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Carla Miller - President, City Ethics
Brief Bio:
Carla Miller is a global government ethics advisor, former U.S. Federal Prosecutor and founder of CityEthics, a non-governmental organization that provides ethics advisory services to local governments. She has extensive national and international experience in creating anti-corruption and ethics programs for governments and civil society. As a former Fellow of the Harvard University Safra Center for Ethics, she uses the latest research-based techniques to inspire, motivate and empower people to be ethics and transparency champions, while pushing through resistance to their efforts. Carla is skilled at curating and simplifying essential international standards and making it fun to learn critical skills and information. Her passion is to help people to focus on their purpose and increase their skills so that they can be successful in creating positive change in their communities.
Carla has worked for more than 20 years to build a strong ethics program in her home city, Jacksonville, Florida. She was Chair of the local Ethics Commission, helped to draft the City’s first ethics code, served as its first Ethics Officer (as a volunteer), fought for (and won) independence for the Ethics Commission; drafted a successful referendum to establish an Inspector General system; and handled thousands of calls on an ethics hotline. She has been the City’s Ethics Director since 2007.
[Read then Mayor Peyton's speech appointing Carla as Ethics Officer on August 28th 2007]
From 2013-2015, Carla was a Network Fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University where she developed ethics training programs for municipalities and participated in various research projects.
From 2003-2006, Carla was an officer of COGEL, the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws -- the leading body for government ethics in North America. She was also Global Affairs Chair for Cogel.
Carla has led efforts to jumpstart government ethics programs in municipalities across the U.S., Europe, China, the Middle East (Iraq) and most recently was asked by the OECD and the European Union to train Mayors across Greece.
Carla has worked with Represent.US in drafting a referendum that successfully passed in Tallahassee, Florida creating an ethics commission and instituting campaign finance reforms.
Carla has been featured in newspapers across the U.S for her work in ethics, including the New York Times and has spoken on ethics to thousands of people across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia.
Carla has presented to numerous organizations, including: COGEL [Council on Governmental Ethics Laws], the International Municipal Lawyers Association, the International Institute for Public Ethics, the Ethics Officer Association of America, the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), National Association of Counties (NACO), the National League of Cities, International Public Administration Conference (Canberra 2010); and to numerous elected officials, government agencies and youth leadership groups.
Academic Background
- Law Degree from the University of Florida, with studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, England
- B.A. Degree in Criminology, Florida State University
- Former Federal Prosecutor for the Middle District of Florida; specializing in white collar crime prosecutions (including the prosecution of the President Pro tem of the Florida Senate for mail fraud and extortion).
- Winner of community awards, including the Times Union 'EVE' Award for volunteer service to the community and the Volunteer Jacksonville, Golden Rule Award.
- Member of the Florida Bar and the Australian Bar Association
Press articles referencing Carla's work.