Pete Subkoviak was the Director of Guaranteed Income and Economic Mobility at the Cook County Bureau of Economic Development, where he lead the nation’s largest publicly funded guaranteed income pilot. Prior to his position at Cook County, Pete was the Senior Policy Advisor on the Toni Preckwinkle for Mayor campaign in 2019; he also served as an implementation consultant for Starbucks’ ground-breaking health insurance plan for transgender employees.
A strong advocate for the rights and inherent value of working people, Pete is proud of his service to SEIU 775 in Seattle, where he directed a successful campaign to design and pass into law the WA Cares Fund. The bi-partisan legislation created the nation’s first public benefit for long-term care needs, which will cover Washington state’s worker and retiree populations beginning in 2025.
Pete earned a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing in health economics and insurance systems. During graduate school, he spent a summer working for the White House Domestic Policy Council and was also named a national Point Foundation scholarship recipient. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Prior to graduate school, Pete worked for health and LGBTQ advocacy organizations in Chicago, where he co-created TransLife Care, a pioneering housing and employment program for transgender individuals. Pete was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, and lives in Chicago, Illinois.
As an Aspen Institute Financial Security Program Policy Fellow, Pete leads a new initiative that looks at ways the federal government can help support direct cash work at the state and local levels, with possible solutions including basic income pilots, improved access to safety net programs like TANF, disaster relief payments to residents, and beyond.