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  Busy Philipps

  Busy Philipps is a New York Times Bestselling author, actor, activist, writer and previous late-night talk show host of Busy Tonight. Philipps served as executive producer on the show, alongside Tina Fey. In 2018, Philipps released a collection of humorous autobiographical essays in her book This Will Only Hurt a Little that was immediately a New York Times Bestseller the first week. The book offers unfiltered and candid stories and was published by Simon and Schuster’s Touchstone division.

  Currently, Philipps stars in the hit comedy series Girls5eva opposite Sara Bareilles, which Netflix recently picked up for a third season. Produced by Tina Fey, the acclaimed series centers on a one-hit wonder girl group from the ’90s who try for another chance at pop stardom. Recently she also appeared in a scene-stealing recurring turn in three episodes of Freeform’s hit comedy series Single Drunk Female. In 2020, Philipps launched her podcast called Busy Philipps is Doing Her Best, with her creative partner, Caissie St. Onge, and Shantira Jackson, both of whom wrote on Busy Tonight. Philipps and St. Onge now co-host the show together. The show features conversations between the duo and their guests, who reflect on times in their lives when a setback led to better opportunities.

  On the big screen, Philipps can next be seen in Paramount’s feature adaptation of the Broadway hit Mean Girls: The Musical, where she will step into the iconic role of “Mrs. George,” alongside Renee Rapp, Tina Fey and Jenna Fischer. She can also be seen in the STX romantic comedy, I Feel Pretty, opposite Amy Schumer and Michelle Williams, and directed by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein. She also appeared in Joel Edgerton’s thriller The Gift, alongside Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall. Additional film credits include: Kat Coiro’s A Case of You opposite Justin Long, Peter Dinklage and Sam Rockwell; Douglas McGrath’s, I Don’t Know How She Does It alongside Sarah Jessica Parker; Ken Kwapis’s He’s Just Not That Into You & Paul Weiland’s Made of Honor with Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan. On television, Philipps was seen in HBO’s Vice Principals, an 18-episode comedy series from Eastbound & Down creators Danny McBride and Jody Hill. Philipps also starred opposite Courteney Cox on the popular TBS comedy Cougar Town where she played ‘Laurie Keller’ for six seasons. Philipps was born in Oak Park, Illinois and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona. Philipps currently resides in New York City with her two daughters.

  Busy Philipps

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  JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist

  JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist joined the ACLU of Alabama in 2015, before being selected as the organization’s first Black woman to serve as executive director in August of 2020. While centering statewide initiatives in Alabama around voting rights, criminal legal reform, and gender justice, JaTaune has also been instrumental in developing nationwide priorities as the visionary and co-creator of the ACLU’s Southern Collective, focused on collaboration and power building among the ACLU’s 12 affiliates based in the South.

  JaTaune received her bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Alabama-Birmingham and earned her master’s degree in organizational communication from Northwestern University. Prior to relocating to Montgomery in 2015, she worked as the Manager of Engagement for a behavioral health agency in Chicago’s North Lawndale community.

  An advocate for community building, leadership development, and equity-focused initiatives, she is a TEDx speaker; a founding Board member of the state civic engagement table, Alabama Forward, and selected as one of the 100 individuals across the nation for the inaugural 2023 Obama Leaders Program.

  JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist

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  Cameron Kasky

  Cameron Kasky burst into the public eye in 2018 as the co-founder of March For Lives, which quickly became one of the largest and most visible protest movements in our nation's history. A New York Times Bestselling Author, in 2018 Kasky was a TIME 100 honoree and topped Fast Company’s list of their 100Most Creative People. He has since become a singular voice in our nation’s discussions on gun control, mental health and Gen-Z’s relationships with activism and the modern political climate. Cameron has appeared across multiple media outlets, including as a frequent contributor for CNN, as well as on BBC, NPR, Fox News and The Mehdi Hasan Show. He has been profiled by publications including The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, and The New York Times.

  A talented actor and creator, Cameron recently guest starred as himself in an episode of The Other Two and wrapped shooting the role of “Denny” in The Room Returns. Cameron also helped produce the viral “Birds Aren’t Real” conspiracy theory parody movement and recently EP’d the Black Eyed Peas video for “The Love” with Jennifer Hudson.

  Cameron Kasky

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  Amanda Litman

  Amanda Litman is the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, which recruits and supports young, diverse progressives running for local office — since 2017, they’ve identified nearly 130,000 young people across the country who want to run. She's also the author of the 2017 book, Run for Something: A Real Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself.

  Before launching Run for Something, Amanda worked on a number of campaigns, including Hillary for America in 2016, Charlie Crist for governor in 2014, and Obama for America in 2012. Amanda graduated from Northwestern University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

  Amanda Litman

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  Victor Shi

  Victor Shi is a Gen Z speaker, writer, and organizer. He currently hosts the daily show On the Move with Victor Shi and co-hosts iGen Politics with Jill Wine-Banks. He also serves as Strategy Director for Voters of Tomorrow, is a writer for Resolute Square, and is a rising senior at UCLA. Previously, Victor was elected as the youngest delegate for Joe Biden, organized on presidential, state, and local campaigns, and interned at the DNC and the White House. Victor has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, PBS and has been published by CNN, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and more. Victor is a Chicago native.

  Victor Shi

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  Jacqueline Ayers

  Jacqueline Ayers is senior vice president of policy, organizing, and campaigns at Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). She leads the strategic direction of the federation’s legislative affairs, global advocacy, and federal and state policy teams.

  She previously served as legislative director for the National Urban League and was a legislative aide in the U.S. House of Representatives covering health, education, and judiciary issues. Jacqueline began her career as the associate legislative director for the ACLU of Indiana.

  She has a BA in mass communication and government from Western Kentucky University and a JD from the Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis. She is licensed to practice law in the state of Indiana. In 2016, Jacqueline completed the first cohort of the Rockwood Fellowship for Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice.

  Jacqueline Ayers

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  Nabeela Syed

  Nabeela Syed is the State Representative for the 51st District in the Illinois State House of Representatives. As a Palatine native, Nabeela has been an advocate for the issues most important to her constituents, including prescription drug affordability, gun safety, and supporting public education. She’s passed several bills as a first-term legislator that target price gouging by pharmaceutical manufacturers, support people with disabilities, expand access to the ballot box, and more.

  From knocking on doors to help elect Democrats in Schaumburg and Palatine to organizing Asian American voters to flip Senate seats in Georgia, Nabeela has worked to advance Democratic causes on both a local and national scale.

  Professionally, Nabeela has worked with a variety of organizations, including EMILY’s List, to raise money to elect Democrats to Congress. Before getting elected, Nabeela worked for a non-profit in digital strategy supporting a variety of their civic engagement efforts including voter mobilization, ending sexual assault on college campuses, and promoting gender equity.

  Nabeela Syed

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  John Della Volpe

  John Della Volpe is the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, and the author of Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America (St. Martin’s Press, January 2022). The Washington Post referred to John as one of the world’s leading authorities on global sentiment, opinion, and influence, especially among young Americans and in the age of digital and social media.

  While John’s research focus at the IOP is exclusively young Americans, he often collaborates with other HKS centers including the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. In 2008, John received an Eisenhower Fellowship for which he traveled extensively throughout China, Hong Kong, and Korea (including a supervised day in North Korea) studying Millennials; in 2011, he was appointed to the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission on Media.

  John is also founder of SocialSphere, a Cambridge based public opinion and analytics company. He serves on the Board of Trustees of iCatholic Media, the Ad Club of Boston, and is a member of the Global Alumni Council for Eisenhower Fellowships. John appears regularly on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and his insights on the Millennial generation are found in national media outlets in the U.S. and abroad, including the Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

  John Della Volpe

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  Manuel Pastor

  Dr. Manuel Pastor is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He currently directs the Equity Research Institute at USC. Pastor holds an economics PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the inaugural holder of the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC.

  Pastor’s research has generally focused on issues of the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities – and the social movements seeking to change those realities.

  Manuel Pastor

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  Katherine Cramer

  Katherine Cramer is Natalie C. Holton Chair of Letters & Science and Virginia Sapiro Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is known for her innovative approach to the study of public opinion, in which she uses methods such as inviting herself into the conversations of groups of people to listen to the way they understand public affairs. Her award-winning book, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, brought to light rural resentment toward cities and its implications for contemporary politics (University of Chicago Press, 2016). She currently co-chairs the American Academy of Arts and Science’s Commission on Reimagining the Economy, and is one of the founders of the Local Voices Network, a human-tech network for constructive communication operated by Cortico. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters.

  Katherine Cramer

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  Christina Baal-Owens

  Christina brings nearly two decades of experience in electoral and legislative campaigns, advocacy, government, and non-profit management. A social worker by trade who started her career in the labor and immigrants’ rights movements, she views social change work through the lens of the direct impact and accessibility of enacted policies on communities.

  Christina first developed a passion for making voting accessible to marginalized communities as Director of Civic Engagement at the New York Immigration Coalition where she ran one of the largest voter registration programs for newly naturalized immigrants in the country and led a statewide immigrant voter table. Following her time at NYIC, Christina served in the political departments of two major labor unions, RWDSU where she was Deputy Political Director and 32BJ SEIU, where she was the State Legislative Coordinator. Directly prior to coming on to Public Wise, she was the Assistant Comptroller for Community Affairs at the NYS Comptroller’s office.

  Christina also brings a wealth of experience running campaigns and IEs at the city, state, and federal levels. Most notably, she was the NYS Organizing Director for Hillary for America in 2016 where she ran a program that generated voter contacts in all 50 states.

  Christina Baal-Owens

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  Geraldo Cadava

  Geraldo L. Cadava is a historian of the United States and Latin America. He focuses on Latinos in the United States and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Originally from Tucson, Arizona, he came to Northwestern after finishing degrees at Yale University (PhD, 2008) and Dartmouth College (BA, 2000).

  He is the author of two books. Most recently, he wrote The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of An American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump, published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2020. His first book was Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland, published by Harvard University Press in 2013.

  Other writing has appeared in The Journal of American History, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and elsewhere. You can learn more about his public-facing writing and media appearances on his website: www.geraldocadava.com.

  Cadava teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Latino History, the American West, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, migration to and from Latin America, and other topics in U.S. History, including Watergate, the musical Hamilton, and the 2016 and 2020 elections. He is also the Director of the Latina and Latino Studies Program.

  Geraldo Cadava

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  Chuck Rocha

  Chuck Rocha is one of the nation’s most experienced Democratic operatives. In 2023, his firm, Solidarity Strategies, was named Creative Agency of the Year by Campaign & Elections. Chuck was also named to Politico’s 2022 Recast Power List which honors the top 40 most influential people on race and politics and awarded General Consultant of the year by Gain Power’s 2022 Powerful Idea Awards. He has earned scores of awards for his advocacy as well as his firm’s hard hitting creative in mail, TV and digital. Chuck is seen as one of the most notable, consistent forces working to push the Democratic Party to be more inclusive. Chuck Rocha began his political career in the woods of East Texas at United Rubber Workers Local 746. By 22, Chuck had become the youngest officer of the 1,200 person local. At 29, he was hired to be the youngest, first person of color and last rank-and-file National Political director of the United Steelworkers of America. Chuck is credited for building out one of the top national labor political departments in the country. In 2010, Chuck left the USW to create Solidarity Strategies, a full-service nonprofit and political consulting firm. Solidarity was built on the idea of diversity, inclusion and mentorship opportunities for the next generation of minority professionals. In 12 years, Solidarity has employed over 100 young people of color and has become one of the most successful minority-owned political consulting firms in the nation. Chuck has worked on several presidential, Congressional and gubernatorial races through the years, including both of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. He is one of only a handful of people of color to help run a presidential campaign and he accomplished all of this despite never attending college, having a criminal record and being a single father at 20 years old. Chuck is a preeminent Latino vote expert, a New York Times op-ed contributor and the author of his debut memoir, Tío Bernie, which provides an inside look at the strategy behind the historic Latino outreach operation he pioneered on the Bernie 2020 campaign. Chuck is an Advisory Board Member of Leaders of Color, which recruits Black and Brown leaders to serve in public office. He also serves on the Florida Fishing Guides Association Trust, the National Wildlife Federation Board and is the founder of Nuestro PAC, a partisan Super PAC that aims to educate and mobilize Latinos in key electoral States. Chuck often says his biggest accomplishments are his twin grandsons, Wyatt and Rowan.

  Chuck Rocha

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  Madi Bolanos

  Madi Bolanos is a co-host for the California Report, a daily radio show from KQED that covers California culture and politics. Before joining KQED, Madi reported on the effects of the pandemic on low-income Latinx communities in the San Joaquin Valley.

  Madi has a bachelors degree in Journalism from San Francisco State University.

  Madi Bolanos

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  David Pepper

  David Pepper is a lawyer, writer, democracy activist, former elected official, and adjunct professor, and served as the Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party between 2015 and 2021.

  His recent non-fiction works—Laboratories of Autocracy (2021) and Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual (2023)—dissect the attack on democracy taking place in states like Ohio, and guide everyday citizens on steps they can take to lift democracy. Pepper is a regular guest on national television, podcasts, and radio shows—as well as a speaker around the country—advocating for steps to strengthen democracy at the state and national level.

  Born and raised in Cincinnati, David is a fifth-generation Cincinnatian. David earned his B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa, and later earned his J.D. from Yale Law School.

  David served on Cincinnati City Council from 2001-2005, then on the Hamilton County Commission from 2007-2010, including as its president in 2009-2010. David was the Democratic candidate for Ohio Auditor in 2010 and Ohio Attorney General in 2014. He was elected chair of the Ohio Democratic Party in December 2014. In that role, he was engaged in numerous fights and extensive litigation over voter suppression and election laws in the Buckeye State, as well as reforms seeking to enhance voting and end gerrymandering.

  In 1999, David clerked for the Honorable Nathaniel Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. After 2000, David also worked in the Cincinnati offices of major law firms Squire Sanders and Blank Rome, focusing his practice on commercial and business litigation, and appellate litigation. David also teaches election and voting rights law as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

  Between his undergraduate and law school years, David spent three years doing international work in St. Petersburg, Russia. Based out of the Center for Strategic and International Studies—a Washington D.C. think tank—he served as a research intern for Zbigniew Brzezinski for part of 1993, followed by several years as the assistant director of a project providing technical assistance to the City of St. Petersburg as it transitioned to a market economy.

  Pepper has also written four novels that bridge real-world politics and fiction—including A Simple Choice (Putnam, June 2022). His first novel, The People’s House, earned praise for having “predicted the Russia scandal.” The Wall Street Journal named Pepper “one of the best political-thriller writers on the scene.”

  Pepper just celebrated his 10th anniversary with his wife Alana. They have two children—Jack (9) and Charlie (6).

  Pepper has always been a cheerleader for his hometown. So much so that in law school, he was named “Most Likely to be President…of the Cincinnati Board of Tourism.” It was in that spirit that he made his decision to first run for office in 2000, working to give back to the community that anchored his upbringing.

  Pepper also paints in his spare time.

  David Pepper

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  Anne Applebaum

  Anne Applebaum is a journalist, a prize-winning historian, astaff writer for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she co-leads a project on 21st century disinformation and co-teaches a course on democracy. Her books include Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956; and Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. Her most recent book is the New York Times bestseller, Twilight of Democracy, an essay on democracy and authoritarianism. She was a Washington Post columnist for fifteen years and a member of the editorial board; she has also been the deputy editor of the Spectator and a columnist for several British newspapers. Her writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, among many other publications.

  Anne Applebaum

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  Henry Olsen

  Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was the Thomas W. Smith distinguished scholar in residence at Arizona State University for the winter/spring 2023 semester. Olsen began his career as a political consultant at the California firm of Hoffenblum-Mollrich. After three years working for the California Assembly Republican Caucus, he returned to school to become a lawyer. Following law school he clerked for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs on the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and as an associate in the Philadelphia office of Dechert, Price & Rhoads. He then joined the think tank world where he spent the next eighteen years as an executive at a variety of institutions, serving as the President of the Commonwealth Foundation, a Vice President at the Manhattan Institute, and as Vice President and Director, National Research Initiative, at the American Enterprise Institute. He left AEI in 2013 to pursue a career in political analysis and writing at EPPC. During that time his work has appeared in variety of leading publications in America and the United Kingdom. He is the author or co-author of two books, The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism and (with Dante J. Scala) The Four Faces of the Republican Party. His biennial election predictions have been widely praised for the uncanny accuracy, and he is a frequent guest on television and radio programs. Olsen regularly speaks about American political trends and global populism in the United State, Europe, and Australia.

  Henry Olsen

A part of the Newmark Civic Life Series of Recanati-Kaplan Talks