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Walter Fields
Senior Adviser, Government Relations and Public Affairs
Walter Fields was named publisher of City Limits in November 2009 after serving as Vice President for Government Relations and Public Affairs for five years. He continues to advise the CEO on the agency’s legislative agenda, and its political and communications strategy. He rejoined CSS in 2005 after a 14-year absence during which he was the principal of Fields Communications, a New Jersey-based political consulting firm, established a nationally recognized black public affairs web site, and served as the Director of Public Affairs for the New York State Trial Lawyers Association. His current projects at CSS include the monthly Working for Change Forums on Capitol Hill and lobbying for two key federal bills supporting disconnected youth.
Among Mr. Fields’ significant accomplishments domestically, he helped to preserve affirmative action in New Jersey by defeating an attempt to pass a referendum modeled after the California initiative that ended the policy in that state. He also played a principal role in the passage of the seat belt law in New Jersey requiring children to be buckled in passenger vehicles. During the summer of 1990, he persuaded the Bergen County Private Industry Council to create the “Summer Jobs for Summer Youth” program after bringing law enforcement, local educators, and community leaders together to support an anti-violence program he created targeting young Black men. In 1994, he had the distinction of being the first Black lobbyist with an office on “Lobbyists Row” across from the New Jersey State House.
On an international level, Mr. Fields advised the Japanese legislature on product liability issues, leading to the adoption of the country’s first personal injury laws pertaining to product safety. At the same time he served as a guest lecturer at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo. In 1994, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development. He was part of a three person team that conducted an assessment of democratization in southern Africa that was used by the Clinton administration to set policy for sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. Fields also served as a consultant to the International City County Managers Association and the National Forum for Black Public Administrators with the responsibility of establishing a training program for new Black city managers in post-apartheid South Africa. He has also provided counsel to Operation Black Vote in London and was a keynote speaker at its Conference of Minority Councilors in Manchester, England.
“My work at CSS is in keeping with my lifetime commitment to my community. I have an extreme disdain for individuals who I believe do not have the best interest of my community at heart and take as a personal offense those who seek to exploit Black Americans for their personal or professional gain or enrichment.”
“Among my mentors is Dr. Walter Stafford; Dr. Robert Weaver, the first Black to sit on a Presidential cabinet; Clarence Mitchell, the former Washington Bureau Chief for the NAACP; Mal Goode, the first Black television network news correspondent; Dr. Augustus Adair, former professor and first Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus; Wells Manning, a local New Jersey civic leader; historian Dr. Benjamin Quarles; E. Frederic Morrow, family friend and the first Black to serve in the Executive Office of the President; Herbert Leverett, family friend and first Black City Council member in my hometown; Doris Dukes, City Clerk for the city of Hackensack; and my parents, Mattie and the late Walter Fields, Sr.”
Mr. Fields was an original political contributor on MSNBC and to MSNBC.com, and a regular contributor to NPR affiliate WBGO 88.9 FM and on NPR's "News and Notes with Ed Gordon." He currently provides political commentary on New York's 98.7 KISS-FM. As a working journalist for a daily newspaper, public policy quarterly, Black newspaper, and his own website, Mr. Fields has published over 500 columns and articles, and contributed to several reports focused on public policy issues. His professional associations include the Radio Television News Directors Association and the Garden State Association of Black Journalists.
Among his many honors and awards, Mr. Fields has received the NYU Wagner School Dean’s Award, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Juried Awards Competition, the NYU Wagner School Distinguished Alumni Torch Award, the New Jersey NAACP President’s Award, the New Jersey Citizen Action Public Policy Award, the New Jersey Black Ministers’ Council Martin Luther King Jr. Award, and the New Jersey Citizen Action Award. He has been honored by the Garden State Association of Black Journalists as well as by a New Jersey Senate Resolution and a New Jersey Assembly Resolution.
Mr. Fields holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Morgan State University and an MPA in Public Policy Analysis and a Certificate for Non-for-Profit Management from the Wagner Graduate School of New York University.