In a May 23 Early Learning Nation piece, Mark Swartz captured the connections made by Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families  participants as they worked to come to cross-partisan consensus on family policy ahead of their Blueprint for Action, “In This Together.”

The piece includes quotes from Collaborative Director Abby McCloskey, Convergence CEO and President, Mariah Levison, and six Collaborative participants, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Rachel Hope Anderson, Bruce Lesley, Dana Suskind, Leah Austin, and Katharine B. Stevens.

Swartz captured the surprising connection between Indivar Dutta-Gupta and Katharine B. Stevens noting,

“Katharine B. Stevens, founder and president of the Center on Child and Family Policy, says ‘I’ve been part of these groups that talk about “consensus,” but it’s consensus by mass bullying.’ She objects to the approach where pundits ‘define a problem as the absence of their chosen policy solution.

Stevens, whose organization is often identified as right-leaning, came away from the process pleasantly surprised by her interactions with Indivar Dutta-Gupta the left-leaning Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). ‘We didn’t expect to connect at all,’ she says. ‘But I would say we ended up connecting on almost everything.'”