Office of Community Partnerships

Bruce Adams is the Director of Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett's Office of Community Partnerships (OCP). The Office of Community Partnerships carries on Montgomery County's historic commitment to empower our ethnic communities while adding a charge from County Executive Leggett to build strong partnerships between the County government and the County's nonprofit organizations and faith communities.

Adams served as an elected member of the Montgomery County Council from 1986-94, including a term as Council President (1991-92). His initiatives included Community Service Day, Committee for Montgomery, Montgomery Housing Initiative, 50% recycling goal, legislation to prohibit smoking in shared workplaces, Capital Crescent Trail, Commission on Child Care, Technology Enterprise Center, and the Bethesda Urban Partnership. Prior to serving on the County Council, he served on numerous State and County boards and commissions, including chair of the Charter Review Commission (1979-82) and chair of the task force that created Montgomery Community Television (1983-84).

Bruce Adams has served as a Senior Fellow at The James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland (1995-97), a Fellow of the Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard University (1979), an Associate of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation (1982-1986), and as National Research Director for Common Cause (1977-1982). At Common Cause, Adams authored model open government legislation enacted by state and local governments across the nation. Adams is co-author of two books on the presidential personnel process and numerous articles on governance, community building, and leadership.

He is founder of the Bethesda Community Base Ball Club (1998), Lazarus Leadership Fellows Program at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School (1997), and Fields of Dreams after-school program in Washington, DC (2002). From 1987-96, Adams taught the John W. Macy, Jr. Leadership Seminar for Montgomery County high school students. From 1988-93, Adams was a Lecturer at the graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland. He is a graduate of Princeton University (1970) and the Georgetown University Law Center (1974). A 1966 graduate of The Landon School, Adams received the Kupka Distinguished Alumnus Award from the school's Alumni Association in 2003.

Adams was named a 1998 Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian magazine and received the 1993 Metropolitan Washington Council of Governmentsof Scull Metropolitan Public Service Award as the elected official who has contributed most significantly to the enhancement of intergovernmental cooperation in the Washington Metropolitan Region. In 2005, he received the William Prescott Allen Award from the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce.

Bruce Adams, 60, lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife, Margaret (Peggy) Engel, a journalist, and their children, Emily and Hugh. Bruce and Peggy are co-authors of Baseball Vacations, a guide to family baseball vacations (Fodors/Random House, 1997, 2000, & 2002).

What does Bruce say about the County?
What's so great about working in Montgomery County is that we have the capacity to create the nation's finest multicultural community. I grew up here, and I have seen that as the County has grown more diverse, we have become smarter, richer, and much more interesting. We have the talent. We have the resources. But great challenges and disparities remain. We can do it. We can achieve our goal if we can learn to work even more effectively together across the lines of race, income, religion, and sector that too often divide and diminish communities.

Austin Heyman founded and served as the Director of Interages and the Montgomery County Intergenerational Resource Center from 1986-1997. Governor Parris Glendening appointed Austin as a delegate to the 1995 White House Conference on Aging. Senator Paul Sarbanes appointed Austin as a delegate to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging. Congresswoman Constance Morella nominated Austin and Interages for the Public Services Round Table Award. He continues to serve as member of the Board of Interages. Austin was a member of the Leggett Administration Transition Team and was appointed in 2007 as a Senior Fellow in the Office of the County Executive, Office of Community Partnerships.

During his 25 years of service with the federal government as an administrator of our foreign assistance programs, Austin was also deeply involved with community groups, working on educational and youth issues, serving as the first Chair of the Montgomery County Commission on Children and Youth, as President of the Montgomery County Council of PTAs, and as a member of the Maryland Task Force on Guidance and Counseling. He was a founding board member and Vice-Chair of the Volunteer Partnership Montgomery and Co-Leader of the John Macy Leadership Seminar. He has served on the Retired Seniors Volunteer Programs Advisory Council and the Community Relations Committee of the Montgomery Chamber of Commerce. Austin received an Award for Distinguished Service to Public Education from the Montgomery County Board of Education in 1997. In 1997 he initiated discussions leading to the creation of the Maryland Intergenerational Coalition. County Executive Douglas Duncan appointed Austin to the Commission on Aging in 1998. In 2004 Austin received the Montgomery County Paths of Achievement Award. In 2008 Austin was inducted into the Montgomery County Human Rights Hall of Fame and in 2009 he was inducted into the Maryland Senior Citizens Hall of Fame.

Austin has served as the moderator for two television programs on County Cable, Seniors Today, and Montgomery Citizens Agenda. He initiated the Vital Living Initiative in 1999 and currently chairs the Montgomery County Vital Living Steering Committee. In 2001 he proposed the creation of a Senior Leadership Montgomery class which was implemented by Leadership Montgomery in 2002.

Austin served as an attorney with a Wall Street law firm in New York City. During his career with the United States Agency for International Development he represented the United States on the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris during the 1960s. Austin has undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University, a Master of International Public Policy from John Hopkins and a Certificate from the Academy of International Law at The Hague.

Diane Vy Nguyen-Vu joins the Office of Community partnerships as the liaison to the Asian American and Middle Eastern communities.   Most recently she served as the executive director the Maryland Vietnamese Mutual Association, a local nonprofit organization providing direct services to and advocacy for Vietnamese Americans.

A 20-year County resident and graduate of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Diane has served on the steering committee of Nonprofit Montgomery, as an appointed member of the County's Commission on Aging, and as a member of the County Executive's Asian American Advisory Group. A former AmeriCorps Fellow, she has participated in the Community Foundation of Montgomery County's Nonprofit Advancement Fund's Small Emerging Nonprofits Initiative.

What does Diane say about the County?
I am excited to help Montgomery County to serve as a national model for a multicultural community where I will be serving as a bridge between communities and government. The Asian and Middle Eastern communities in the County are diverse and a great asset to this County and I look forward to working with them. 

Mr. Koroma is a Senior Fellow at the County Executive's Office and the Community Liaison to the African and Caribbean communities. Mr. Koroma has worked with the many non-profits in the Washington DC area and sits on the Board of the Smithsonian National Museum of Africa Art. Prior to joining the County Government, Mr. Koroma worked as a Global Banking Strategist for Bank of American and later led the Global Trade Services Group for Bank of America in Northern Virginia.

When he was the Business Development Manager for seven years, Mr. Koroma conducted several business seminars in Montgomery County, Washington DC, and Northern Virginia. Mr. Koroma attended the University of Maryland, College Park where in majored in International Business and Public Policy. He also worked for the University's Computer Science Department for two years. Mr. Koroma and his wife live in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Karla Silvestre, a native of Guatemala, has more than 12 years of experience in education, language policy, and youth development. Currently Karla works in the County Executive's Office of Community Partnerships as the liaison to the Latino community in Montgomery County. Her role is to represent the County Executive in the Latino community, bring more Latino residents to the decision-making table, and connect more Latino residents to county agencies and vice versa.

Ms. Silvestre holds a Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors degree in Biology from Florida State University. She is a 2007 graduate of the Bryn Mawr College's Non-Profit Executive Leadership Institute and a 2006 participant of the United Way of South Eastern Pennsylvania's Hispanic Leadership Development Program. She has presented at numerous venues, including the 2004 Annual Conference of the National Council of La Raza, the Ethnography Forum of the University of Pennsylvania in 2000, and the conference Towards an Ethical Mayanist Archaeology at the University of British Columbia in collaboration with her husband in 2002, on topics ranging from models for alternative education, ethical archaeology, and language maintenance and revitalization of her family's indigenous language, Jakaltec Maya.

From 2002-2007 Ms. Silvestre worked for Congreso de Latinos Unidos, a nationally recognized, community-based non-profit in North Philadelphia, PA. She served as Education Manager, Program Director, and was promoted to Vice President for Children and Youth Services in 2005. In her role as Vice President she led the preventive arm for all K-12 children and youth services within the agency, creating a high-performing division defined by high school graduation, post-secondary enrollment, and competitive employment for youth in an urban Latino community. She oversaw a budget of $2.5 million dollars in federal, state, city, corporate, and foundation funding.  She managed internal systems, measured program outcomes, partnered with school districts and outside agencies, administered division finances, and fundraised actively.  She supervised a team of 75 full and part-time staff and aligned the division to better meet the educational and cultural needs of youth in the community.

As Education Manager and Program Director of Congreso's Boys Center she designed the education department of a start-up alternative education program for truant and adjudicated boys and then managed a staff of 20 social service professionals, delivering high quality services in a holistic program for adjudicated youth.

From 2000-2002, she worked as a language planning consultant for Guatemala's Ministry of Education in the development of a national language policy regarding bilingual education for the 25 Mayan language groups in the country. Working with a multidisciplinary team, she designed a national language plan that integrated cultural and linguistic goal-based components into the national curriculum.  She simultaneously organized the First Hemispheric Conference on Indigenous Education, subsequently authoring and editing the Conference's proceedings for publication.

Additionally, Ms. Silvestre has worked in program development and volunteer coordination at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn-Merck Collaborative for the Enhancement of Science Education as Volunteer Coordinator and Assistant Program Coordinator; as a team leader and migrant worker liaison for the Center for Civic Education at Florida State University; and as a marine biologist.

Karla Silvestre lives in Silver Spring with her husband Greg Borgstede, an archeologist, and their two daughters Ana and Sonia.  In her free time she enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking and camping.

Reverend Tim Warner comes to the work of the Office of Community Partnerships Liaison for the African American and Faith Communities after having served as Sr. Pastor of the Community of Faith Methodist Church of Clarksburg, MD. Tim served for seven prior years as the Associate Council Director for Community and Economic Development in the Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, and led the churches in ministries of community and economic development, while managing the Conference's relationship with the Zimbabwe Episcopal Area.

Tim received his M. Div. from Wesley Theological Seminary with a concentration in Urban Ministry. He is trained as a bacterial geneticist, and enjoyed a productive career in pharmaceutical research and development, having held various scientific and executive leadership positions for over 18 years before committing to full-time ministry.

What does Tim say about the County?
When I heard Ike Leggett talk about "...building a bigger table in Montgomery County," I thought, " Isn't that the work of the ministry?" As communities of faith of all kinds continue to lead in doing essential, critically important work with all the citizens of this County, I hope to assist them in providing a strong, cohesive and productive voice as they take their seat at the County Executive's widening table. As the African American community in Montgomery County enjoys such rich history, it still faces challenges in virtually every aspect of its life. I hope to assist both the County government and the African American community in a productive and mutually enriching dialogue that will lead to a better future for th entire County. Leveraging the power of nonprofit corporations in both communities is one among many tools I hope to employ in reaching this goal.