Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is a political philosopher and public policy expert, who focuses on democracy innovation, public health and health equity, justice reform, education, and political economy. She also directs the Safra Center’s Democratic Knowledge Project, a K-16 civic education provider. Her books include Our Declaration: a reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality, Cuz: an American Tragedy, and Talking to Strangers: anxieties of citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. She has chaired numerous commission processes and is a lead author on influential policy roadmaps, including Pursuing Excellence on a Foundation of Inclusion; Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience; Pandemic Resilience: Getting It Done; Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21^st Century ; and the forthcoming Educating for American Democracy: Excellence in History and Civics for All Learners K-12. She was for many years a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, and writes for the Atlantic.

David Becker is the Executive Director and Founder of the non-profit Center for Election Innovation & Research, leading CEIR’s successful efforts to help election officials of both parties, all around the country, ensure that all eligible voters can vote conveniently in a system with maximum integrity. As one of the foremost elections experts in the country, with over two decades of experience, David is an expert on all aspects of election administration, including election cybersecurity, disinformation, foreign interference, long lines and other issues with in-person voting, mail and early voting, and voter registration.

Prior to founding CEIR, David was Director of the elections program at The Pew Charitable Trusts. As the lead for Pew’s analysis and advocacy on elections issues, David spearheaded development of the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which to date has helped a bipartisan group of thirty states update over 10 million out-of-date voter records, and helped those states register tens of millions of new eligible voters.

Before joining Pew, David served for seven years as a senior trial attorney in the Voting Section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, overseeing voting rights enforcement in several states, including California and Georgia, and served as lead counsel on major voting rights litigation, including the case of Georgia v. Ashcroft, ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

David serves as CBS’ election law expert, and his many appearances in the media include The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, PBS NewsHour, and NPR, and is frequently published on election issues, including by the Stanford Social Innovation Review and The Washington Post.

David received both his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a two-time champion on Jeopardy! and a winner on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Jocelyn Benson is Michigan’s 43rd Secretary of State. In this role she is focused on ensuring elections are secure and accessible, and dramatically improving customer experiences for all who interact with our offices.

Benson is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process, the first major book on the role of the secretary of state in enforcing election and campaign finance laws. She is also the Chair of Michigan’s Task Force on Women in Sports, created by Governor Whitmer in 2019 to advance opportunities for women in Michigan as athletes and sports leaders.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and expert on civil rights law, education law and election law, Benson served as dean of Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. When she was appointed dean at age 36, she became the youngest woman in U.S. history to lead a top-100, accredited law school. She continues to serve as vice chair of the advisory board for the Levin Center at Wayne Law, which she founded with former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin. Previously, Benson was an associate professor and associate director of Wayne Law’s Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights.

Prior to her election, she served as CEO of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE), a national nonprofit organization using the unifying power of sports to improve race relations.

Benson is co-founder and former president of Military Spouses of Michigan, a network dedicated to providing support and services to military spouses and their children.

In 2015, she became one of the youngest women in history to be inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.

Ashley Nicole Black is a writer, actress, comedian, and activist. Her work includes starring in and writing the first all-Black female sketch series, “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” on HBO and an Emmy-winning run as a writer on “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” where she also served as an on-air correspondent. Black earned a degree from UC Santa Cruz and a master’s in performance studies from Northwestern where she also worked toward a PhD before joining the legendary improv program at The Second City. Ashley grew up just outside of Los Angeles, where she currently resides.

Selected by President Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco is the first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity characterizes his four collections of poetry: How To Love a Country, City of a Hundred Fires, which received the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press; Directions to The Beach of the Dead, recipient of the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center; and Looking for The Gulf Motel, recipient of the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award. He has also authored the memoirs For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. His inaugural poem “One Today” was published as a children’s book, in collaboration with renowned illustrator Dav Pilkey. Boundaries, a collaboration with photographer Jacob Hessler, challenges the physical and psychological dividing lines that shadow the United States. And his latest book of poems, How to Love a Country, both interrogates the American narrative, past and present, and celebrates the still unkept promise of its ideals. Blanco has written occasional poems for the re-opening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, Freedom to Marry, the Tech Awards of Silicon Valley, and the Boston Strong benefit concert following the Boston Marathon bombings. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary doctorates. He has taught at Georgetown University, American University, and Wesleyan University. He serves as the first Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets.

Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer, and educator. She is the Interim Executive Director of Urban Word NYC & Poetry Coordinator at St. Francis College. Browne has received fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg. She is the author of Chlorine Sky (2021), Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice (2020), Black Girl Magic (2020), Woke Baby (2018), and Kissing Caskets (2017). Browne is also the founder of Woke Baby Book Fair (a nationwide diversity literature campaign); and as an Arts for Justice grantee, is completing her first book of essays on mass incarceration, investigating its impact on women and children. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Sarah Cooper is an actor, comedian, and best-selling author. Her books How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings and 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings are both currently in development for series television. Sarah built her comedy career from the ground up while working for companies like Yahoo! and Google, where she was fed free lunches and lots of material. Sarah’s first Netflix special, “Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine,” was executive produced by Maya Rudolph and directed by Natasha Lyonne debuted on the steaming service October 27th 2020. Sarah has been touted one of the “hottest comics in the country” by People Magazine, named one of Variety’s 10 Comics to Watch for 2020 and named as AdWeek’s Digital Creator of the Year. She has gained celebrity fans such as Ben Stiller, Jerry Seinfeld, Halle Berry, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Chrissy Teigen, Cher, Jane Lynch, Seth Meyers and Bette Midler. In April 2020, Sarah went viral with a video called “How to Medical,” in which she lip-syncs Donald Trump’s proposed COVID-19 cures of UV light and disinfectant. The video was viewed over 25 million times across Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. She has since created dozens more Trump lip-syncs, each garnering millions of views. Sarah appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “The Tonight Show,” “Ellen,” and has been featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Washington Post, InStyle Magazine and countless others. Sarah currently resides in New York.

Stephen Engelberg was the founding managing editor of ProPublica from 2008–2012, and became editor-in-chief on January 1, 2013. He came to ProPublica from The Oregonian in Portland, where he had been a managing editor since 2002. Before joining The Oregonian, Mr. Engelberg worked for The New York Times for 18 years, including stints in Washington, D.C., and Warsaw, Poland, as well as in New York. He is a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Mr. Engelberg’s work since 1996 has focused largely on the editing of investigative projects. He started the Times’s investigative unit in 2000. Projects he supervised at the Times on Mexican corruption (published in 1997) and the rise of Al Qaeda (published beginning in January 2001) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. During his years at The Oregonian, the paper won the Pulitzer for breaking news and was a finalist for its investigative work on methamphetamines and charities intended to help the disabled. He is the co-author of “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War” (2001).

Ben Feinstein is a sophomore studying History and Russian at Southern Methodist University. In his free time he can be found way too deep down the Wikipedia presidential history rabbit hole.

Jeff Kao is a computational journalist at ProPublica who uses data science to cover technology and artificial intelligence. He used natural language processing techniques to uncover 1.3 million fake comments submitted to the FCC in its proceeding repealing net neutrality. This work was cited in the Washington Post, Fortune Magazine and engadget, among other publications, and by members of the U.S. Senate. He has appeared as a data scientist in the New York Times and on the WNYC program Science Friday.

Kao previously worked as a machine learning engineer at Atrium LTS, where he developed natural language processing systems for legal services. He holds a law degree from Columbia Law School, where he was the editor-in-chief of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, and a bachelor’s degree in systems design engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Eric Klinenberg is Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (Crown, 2018), Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (The Penguin Press, 2012), Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media (Metropolitan Books, 2007), and Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2002), as well as the editor of Cultural Production in a Digital Age, co-editor of Antidemocracy in America (Columbia University Press, 2019), and co-author, with Aziz Ansari, of the New York Times #1 bestseller Modern Romance (The Penguin Press, 2015). His scholarly work has been published in journals including the American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Ethnography, and he has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and This American Life.

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, and host of the podcast, The Last Archive. Her many books include, These Truths: A History of the United States (2018), an international bestseller, named one of Time magazine’s top ten non-fiction books of the decade. Her most recent book, IF THEN: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future,  was longlisted for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Book Award. A series of her 2020 New Yorker pieces contemplated the pandemic year, including assays on loneliness, race riot commissions, policing, the census, the decline of democracy, living indoors, and the literature of plagues. 

Lepore received a B.A. in English from Tufts University in 1987, an M.A. in American Culture from the University of Michigan in 1990, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1995. She joined the Harvard History Department in 2003 and was Chair of the History and Literature Program in 2005-10, 2012, and 2014. In 2012, she was named Harvard College Professor, in recognition of distinction in undergraduate teaching.

Lepore is the recipient of many honors, awards, and honorary degrees, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award; the National Magazine Award; and, twice, for the Pulitzer Prize. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the American Philosophical Society. Her research has been funded by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Charles Warren Center, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Much of Lepore’s scholarship explores absences and asymmetries in the historical record, with a particular emphasis on the histories and technologies of evidence. A prize-winning professor, she teaches classes in evidence, historical methods, the humanities, and American political history. (On teaching the writing of history, see How to Write a Paper for This Class.) In 2017, she launched the Democracy Project: Arguing with American History, a one-semester undergraduate course on the history of the United States, undertaken through weekly debates in which students use primary sources to argue over competing historical interpretations of turning points in American history. She also teaches at Harvard Law School.

In 2018, as part of her research on the Simulmatics Corporation and represented by the Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, Lepore filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, requesting the unsealing of grand jury records pertaining to the Pentaon Papers investigation in Boston in 1971.

Lepore has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2005, writing about American history, law, literature, and politics. A complete list of Lepore’s New Yorker essays is here. Scholarly bibliographies to her New Yorker essays can be found here. Her essays and reviews have also appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Journal of American History, Foreign Affairs, the Yale Law Journal, American Scholar, and the American Quarterly; have been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Latvian, Swedish, French, Chinese, and Japanese; and have been widely anthologized, including in collections of the best legal writing and the best technology writing. Three of her books derive from her New Yorker essays: The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death (Knopf, 2012), a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction; The Story of America: Essays on Origins (Princeton, 2012), shortlisted for the PEN Literary Award for the Art of the Essay; and The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle for American History (Princeton, 2010), a Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her 2019 book This America: The Case for the Nation, is based on an essay written for Foreign Affairs. 

The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Knopf, 2014) was a national bestseller and winner of the 2015 American History Book Prize. Lepore’s earlier work includes a trilogy of books that together constitute a political history of early America: The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (Knopf, 1998), winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, and the Berkshire Prize; New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (Knopf, 2005), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best nonfiction book on race and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (Knopf, 2013), Time magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize and a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Lepore has lectured widely. Among her recent scholarly and public addresses, she has delivered the F. E. L. Priestley Memorial Lectures in the History of Ideas at the University of Toronto (2018), the George Bancroft Memorial Lecture at the United States Naval Academy (2017), the Richard Leopold Lecture on Public Affairs at Northwestern University (2016), the Patten Lectures at Indiana University (2016), and the Theodore H. White Lecture on the Press and Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (2015).

Lepore is a past president of the Society of American Historians and a former Commissioner of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. She has been a consultant and contributor to a number of documentary and public history projects. Her three-part story, “The Search for Big Brown,” was broadcast on The New Yorker Radio Hour in 2015. S Among her interviews, she has appeared on Fresh Air and on the Colbert Report.

Lepore lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and their three sons.

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and the editor of the policy journal National Affairs. He is a contributing editor to National Review and his essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The Atlantic, and many others. He is the author, most recently, of A Time to Build: From family and community to Congress and the campus, how recommitting to our institutions can revive the American dream. He has been a member of the White House domestic policy staff (under President George W. Bush) and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.

Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author and correspondent for 60 Minutes+ and CBS News. Lowery was previously a national correspondent at the Washington Post, specializing in issues of race and law enforcement. He led the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 for the creation and analysis of a real-time database to track fatal police shootings in the United States. His 2018 project, Murder With Impunity, an unprecedented look at unsolved homicides in major American cities, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. His first book, They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement, was a New York Times bestseller and was awarded the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose by the LA Times Book Prizes.

Amanda McBaine is a Sundance Award-winning producer making her feature directing debut with Boys State. As a producer, her films include The Overnighters, The Bandit, Speedo and Ghosts of Attica. Along with her husband and creative partner Jesse Moss, she is a partner in Mile End Films, a San Francisco-based production company.

Jesse Moss is an acclaimed documentary filmmaker. His films include The Overnighters (Sundance Special Jury Prize for Intuitive Filmmaking), recognized by many critics as the top documentary of 2014; The Bandit; Full Battle Rattle (SXSW Special Jury Prize); Speedo: A Demolition Derby Love Story; and Con Man. His recent work includes, in collaboration with Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, the “Payday” episode of the Netflix series “Dirty Money,” and “The Family,” a five-part series, also for Netflix, about an enigmatic and influential Christian organization, based on Jeff Sharlet’s best- selling book. His recent short film “La Boca Del Lobo” for the New York Times Op Doc series, about the impact of immigration-related arrests on the Hispanic community in Atlanta, marked his first collaboration with Concordia Studio. As a producer, his films include Gay Chorus Deep South (2019 Tribeca Audience Award) and William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (Sundance 2010). He frequently works with his wife and co-conspirator Amanda McBaine.

Svante L. Myrick was sworn into office in January 2012 and became, at 24, the City of Ithaca’s youngest Mayor and first Mayor of color. Svante was first elected to the Common Council at the age of 20 while still a junior at Cornell University.

His active advocacy in Albany and in Washington D.C. has resulted in over $20 million of grants and awards from the State and Federal government. After years without them Myrick brought fireworks back to the City on the 4th of July and he’s moved Ithaca into the 21st century by embracing social media and overhauling the City’s web presence.

His accomplishments in his first term include sorely needed revisions to the City of Ithaca’s sidewalk policy, an overhaul of storm water utility legislation, successful completion of the total rehabilitation of the Commons, Ithaca’s downtown pedestrian mall, and making changes within the Ithaca Police Department in an effort to improve police and community relations.

After being elected to a second four-year term, in 2016 Myrick released The Ithaca Plan: A Public Health and Safety Approach to Drugs and Drug Policy, which garnered international attention for its forward thinking. From turning his dedicated mayoral parking space into a small public park to strengthening Ithaca’s status as a sanctuary city for refugees, he has demonstrated a progressive approach to governing.

Myrick has provided both local and national leadership in critical areas such as public health, housing, poverty and access to education. In 2017, he was awarded an Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership, a program that identifies and brings together the nation’s most promising young political leaders to explore the underlying values and principles of democracy, the relationship between individuals and their community, and the responsibilities of public leadership.

His other honors include a John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, which recognizes Americans under the age of 40 who are changing their communities and the country with their commitment to public service, and being named to the Forbes magazine “30 under 30” list in the area of law and policy. Myrick is currently serving a third term as Mayor of the City of Ithaca.

Aparna started out doing comedy in her hometown of Washington D.C. and now resides in New York City. 2016’s Elle’s Women in Comedy Issue, featured her as one of the most exciting new voices to hit the comedy scene. She is a series regular in Comedy Central’s Corporate and reprised her role in season 3 of HBO’s Crashing. Aparna is also featured in the second season of Netflix’s The Standups. Other television credits include Apple TV+’s Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, Netflix’s Space Force, Master of None and Love, HBO’s High Maintenance, Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer, and being a US correspondent for Dave’s (UK) Unspun with Matt Forde. She is the voice of Meena on Mira, Royal Detective, Hollyhock on BoJack Horseman, and Moon on The Great North.

In 2018 she made her feature debut in the Paul Feig movie A Simple Favor. Her TV stand up appearances include the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the Late Late Show with James Corden, as well as a half-hour special on Comedy Central. In 2013, she made her late night stand up debut on TBS’s Conan and was one of the breakout New Faces at the prestigious Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. Her TV writing credits include Late Night with Seth Meyers as well as being a regular correspondent/writer on FX’s Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.

She is also an alumna of the NBC Stand Up for Diversity program, headlines throughout the world and has been seen at a number of festivals including Comedy Central’s Clusterfest, Portland’s Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Moontower, SF Sketchfest, DC’s Bentzen Ball, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, Dublin’s Vodaphone Comedy Festival, and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Aparna’s been featured in or on the New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, the LA Times, and the Washington Post Magazine.

Chelina is co-founder and Executive Director of KDI. She believes in the potential of low-cost, high-impact design interventions to improve the physical, economic, and social quality of life in low-income communities. Chelina’s expertise covers a range of topics including leadership, participatory planning, social entrepreneurship, urban development, environmental remediation, and social impact design. She has extensive field experience through her work in Africa, Latin America and the US. Having shaped KDI into an internationally recognized and award-winning design, planning and community development firm, she lectures and speaks around the world and writes about KDI’s community-engaged approach to planning and design. Chelina has been recognized by the Van Alen Institute, American Express and the Aspen Institute for her work. Chelina holds a Bachelor of Arts from Claremont McKenna College, where she graduated with magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors. She received her Master of Urban Planning from Harvard University.

Priya Parker is helping take a deeper look at how anyone can create collective meaning in modern life, one gathering at a time. She is a master facilitator, strategic advisor, acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters and the host of the New York Times podcast, Together Apart. Parker has spent 15 years helping leaders and communities have complicated conversations about community and identity and vision at moments of transition. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India.

Parker is a founding member of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network, a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership, and a Senior Expert at Mobius Executive Leadership. She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia.

Parker’s The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (Riverhead, 2018) has been named a Best Business Book of the year by Amazon, Esquire Magazine, NPR, the Financial Times, 1-800-CEO-READS and Bloomberg. She has spoken on the TED Main Stage, and her TEDx talk on purpose has been viewed over 1 million times. Parker’s work has been featured in numerous outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, TED.com, Forbes.com, Real Simple Magazine, Oprah.com, Bloomberg, Glamour, the Today Show and Morning Joe. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, Anand Giridharadas, and their two children.

Debora Plunkett is a leader with more than 30 years of experience leading large, complex organizations. Culminating a career of U.S. federal service in 2016, she currently is Principal of Plunkett Associates LLC, a consulting business. She is a Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and Technology and an Adjunct Professor of Cybersecurity in the University of Maryland’s Graduate School. She serves on the corporate boards of CACI International, Nationwide Insurance and BlueVoyant. She is a founding member and Chairman of the Board of Defending Digital Campaigns, a non-profit entity focused on providing free or low-cost cybersecurity services to federal election campaigns. Ms. Plunkett serves on the New York State Cybersecurity Advisory Board and on the Board of Visitors of Towson University.

As a federal senior executive, Ms. Plunkett served first as the Deputy Director and thereafter for over four years as the Director of the National Security Agency’s Information Assurance Directorate. As the leader of NSA’s cyber defense, cryptography and information systems security missions, she directed thousands of personnel across NSA’s worldwide presence and managed a multi-million-dollar budget. Her efforts enabled continuous innovation and development of strong security solutions and policies for the protection of the classified communications of the United States government, serving the needs of a wide range of consumers from the White House to the war fighter.

Ms. Plunkett also served as the first Senior Advisor to the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) for Equality where she led efforts to develop and deliver solutions to improve equality, inclusion and diversity for the highly technical NSA workforce. Her efforts resulted in the identification and implementation of new strategies to address systemic issues. In one year, her breakthrough leadership resulted not only in new NSA policies and processes, but also extended to the broader Intelligence Community (IC) where the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) mandated two of her initiatives for the entire IC.

Ms. Plunkett has significant executive experience in working with industry and at the seniormost levels of the U.S. government. She served as Director on the National Security Council at the White House in the Administrations of Presidents William Clinton and George W. Bush where she contributed to the development of national cybersecurity policies and programs.

Among her many awards are the ranks of Meritorious Executive in the Senior Cryptologic Executive Service by President George W. Bush in 2007 and Distinguished Executive by President Barack Obama in 2012. In 2015 Debora was recognized with the Intelligence Community Equal Opportunity and Diversity Exemplary Leadership Award from the Director of National Intelligence and the Exceptional Civilian Service Award from the NSA Director.

A graduate of Towson University with a Bachelor of Science degree, Debora also earned an MBA from Johns Hopkins University, and a Master of Science in National Security Strategy from the National War College. She also completed the Harvard Law School program in Conflict Management and Negotiations, and the Leadership at the Peak program at the Center for Creative Leadership. She values remaining current on best practices in leadership.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is the CEO and owner of Tendon Systems, LLC. Tendon is a specialty contracting and engineering design firm with nearly 200 employees. The firm has operated in 35 different states. Raffensperger also owns and operates a specialty steel manufacturing plants based in Forsyth County.

Additionally, he served two terms in the Georgia General Assembly from 2015-2019.

Brad Raffensperger earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Western University and was awarded his MBA from Georgia State University. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in over 30 states.

Brad and his wife, Tricia, have been married for 42 years and live in Johns Creek. Brad is a member of North Point Community Church.

Josie Duffy Rice is a journalist and law school graduate whose work is primarily focused on prosecutors, prisons, and other criminal justice issues. Currently, she is President of The Appeal, a news publication that publishes original journalism about the criminal justice system.

Josie co-hosts the podcast Justice in America. She is a 2020 New America Fellow, a 2019-2020 Type Media Fellow, and a Civic Media Fellow at University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Slate, among others.

Josie’s a graduate of Harvard Law School and received her bachelor’s degree from Columbia University. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and son.

Jay Rosen has been teaching journalism at New York University since 1986. He is the author of PressThink, a blog about journalism and its ordeals (www.pressthink.org), which he introduced in September 2003. In 1999, Yale University Press published his book, What Are Journalists For?, which is about the rise of the civic journalism movement during the pre-internet era. In 2017 he became director of the Membership Puzzle Project, funded by the Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund and Luminate. It studies membership models for sustainability in news. Rosen is also an active press critic with a focus on problems in the coverage of politics. On Twitter he is @jayrosen_nyu.

Amber Ruffin is a writer, executive producer, and host of the WGA Award nominated series The Amber Ruffin Show on Peacock. She is also an Emmy and WGA Award nominated writer and performer for NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” Ruffin was the first African American female to write for a late-night network talk show in the U.S. She wrote and performed on Comedy Central’s “Detroiters” and was a regular narrator on the cabler’s “Drunk History.” Ruffin was previously a performer at Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, the iO Theater and the Second City in Chicago. In addition, she was a writer/performer for the 2018 and 2019 Golden Globe Awards and has written for the series “A Black Lady Sketch Show.” Ruffin is a New York Times bestselling author, along with her sister Lacey Lamar, of “You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories of Racism,” published by Grand Central Publishing. Recently, Ruffin was named to the 2021 TIME100 Next List, TIME’s list of the next 100 most influential people in the world.

Hari Sreenivasan is the anchor of PBS NewsHour Weekend, an Amanpour and Company contributor, a senior correspondent for PBS NewsHour and host of the YoutTube channel TakeOnFake. Previously, the Emmy-winning journalist worked for CBS News, reporting regularly on the CBS Evening News, The Early Show and CBS Sunday Morning. Before that, he served as an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, reporting for ABC News Now, World News Tonight, Nightline and anchoring World News Now.

Emily Tisch Sussman has been at the forefront of executing strategy for the progressive movement in America for more than a decade. She is a leading democratic political strategist with over 250 appearances on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, HLN, and CBS, and nearly 100 in the past election. Her views are also frequently featured in national news outlets including The New York Times, Newsweek, Reuters, and Politico.

Emily is the host of the popular all-women interview-style podcast Your Political Playlist, formerly Your Presidential Playlist, a guide to politics in the new presidential administration and Congress. Every week, the podcast releases bite-size conversations with women at the seat of power and activism like President Biden’s Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon, Nominee for Director of the Office of Management and Budget Neera Tanden, White House Council of Economic Advisers Member Heather Boushey, and Acting Chair of the Federal Communications Commission Jessica Rosenworcel. Over the course of three seasons, more than 50 guests have come on the show including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Stacey Abrams. The podcast has had several features on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher and was named one of Refinery29’s Best New Podcasts for 2020.

Emily’s January 2020 interview with Hillary Clinton made headlines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, POLITICO, The Hill, and several other outlets, driving a 48-hour news cycle in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial and the weekend leading up to the Iowa caucuses. Her May 2020 live podcast recording with Senator Cory Booker at the 92Y was viewed by more than 70,000 people in 120 countries. The show was called “required listening for any Democrat” by the National Field Director for Swing Left and "an in-depth policy brief with context around the democratic evolution on these issues” by a national political reporter for a major news outlet.

In 2019, Emily launched ETS Advisory which allows her to work directly with advocates across the country to drive progressive change through legislation, advocacy, the electoral process, and policy development. She has had the opportunity to provide counsel to organizations including Change the Ref, an initiative sponsored by March For Our Lives; Town Hall Project; the Baker Project, which is a part of Eleanor’s Legacy; Funny or Die: Glam Up the Midterms; and Vote Vets.

Emily is a member of the EMILY’S List Creative Council and has also served as a Senior Advisor to Swing Left, where she executed a national celebrity surrogate tour with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Natalie Portman, and Jessica Alba and coordinated the “The Last Weekend” project to mobilize key stakeholders in the final days of the 2018 midterm elections. Previously, Emily held the role of Vice President of Campaigns for the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAP), the largest progressive think tank in Washington, DC, overseeing issue campaigns to impact policies at the national and state levels.

She shaped key strategies to resist the Trump Administration’s harmful policies and turned up the heat on the Repeal and Replace debate as Republicans worked to dismantle healthcare for millions of Americans. She also worked with CAP’s youth outreach arm to cultivate young activists through Generation Progress and helped establish a Gun Violence Prevention Network.

Emily is a staunch advocate of women’s rights and helped shape the leading principles for the inaugural Women’s March in January 2017. She has extensive experience guiding young activists, having previously served as executive director of Young Democrats of America, and as the founder of Think Blue, an organization to increase youth participation in the democratic electoral process.

She is a member of the New York Bar, earning her J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Key recognitions include the Cardozo Alumni of the Decade, New Leaders Council 40 under 40 Emerging Leaders in Politics, Washington Life Magazine 40 Under 40, American Association of Political Consultants 40 under 40, “We Are Emily” award from Emily’s List, and the Truman Values Award from Truman National Security Project.

A New York Giants fan and a life-long musical theatre enthusiast, Emily considers her experience as a camp counselor for girls in Massachusetts amongst her most fulfilling roles. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

Jevin West is an Associate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. He co-founded the DataLab and directs the Center for an Informed Public. He studies the Science of Science and worries about the spread of misinformation. His laboratory consists of millions of scholarly papers and the billions of links that connect these papers. He develops knowledge discovery tools to both study and facilitate science.

Kai Wright is host and managing editor of The United States of Anxiety, a show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future. The show airs live on WNYC, Sundays at 6p eastern. The Atlantic hailed the show as one of the “The Best Podcasts of 2018,” declaring that it “has always been able to swiftly explain current events through the lens of the past.” In addition, Wright was the host of WNYC Studios’ other limited edition podcasts with social justice themes: The Stakes, There Goes the Neighborhood, and Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice, which was honored with an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. He also served as one of the hosts of Indivisible, a national live radio call-in show that WNYC convened during the first 100 days of the Trump Administration to invite Americans to come together across divides. Wright’s journalism has focused on social, racial, and economic justice throughout his career. Formerly, he was an editor at The Nation and the editorial director of Colorlines. As a fellow of Type Investigations, he covered economic inequality, access to healthcare, and racial inequity. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Mother Jones, and Salon, among other outlets, and his broadcast appearances include MSNBC and NPR. Wright is the author of Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York, as well as two surveys of black American history.