Tulsan Tapped for State Human Services Commission

OKLAHOMA CAPITOL -- Gov. Brad Henry has appointed Tulsan Steven Dow as a member of the Oklahoma Commission for Human Services. Dow will fill the unexpired term of Patrice Dills Douglas, who resigned.
Since 1992, Dow has been the executive director of the Community Action Project of Tulsa County, where he oversaw the transformation of the organization from a two-person agency with an operating budget of $165,000 to one of the country’s most innovative anti-poverty agencies with a staff of nearly 600 and a budget of $50 million. CAPTC focuses on human development, income support and asset building services that reach more than 20,000 households annually.

Recently, CAPTC has led efforts within community-based organizations to provide free Earned Income Tax Credit assistance and outreach. In 2001, the Annie E. Casey Foundation honored CAPTC with its Families County: National Honors program that rewards organizations doing the most to improve the odds for disadvantaged children and families.

In conjunction with the George Kaiser Family Foundation, CAPTC has led and managed the development of Tulsa’s Educare Center, as Tulsa became the fourth city to join the Bounce Learning Network. Founded by the Buffett, Gates, Harris, Kaiser and Kellogg Foundations, BLN is a national network of public and private partnerships that have established Educare Centers designed to give at-risk children opportunities for school success and lifelong achievement. In March 2007, then-U.S. Sen. and Presidential candidate Barack Obama visited CAPTC’s Educare Center at the invitation of Tulsa philanthropist George Kaiser. Tulsa’s second Educare Center is slated to open later this year.

Prior to his service with CAPTC, Dow was an associate at Crowe and Dunlevy in Tulsa, where he worked in commercial litigation and helped develop the firm’s public interest and pro bono department. Dow also has experience as a law clerk to a federal district judge and in corporate finance at Goldman, Sachs and Co. in New York City.

Dow has served on many national and state boards, including the National Advisory Council for AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps; Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship and Downpayment (SEED) National Policy Council; the Oklahoma College Savings Task Force; the Oklahoma Advisory Task Force on Children’s Issues; the Governor’s Advisory Committee on the Homeless; the Tulsa KIPP Academy; the Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless; the Tulsa Community Food Bank; and the Tulsa Workforce Investment Board.

Dow graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Yale University in New Haven, Conn. in 1985 and from Yale Law School in 1990. He was the senior editor of the Yale Law Journal.

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