tank that seeks to train new policymakers to address the most pressing issues facing the four western Massachusetts counties.

The think tank is actively recruiting people for paid fellowships and is looking to expand its Black- and woman-led board of directors.

WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill spoke with Lauren Rollins, the organization’s Founding President and CEO.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.