Since April 2006, Lee Umphrey has served as MfA’s first Director of Communications and Public Policy. He is primarily responsible for raising the organization’s national profile and coordinating the effort to create and pass national legislation using the MfA model. In 2007, the America COMPETES ACT, including an MfA amendment creating teaching Fellowships within the National Science Foundation, became public law.

Lee has over two decades of communications and government relations experience. Previously, he was Director of Communication and Spokesperson for Governor John Baldacci of Maine. He has held government positions in Maine with the City of Bangor and in Washington, DC with United States Senator Claiborne Pell and the Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service. He also served as political advocate and consultant to the Maine Newspaper Group, a consortium of Maine’s seven daily newspapers.

Lee has extensive education and job training experience, having served for nine years as the Director of Community and Government Relations for the Training and Development Corporation in Maine and nationally. During this time, he managed a three-county Summer Youth Employment and Education Program, and a state-wide Migrant Seasonal Farm worker educational program while providing community relations support for Job Corps Centers in three states. In 1996, under the auspices of US Senator George Mitchell and the US Department of State, Lee played a primary role organizing a Workforce Development Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland to share best US education and training practices with educators and advocates from all over Northern Ireland. This conference resulted in building new relationships and the replication of several new projects in Belfast and the US.

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