• 

  

  Andrew Yang

  Andrew Yang was a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and a 2021 candidate for mayor of New York City. Named by President Obama as a Presidential Ambassador of Global Entrepreneurship, he is the founder of Humanity Forward. Venture for America, and the Forward Party. Yang’s New York Times bestselling book The War on Normal People helped introduce the idea of universal basic income into the political mainstream. Yang is a graduate of Brown University, where he graduated with degrees in economics and political science, and Columbia Law School, where he was an editor of the Law Review. He lives with his family in New York.

  Andrew Yang

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  Will Hurd

  Will Hurd is currently a managing director at Allen & Company and former member of Congress, cybersecurity executive, and undercover officer in the CIA. For almost two decades he’s been involved in the most pressing national security issues challenging the country whether it was in the back-alleys of dangerous places, boardrooms of top international businesses or halls of Congress.

  After stopping terrorists, preventing Russian spies from stealing our secrets, and putting nuclear weapons proliferators out of business, Will helped build a cybersecurity company that prepared businesses for the next domain of conflict — cyberspace.

  While in Congress, Texas Monthly and Politico Magazine called Will “The Future of the GOP,” because he put good policy over good politics at a time when America was often consumed with what divides us rather than what unites us. He was able to get more legislation signed into law in three terms than most congressmen do in three decades — substantive legislation like a national strategy for Artificial Intelligence.

  Will is a native of San Antonio and earned a Computer Science degree from Texas A&M University. Additionally, he is growing the US transatlantic partnership with Europe as a trustee of the German Marshall Fund, an OpenAI board member, and most recently served as a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. He is also the author of American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done, released in March 2022. For more information, please visit www.willbhurd.com

  Will Hurd

• 

  

  Leon Panetta

  Leon Panetta co-founded the The Panetta Institute for Public Policy with his wife Sylvia in 1997 upon completion of his service as White House chief of staff in the Bill Clinton administration. He co-directed it with her until 2009, when he left to serve as CIA director and then secretary of defense under President Obama. He returned to the Institute as chairman in 2013.

  A Monterey native and Santa Clara University School of Law graduate, Secretary Panetta began his public service career in 1964 as a U.S. Army intelligence officer receiving the Army Commendation Medal. Upon discharge he went to work in Washington as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senate minority whip Tom Kuchel of California. In 1969, he was appointed director of the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, where he was responsible for ensuring equal opportunity in public education, and later he served as executive assistant to the mayor of New York City. He then returned to Monterey, where he practiced law until his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976.

  Serving his Central Coast district in Congress for sixteen years, Secretary Panetta became a respected leader on agriculture, federal budget, ocean and healthcare issues, and from 1989 to 1993 he chaired the House Budget Committee. He won passage of the Hunger Prevention Act of 1988, Medicare and Medicaid coverage of hospice care for the terminally ill, and numerous measures to protect the California coast, including creation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

  In 1993, Secretary Panetta left Congress to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget for the incoming Clinton administration. There, he was instrumental in developing the policies that led to a balanced federal budget and eventual budget surpluses. In 1994, he accepted appointment as the president’s chief of staff, and is credited with bringing order and focus to White House operations and policy making.

  Upon leaving the Clinton administration in 1997, Secretary Panetta joined with his wife Sylvia to create and co-direct The Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at California State University, Monterey Bay. Reflecting the Secretary’s ideals and personal example, the nonpartisan, not-for-profit study center seeks to attract thoughtful men and women to lives of public service and prepare them for the policy challenges of the future.

  Secretary Panetta returned to public service at the start of the Barack Obama administration as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he supervised the operation to find and bring the international terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice. Then, as secretary of defense, he led efforts to develop a new defense strategy, conduct critical counter terrorism operations, strengthen U.S. alliances, and open military service opportunities to Americans regardless of gender or sexual orientation. He chronicles his life in public service in his bestselling memoir Worthy Fights, which was published by Penguin Press in 2014.

  Over the years Secretary Panetta has served on numerous boards and commissions. He co-chaired California Forward, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, and Governor Schwarzenegger’s Council on Base Support and Retention. In 2006 he served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission seeking a new course for the war in Iraq. At present, he serves on the boards of directors for Oracle, Blue Shield of California and as co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Defense Personnel Task Force and the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Countering Violent Extremism.

  Secretary Panetta is the recipient of hundreds of awards and honors. Recent examples include the California Teachers Association’s Friends of Education Award; the Judicial Council of California’s Stanley Mosk Defender of Justice Award; the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award; the Sons of Italy Foundation’s National Education & Leadership Award; the Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Excellence in Policy; the Intelligence and National Security Alliance’s William Oliver Baker Award; the OSS Society’s William J. Donovan Award; and the National Defense Industrial Association’s Dwight D. Eisenhower Award.

  Leon Panetta

• 

  

  Michael Steele

  When elected Lt. Governor of Maryland in 2003, Michael Steele made history as the first African American elected to statewide office; and again with his subsequent chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 2009.

  The RNC broke fundraising records and won the biggest pickup of House seats since 1938. His commitment to grassroots organization and party building produced 12 governorships and the greatest share of state legislative seats since 1928.

  As Lt. Governor, his priorities included reforming the state’s Minority Business Enterprise program, improving the quality of the public education system, expanding economic development and fostering cooperation between government and faith-based organizations.

  Steele is a political analyst for MSNBC and the host of the Michael Steele Podcast.

  Author of Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda and co-author of The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis.

  Born at Andrews Air Force Base in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Steele was raised in Washington, DC. Upon graduating Johns Hopkins University, he entered the Order of St. Augustine where studied for the priesthood. He is a graduate of Georgetown Law Center, an Aspen Institute Rodel Fellow in Public Leadership and a University of Chicago Institute of Politics Fellow.

  Michael Steele

• 

  

  Farai Chideya

  Farai Chideya is creator and host of Our Body Politic, a nationally-syndicated public radio show, podcast, and insights brand that centers Black women and women of color. She’s the author of six books, and has worked for FiveThirtyEight, NPR, CNN, and ABC News, and has covered political extremists for a quarter century and every presidential election since 1996.

  Chideya was also a program officer focusing on journalism with the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression team; and spent four years as a distinguished writer in residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

  Farai Chideya

• 

  

  Danielle Allen

  Danielle Allen is a professor of public policy, politics, and ethics at Harvard University, Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, and James Bryant Conant University Professor, one of Harvard’s highest honors. She is also Founder and President of Partners In Democracy. She is a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, national voice on pandemic response, distinguished author, and mom. Danielle’s work to make the world better for young people has taken her from teaching college and leading a $60 million university division to driving change at the helm of a $6 billion foundation, writing for the Washington Post, advocating for cannabis legalization, democracy reform, and civic education, and most recently, to running for governor of Massachusetts. During the height of COVID in 2020, Danielle’s leadership in rallying coalitions and building solutions resulted in the country’s first-ever Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience; her policies were adopted in federal legislation and a Biden executive order. Danielle made history as the first Black woman ever to run for statewide office in Massachusetts. In her role as board chair for Partners In Democracy, She continues to advocate for democracy reform to create greater voice and access in our democracy, and drive progress towards a new social contract that serves and includes us all. Her many books include the widely acclaimed Our Declaration: a reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality; Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.; Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus; and Justice by Means of Democracy.

  Danielle Allen

• 

  

  Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs

  Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs holds a PhD in Sociology and Masters in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge in addition to a Bachelors in Anthropology from Stanford University. Anna’s research, writing, and talks are centered on gender and race issues in the U.S., especially as these relate to the pervasive erasure of Black women.

  Anna’s debut book, The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation is a New York Times Bestseller as well as a New York Times Editor’s Choice and an Amazon Editor’s Pick.

  Anna has published articles on topics ranging from the importance of inclusivity and feminism to addressing the unique burden Black mothers carry in the U.S. for Time Magazine, New York Magazine, The Guardian, CNN, Motherly, Blavity, Huffington Post, Darling Magazine, and For Harriet.

  Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs

• 

  

  Suketu Mehta

  Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. He has won the Whiting Writers’ Award, the O. Henry Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta’s work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Time, and Newsweek, and has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air and All Things Considered.

  Mehta is an Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University. His book about global migration, This Land is Our Land, will be published by Farrar Straus & Giroux in June 2019. He is also working on a nonfiction book about immigrants in contemporary New York, for which he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Mehta has written original screenplays for films, including New York, I Love You. Mehta was born in Calcutta and raised in Bombay and New York. He is a graduate of New York University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

  Suketu Mehta

• 

  

  Bird Runningwater

  Bird Runningwater belongs to the Cheyenne and Mescalero Apache Tribal Nations, and was raised on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. He is a Producer and Executive Producer for film and television and most recently signed a first look deal to create content with Amazon Studios. He is currently serving as a Co-Executive Producer on the TV show “Sovereign” currently in development with Ava DuVernay, Warner Brothers Television, and Array Filmworks; And, he is an Executive Producer on Erica Tremblay’s debut feature “Fancy Dance” premiering in Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. He has more projects in development with Showtime Networks and Amazon Studios. Prior to launching his producing career, Runningwater guided the Sundance Institute’s commitment to Indigenous Filmmakers for 20 years nurturing new generations of filmmakers through the Institute’s Labs and Sundance Film Festival. He also served as the head of the Institute’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work Institute-wide. Runningwater is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and co-chairs the Academy’s Indigenous Alliance. He also serves on the boards of directors of Illuminative and the Arctic Indigenous Film Fund. He was recently appointed to serve on the Library of Congress’ National Film Preservation Board, and is a past member of the Board of Jurors for the George Foster Peabody Awards. In Time Magazine’s 2019 Optimist Issue, Runningwater was listed among “12 Leaders Who Are Shaping the Next Generation of Artists''. Runningwater began his career in media 26 years ago as a Program Associate for the Media, Arts and Culture Program at the Ford Foundation in New York where he helped fund non-commercial radio, tv and film work across the US and around the world in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Russia. He is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma with degrees in Journalism and Native American Studies, and he received his Master of Public Affairs degree from the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

  Bird Runningwater

• 

  

  Gabriella Cázares-Kelly

  Gabriella Cázares-Kelly (she/her) is the Pima County Recorder, taking office in January 2021. She leads an office that oversees voter registration, early voting, and document recording for the county. She is a proud, union-dues-paying, former #RedForEd public school educator and community organizer. She is one of four women who co-founded Indivisible Tohono, a grassroots, community organization that provides opportunities for education and civic engagement for members of her tribe, the Tohono O’odham Nation. She was inspired to run for office after encountering many systemic barriers preventing people from simply getting registered to vote. She lives with her husband, Ryan, and their two children, who are now voting age. She is the first Native American to hold an elected Pima County office and one of only four Native Americans to ever hold a county-level office in Arizona. @GabriellaCKelly @PimaRecorder

  Gabriella Cázares-Kelly

• 

  

  Lilliana Mason

  Lilliana Mason is an SNF Agora Institute Associate Professor of Political Science.

  She is co-author, with Nathan P. Kalmoe, of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2022), and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (University of Chicago Press, 2018).

  She received her PhD in political psychology from Stony Brook University and her BA in politics from Princeton University. Her research on partisan identity, partisan bias, social sorting, and American social polarization has been published in journals such as American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Political Behavior, and featured in media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and National Public Radio.

  Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the Facebook Research Integrity Group, and the Democracy Fund.

  Lilliana Mason

• 

  

  Ross Morales Rocketto

  Ross Morales Rocketto is the co-founder and co-executive director of Run for Something, a piece of Democratic infrastructure designed to recruit and support the next generation of young, diverse, and progressive political leaders. To date, Run for Something has worked with more than 125,000 individuals who are interested in running for office while making over 2,000 endorsements over the last five years. RFS has helped elect more than 650 new folks across the country. Before starting Run for Something, Ross spent 20 in electoral politics having worked for candidates from school board to President. He was previously a Principal at the Smoot Tewes Group where he worked on a variety of advocacy and electoral campaigns. In 2016, Ross was an advisor with For Our Future, a multi-million dollar SuperPAC that did field and organizing work in swing states. Ross lives in Washington, DC with his partner Jess, his dog Nacho, and his cat Baby Kitty.

  Ross Morales Rocketto

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  Steven Levitsky

  Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is also Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on in Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a >New York Times Bestseller and was published in 25 languages. He has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022), and most recently, Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (with Daniel Ziblatt) (Crown Publishers, forthcoming). He and Lucan Way are currently working on a book on democratic survival across the world.

  Steven Levitsky

• 

  

  Jena Griswold

  Jena Marie Griswold is Colorado’s 39th Secretary of State. She was first elected in 2018 as the youngest elected Secretary of State in the United States. She was reelected to the office in 2022.

  Secretary Griswold grew up in a working-class family in rural Colorado and was the first person in her family to attend a four-year college and then law school. She knows first-hand how important it is for every vote to count and for every Coloradan’s voice to be heard, no matter their background.

  Since taking office, Secretary Griswold has overseen seven statewide elections, protected Coloradans Constitutional right to vote and supported the State’s business community by cutting red tape and the cost of starting a business.

  Prior to being elected Secretary of State, Griswold practiced international anti-corruption law and worked as a voter protection attorney, where she made sure Coloradans were able to participate in our democracy. Griswold also served as the Director of the Governor of Colorado’s DC Office, advocating on behalf of Colorado in D.C. Before her election to Colorado Secretary of State, Griswold ran her own small business, a legal practice in Louisville.

  Secretary Griswold holds a B.A. in Politics and Spanish Literature from Whitman College and a J.D from University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is fluent in Spanish and a graduate of Estes Park High School in Estes Park, Colorado. In 2006, Secretary Griswold was awarded the Watson Fellowship, and in 2009, the Penn Law International Human Rights Fellowship.

  Jena Griswold

• 

  

  Renée DiResta

  Renée DiResta is the Technical Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies. Renee’s work examines the spread of narratives across social and media networks, how distinct actor types leverage the information ecosystem to exert influence, and how policy, education, and design responses can be used to mitigate manipulative dynamics.

  Renée has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations. At the behest of SSCI, she led outside teams investigating both the Russia-linked Internet Research Agency’s multi-year effort to manipulate American society and elections, and the GRU influence campaign deployed alongside its hack-and-leak operations in the 2016 election. Renée is an Ideas contributor at Wired and The Atlantic, an Emerson Fellow, a 2019 Truman National Security Project fellow, a 2019 Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust, a 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar, and a Council on Foreign Relations term member.

  Renée DiResta

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  Dr. Kate Starbird

  Dr. Kate Starbird, a University of Washington Human Centered Design & Engineering associate professor, is the director of UW’s Center for an Informed Public, which formed in 2019 around a shared mission of resisting strategic misinformation, promoting an informed society, and strengthening democratic discourse. Starbird’s research is situated within human-computer interaction (HCI) and the emerging field of crisis informatics — the study of how information-communication technologies (ICTs) are used during crisis events. Her research examines how people use social media to seek, share, and make sense of information after natural disasters (such as earthquakes and hurricanes) and man-made crisis events (such as acts of terrorism and mass shooting events). More recently, her work has shifted to focus on the spread of disinformation in this context. Starbird’s research touches on broader questions about the intersection of technology and society — including the vast potential for online social platforms to empower people to work together to solve problems, as well as salient concerns related to abuse and manipulation of and through these platforms and the consequent erosion of trust in information.

  Dr. Kate Starbird

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  Rebecca Kern

  Rebecca Kern is a tech policy reporter for POLITICO. She covers the battles over online speech, misinformation and content moderation along with more general technology policy on Capitol Hill.

  Rebecca came to POLITICO from Bloomberg Government, where she covered privacy, tech firms’ liability shield, cybersecurity and telecommunications. She also helped launch Bloomberg Government’s Tech and Cyber Briefing newsletter. She previously covered energy policy for Bloomberg Industry Group — tracking the policy and personality shifts between energy secretaries Ernest Moniz and Rick Perry — and reported on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the Obama and Trump administrations. Her reporting also took her to Puerto Rico to cover the recovery of the electric grid and the potential for renewables after Hurricane Maria — where she unexpectedly met Ricky Martin.

  Throughout her reporting career, Rebecca also covered consumer product safety, highway safety, health care and education with work published in outlets including U.S. News and World Report, USA Today and The Washington Post. She graduated from American University with a journalism degree.

  A Southerner at heart, Rebecca hails from a long line of Tennesseans. While she may have lost her Southern twang over the years she’s lived in D.C., she dares anyone to test her Dolly Parton knowledge.

  Rebecca Kern

• 

  

  Mutale Nkonde

  Mutale Nkonde is an Emmy winning producer and the founder and leader of AI for the People. AI for the People is a high impact communications firm that uses art, film and culture to help people imagine a world in which AI technology does not track, misinform or harm Black communities.

  She started AI for People in 2019 after co-authoring a report, Advancing Racial Literacy in Tech, which called on the tech sector to pay closer attention to the impact predictive algorithms have on Black communities. In 2019, Nkonde worked as an AI Policy advisor and led a team that introduced the Algorithmic Accountability Act, the DEEP FAKES Accountability Act, and the No Biometric Barriers to Housing Act (reintroduced in 2022) to the US House of Representatives.

  The inability for these bills to move out of committee convinced her of the need to increase policymaker understanding about the racial justice implications of tech. She then turned back to her work as a television producer to create media content that outlined these issues.

  Nkonde is a member of the TikTok Content Moderation Board, a fellow at Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab, and has formerly held fellowships at the Berkman Klein Center of Internet and Society at Harvard and the Institute of Advanced Study at Notre Dame. She is currently a Masters Candidate at Columbia University in New York where her research focuses on race and technology.

  She started her career as a journalist. Between 2000 and 2008, she produced films about science and technology for the BBC, CNN and ABC. In 2008, she volunteered for Barack Obama’s first campaign and there met people who asked her to work opposite Google’s External Affairs team as they invested in a number of non profits offering coding education to Black children in New York City, where her interest in race and tech was born.

  Mutale Nkonde

• 

  

  Eric K. Ward

  Eric K. Ward, a nationally-recognized expert on the relationship between authoritarian movements, hate violence, and preserving inclusive democracy, is the recipient of the 2021 Civil Courage Prize — the first American in the award’s 21-year history. In his 30+ year civil rights career, Eric has worked with community groups, government and business leaders, human rights advocates, and philanthropy as an organizer, director, program officer, consultant, and board member. Eric’s widely quoted writings and speeches are credited with key narrative shifts. He currently serves as Executive Vice President of Race Forward, Senior Adviser to Western States Center, a member of the President’s Leadership Council for the Search for Common Good, Chair of The Proteus Fund, and Advisor to the Bridge Entertainment Labs.

  Eric K. Ward

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  Eileen Hershenov

  As Senior Vice President, Democracy Initiatives, Eileen Hershenov develops thought leadership and strategies for ADL’s fight against authoritarianism and illiberalism in addition to leading ADL’s emerging litigation capacity. She also oversees ADL’s civil rights team, cross-organizational work on tech law and policy, the Civil Society fellowship (a partnership between ADL and the Aspen Institute), and the library and archives work. Eileen joined ADL in 2018 after serving as General Counsel for several of the nation’s leading mission-driven not-forprofits. Directly prior to coming to the ADL, she served as GC and head of public policy for the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, a top five global internet site. Prior to that, she was GC at Consumer Reports and before that, GC at the Open Society Foundations. Eileen began her legal career clerking for federal district court Judge Jack B. Weinstein, litigated as an attorney with the ACLU, and then spent three years as a litigation associate at the law firm Morrison & Foerster, where among other things, she brought cases supporting racial justice and the rights of women, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community, and also litigated and lobbied in the intersection of civil rights and national security. Eileen began her professional career as an organizer for the New York Public Interest Research Group. Eileen earned a BA from Yale College and a JD from Yale Law School.

  Eileen Hershenov

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  Christine Chen

  Christine Chen is a co-Founder and Executive Director of Asian Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote), one of the most trusted national, nonpartisan organizations. APIAVote’s mission is to work with local and state community based organizations (CBOs) to mobilize Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities in electoral and civic engagement. Since 2007, APIAVote has been building power in AAPI communities by investing in their capacity and infrastructure to mobilize voters. This investment, as well as, proactively training and resourcing community leaders across the country, paid off in the 2020 election cycle and Census.

  Under Chen’s leadership, APIAVote strengthened and expanded APIAVote’s partners into 28 states and made two historical milestones; attracted, then candidate Joe Biden to speak directly to the AAPI electorate, a first in history for a Presidential nominee, and second, contributed to the groundwork that led to the highest AAPI voter turnout in history.

  Chen has been a champion for the empowerment of AAPI communities from the start of her career. Moving to Washington, DC, from Ohio, she took on organizing and leadership roles at the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA), and started a consulting firm, Strategic Alliances USA which was built on her broad and deep pool of relationships and skills in the AAPI community and in government. Chen’s firm included clients such as the Linsanity documentary, Comcast, and USDA to coordinate their outreach to Hmong farmers in Arkansas.

  While serving as Executive Director of OCA National from 2001 to 2006, Chen served as a member of the executive committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, founding member of APIA Scholars, and served on numerous boards including the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans and Demos Board of Trustees. She was a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics during the 2022 spring semester. She currently serves on the Kennedy Center Community Advisory Board and the Center for Asian American Media. She is also a member of the Election Assistance and Policy (EAP) Standing Committee at the American Political Science Association.

  Christine Chen

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  Steve Phillips

  Steve Phillips is a national political leader, bestselling author, and columnist. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and the newly released national bestselling book How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and EndingWhite Supremacy for Good.

  He is a columnist for The Guardian and The Nation, and an opinion contributor to The New York Times. He is also the host of Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips, a color-conscious podcast on politics. He is the founder of Democracy in Color, a political media organization dedicated to race, politics and the multicultural progressive New American Majority.

  Phillips is a graduate of Stanford University and University of California College of the Law, San Francisco and practiced civil rights and employment law for many years.

  Follow @StevePtweets on Twitter to keep up with his musings on race, politics, sports, and more.

  Steve Phillips

• 

  

  Michael Li

  Michael Li serves as senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, where his work focuses on redistricting, voting rights, and elections. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Li practiced law at Baker Botts L.L.P. in Dallas for ten years. He was the author of a widely cited blog on redistricting and election law issues that the New York Times called “indispensable.” He is a regular writer and commentator on election law issues, appearing on PBS Newshour, MSNBC, and NPR, and in print in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Roll Call, Vox, National Journal, Texas Tribune, Dallas Morning News, and San Antonio Express-News, among others.

  In addition to his election law work, Li previously served as executive director of Be One Texas, a donor alliance that oversaw strategic and targeted investments in nonprofit organizations working to increase voter participation and engagement in historically disadvantaged African American and Hispanic communities in Texas.

  Li received his JD with honors from Tulane Law School and an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Texas at Austin.

  Michael Li

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  Ayad Akhtar

  Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

  Akhtar is the author of Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.), which The Washington Post called “a tour de force” and The New York Times called “a beautiful novel…that had echoes of The Great Gatsby and that circles, with pointed intellect, the possibilities and limitations of American life.” His first novel, American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), was published in over 20 languages.

  As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations).

  Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient of the Steinberg Playwrighting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as well as fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at New York Theatre Workshop, and PEN America, where he serves as President. In 2021, Akhtar was named the New York State Author, succeeding Colson Whitehead, by the New York State Writers Institute.

  Ayad Akhtar

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  Susan Neiman

  Susan Neiman is an American philosopher, author, and the director of the Einstein Forum in Germany. Born in Atlanta, Neiman studied philosophy at Harvard and the Free University of Berlin. Her previous works, translated into many languages, include Slow Fire, The Unity of Reason, Moral Clarity, Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil.

  Among other honors, Neiman has received the International Spinoza Prize and the PEN American Center award for a first work of nonfiction. She has given the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh and the Tanner Lectures in the Humanities in Britain and the U.S. Neiman is a member of the American Philosophical Society as well as the Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Thomas Mann House.

  Her book Left is Not Woke will be released by Polity Press on March 28, 2023. Thomas Chatterton Williams calls it “an urgent and powerful intervention into one of the most pressing struggles of our time.” Ivan Krastev comments: “Philosophy, for Susan Neiman, is a martial art. Her sharp argument will stir a much-needed debate.”

  https://www.susan-neiman.com/en/

  Susan Neiman

• 

  

  Jeremy Peters

  Jeremy W. Peters is a reporter for The New York Times who covers the media and its intersection with politics, culture and law.

  He has covered a wide variety of beats for The Times for nearly two decades, including three presidential campaigns, Congress, the conservative movement, financial news and New York politics. He is the author of Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted. He is also an MSNBC contributor.

  Jeremy Peters

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  Eva McKend

  Eva McKend joined CNN’s Washington D.C. bureau in September 2021 as a National Politics Reporter. She previously served as an on-air Congressional Correspondent, reporting for Spectrum’s 24-hour news stations across the country from the nation’s capital.

  She is known in Washington for her pointed questions to people in leadership, getting then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to confirm on the record that climate change is being exacerbated by humans and that he wasn’t going to be an “impartial juror” in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Her question to McConnell on reparations for slavery elicited his most robust rejection of the concept to date and drove the news cycle nationwide for several days.

  Eva’s series of reports on Black hemp farmers following the crop’s legalization in the 2018 Farm Bill earned her a first-place prize in enterprise and investigative broadcast reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists in Louisville. She was also nominated for an Ohio Valley Regional Emmy for the work.

  Eva is a regular guest on the WAMU/NPR program 1A, distributed to more than 400 public radio stations across the U.S. She also is regularly asked to join PBS’ Washington Week panel.

  From 2015-18, she served as an anchor at WCAX-TV, the market-leading CBS affiliate in Vermont where she was also known for her strong interviews with elected officials. She was named a Rising Star by Vermont Business Magazine in 2017.

  Before Vermont, Eva worked as a reporter for Spectrum News Hudson Valley from 2012-14. During her time in the region, she covered many stories as the Sullivan County reporter that received national and international attention including the murder trial of Paul Novak and the malfeasance of a village mayor, securing surveillance video from his high profile arrest via FOIA request, footage that went on to go viral. Her ongoing coverage of an illegal demolition in Monticello was recognized by the New York State Associated Press for Best Continuing Coverage. The AP also gave her a nod for General Excellence in Individual Reporting.

  Prior to this work, she spent a summer as a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for Springfield, Mo., CBS affiliate KOLR/KOZL.

  Eva is a graduate of Swarthmore College and earned her master’s degree in broadcast and digital journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University through the Turner Diversity Fellowship. She is a proud member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

  Eva McKend

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  Tamara Keith

  Tamara Keith has been a White House correspondent for NPR since 2014 and co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast, the top political news podcast in America. In that time, she has chronicled the final years of the Obama administration, covered Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for president from start to finish and thrown herself into documenting the Trump administration, from policy made by tweet to the president’s COVID diagnosis and the insurrection. In the final year of the Trump administration and the first year of the Biden administration, she focused her reporting on the White House response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  In 2018, Keith was elected to serve on the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association and is the association’s president through July 15, 2023. In that role she leads the press corps in its interactions with the White House, advocating for press conferences and coordinating travel. Her mission for the year of her presidency is to demystify the White House beat for the public, in an effort to help restore trust in the press, an essential pillar of American democracy.

  Previously Keith covered congress for NPR with an emphasis on House Republicans, the budget, taxes and the fiscal fights that dominated at the time.

  Keith joined NPR in 2009 as a Business Reporter. In that role, she reported on topics spanning the business world, from covering the debt downgrade and debt ceiling crisis to the latest in policy debates, legal issues and technology trends. In early 2010, she was on the ground in Haiti covering the aftermath of the country’s disastrous earthquake, and later she covered the oil spill in the Gulf. In 2011, Keith conceived of and reported "The Road Back To Work," a year-long series featuring the audio diaries of six people in St. Louis who began the year unemployed and searching for work.

  Keith has deep roots in public radio and got her start in news by writing and voicing essays for NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday as a teenager. While in college, she launched her career at NPR Member station KQED’s California Report, where she covered agriculture, the environment, economic issues and state politics. She covered the 2004 presidential election for NPR Member station WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, and opened the state capital bureau for NPR Member station KPCC to cover then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  In 2001, Keith began working on B-Side Radio, an hour-long public radio show and podcast that she co-founded, produced, hosted, edited and distributed for nine years, back before podcasts were cool.

  Keith earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree at the UCB Graduate School of Journalism. Keith is also a member of the Bad News Babes, a media softball team that once a year competes against female members of Congress in the Congressional Women’s Softball game. She serves on advisory boards for the University of California Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and the UC Berkeley J-School.

  Tamara Keith

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