Josh Lerner

Josh Lerner is founder and Executive Director of People Powered: Global Hub for Participatory Democracy. People Powered's mission is to expand people's power to make government decisions, by supporting organizations and governments that are building participatory democracy around the world. Josh has spent the past 20 years developing, researching, and working with leading community engagement programs across North America, Latin America, and Europe.

He was previously co-founder and Co-Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), a nonprofit organization that empowers people to decide together how to spend public money, across the US and Canada. Through this work, 534,000 people in 30 cities directly decided how to spend $337,000,000 to improve their communities.

Josh completed a PhD in Politics at the New School for Social Research and a Masters in Planning from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics, Everyone Counts: Could Participatory Budgeting Change Democracy?, and over 20 articles.