Jim Doyle

President and founder, Business Forward.

For more than 15 years, Doyle has advised leading corporations, financial service firms, venture capitalists and non-profits on a range of policy, regulatory and communications issues.  Doyle has served as senior vice president of PSB Associates, a research and strategic communications firm, and as Managing Director of Civitas Group, a bipartisan advisory services firm specializing in critical infrastructure protection and national security.  Doyle served as senior policy advisor and deputy chief of staff to Commerce Secretary William Daley, where he focused on technology and economic policy, and on the communications team of Clinton/Gore 1996.  Doyle also practiced law in the D.C. offices of Hogan & Hartson LLP.  He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Harvard Law School.  He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and his two children. 

Bert Kaufman

Vice President of Business Forward.

Kaufman has extensive experience in corporate, legal, political and non-profit research and management.  Before helping start Business Forward, he served as a law clerk in U.S District Court and has advised political campaigns in Louisiana, New York and Virginia.  Kaufman also worked for CNN in Washington, D.C., and London.  While in law school he co-founded the Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and Media (IJPM), a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary center created to produce scholarship and national programming on the interaction between courts, politics and the press.  He was the only student selected to serve on a cross-disciplinary planning committee of judges from federal and state courts, deans, and professors to conceptualize and launch the institute.  He also served for two years as the research assistant to the Dean of the Syracuse University College of Law.  He has recently helped launch and is on the board of Press Pass Mentors, a non-profit that pairs inner-city high school juniors with professional journalists for a writing-intensive two-year mentoring program that ends with a college scholarship. He received his undergraduate, Masters and law degrees from the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, the Newhouse School of Public Communications and the College of Law at Syracuse University, respectively.  He is a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia.

Tim Ossowski

Director, Programming, Member Services, and New Media.

Ossowski joined Business Forward from the Department of Homeland Security, where he was a Business Liaison in the Private Sector Office, working to provide businesses with a direct line of communication to the Department.  Previously, he worked for the U.S. Soccer Federation and at the White House’s Office of Presidential Correspondence.  Prior to serving in the Executive Branch, Ossowski worked across the country with the Obama for America campaign, first as a Field Organizer in Iowa and several Midwestern states, and later as a Regional Field Director in Alaska and Regional GOTV Director in Nevada. Before the campaign, he worked in the U.S. Senate office of then-Senator Barack Obama, and before that spent a year interning at the Illinois State Senate. Ossowski is a native of Springfield, Illinois, and a graduate of Colorado State University, where he received his Bachelor's degree in Psychology.

Britney Sussman

Director, Communications and Member Services

Prior to joining Business Forward, Sussman worked for the boutique renewable energy consulting firm, Technology Transition Corporation, which specializes in managing trade associations for non-top-of-mind clean energy technologies. Before coming to Washington, DC, she represented Rotary International as an Ambassadorial Scholar to Lima, Peru. There she familiarized herself with sustainable project development, implementation, and management. She also gained international marketing experience while working for the Spanish women’s designer apparel brand, Custo Barcelona, as the Marketing Manager for the Hawaii region. Britney holds a BBA in International Business and Marketing, with a minor in Spanish from the University of Hawaii, and has also studied in Chile and Spain. She was born and raised on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.