Aimee Allison is the Founder of She the People, the national network elevating the political voice and power of women of color. In conjunction with her leadership of She the People, Ms. Allison is President of Democracy in Color, dedicated to empowering the multiracial progressive electorate through media, public conversations, research, and analysis. She has led national efforts to build inclusive, multiracial coalitions, expand the electorate, and support leaders who advocate for a progressive future.
Rahna Epting is the Executive Director at Moveon.org. Before joining Moveon.org she served as Every Voice's Chief of Staff. At Every Voice, she oversaw the strategic implementation of the program to win, helped support the supervision and development of staff, and served as an ambassador to the money in politics efforts across the country.
Christina Greer is an Associate Professor of Political Science and American Studies at Fordham University (Lincoln Center Campus). Her primary research and teaching interests are presidential politics, campaigns and elections, racial and ethnic politics, and American urban centers.
Yvonne Gutierrez is Head of Community Engagement at Supermajority. Prior to that, she was the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes (PPTV), the statewide electoral and advocacy organization working to engage and organize Texans throughout the state, committed to supporting candidates who are willing to fight and protect women's access to health care.
Robin Leeds is the founder and managing director of Winning Strategies LLC, a public affairs and political consulting firm based in Washington, DC. In presidential election cycles since 1992, she has worked with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights' National Election Protection Program to conduct trainings and manage election day command centers. Leeds served on the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, and provides ongoing strategic counsel to advocates on federal and state election reform initiatives and the women’s vote.
Margie Omero is a principal at the Democratic polling firm GBAO and has over 20 years of experience providing strategic advice using qualitative and quantitative research. Her clients have included some of the world’s biggest brands, hundreds of Democratic candidates for office, and non-profit and advocacy groups.
Cynthia Richie Terrell is the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen and a founding board member of the ReflectUS coalition of non-partisan women’s representation organizations. Terrell and her husband Rob Richie helped to found FairVote - a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms that give voters greater choice, a stronger voice, and a truly representative democracy. Terrell has worked on projects related to women's representation, voting system reform, and democracy in the United States and abroad via partnerships with the U.S. State Department and advocates for women's representation in dozens of countries.
A social scientist by training, Vanessa Tyson currently teaches in the Department of Politics at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. As an expert on US Congress, policy formulation, race, gender, and social justice, Dr. Tyson has an extensive background in both US and California politics. Having worked on political campaigns since she was a teenager, including three Presidential campaigns, two US Senate campaigns, and numerous state and local campaigns, she carefully considers how political dynamics affect policy formulation and consequent outcomes.
Marisa Franco is a Phoenix-based organizer, writer and strategist. She is the Director and co-founder of Mijente, a digital and grassroots organizing hub for Latina/o and Chicana/o people. In her over 15 years of work as an organizer and movement builder, Marisa has helped lead key grassroots organizing campaigns rooted in low-income and communities of color, characterized by their innovation and effectiveness.
Laura Packard is a nationally-known health care advocate and stage 4 cancer survivor. She has thrown out of a public forum with former Senator Heller while asking him about his health care votes. Packard founded a non-profit, Health Care Voices, to organize adults with serious medical conditions. She shared her personal health care story with Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention, day 2.
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is a professor, teaching courses in Election Law, Corporate Governance, Business Entities, and Constitutional Law at Stetson University College of Law. She is also a Brennan Center Fellow. Prior to joining Stetson's faculty, Professor Torres-Spelliscy was counsel in the Democracy Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law where she provided guidance on the issues of money in politics and the judiciary to state and federal lawmakers.
Pat Mitchell, a resident of Georgia, is a lifelong advocate for women and girls. At every step of her career, Mitchell has broken new ground for women, leveraging the power of media as a journalist, an Emmy award- winning and Oscar-nominated producer to tell women’s stories and increase the representation of women onscreen and off.
- Experts in Georgia here.
Charlene A. Carruthers is a Black, queer feminist community organizer and writer with over 15 years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youth leadership development movement work. Carruthers was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago where she currently resides and continues to lead and partake in social justice movements. She is the founder and executive director of the Chicago Center for Leadership and Transformation, a locally rooted and nationally connected learning community for political education, grassroots organizing, language and strategic communications capacity building.
Donna R. Hoffman is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Northern Iowa. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, where her research focused on partisan changes in the American electorate. Hoffman’s research on presidential rhetoric examines the way that presidents communicate their policy agendas with both Congress and the public, especially through State of the Union addresses. Her work on electoral politics examines changes in the partisan composition of the American electorate.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz is the founding Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera, a low-wage and immigrant workers center with chapters in Milwaukee and Racine, Wisconsin, including a student chapter called Students United for Immigrant Rights with members from 3 high schools. Voces de la Frontera is increasingly recognized as Wisconsin’s leading voice for immigration reform.
At FairVote Minnesota, Liz Johnson works with communities across the state to advance Ranked Choice Voting, a system proven to be more inclusive, participatory, and representative than our current electoral system. Johnson is also a founding board member at Vote Run Lead, the largest and most diverse national organization training women to run for office and win.
McClain Bryant Macklin, JD MBA, is Director of Policy for Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, Missouri. In this role, McClain shapes the policymaking of the City, with an emphasis on economic development, workforce development, housing, digital equity, MBE/WBE, and entrepreneurship and small business.
Na'ilah Amaru has leveraged her nearly two decades serving as a public interest advocate and Democratic operative towards advancing progressive policies across five U.S. states and at every level of government.
Kristin Goss focuses on why people do (or don't) participate in political life and how their engagement affects public policymaking. Her current research projects focus on the role of philanthropic billionaires in policy debates and on the evolution of gun-related advocacy over the past decade. Goss is the author of The Paradox of Gender Equality: How American Women's Groups Gained and Lost Their Public Voice (University of Michigan Press, 2013). The book documents and explains the surprising rise -- and even more surprising fall -- of American women's groups on the national stage.
- Experts in North Carolina here.
Kathryn Lavelle is the Ellen and Dixon Long professor of World Affairs at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research explores the exchange between economic and political institutions with a particular emphasis on global financial issues.
Kelly Dittmar is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University–Camden and Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics. She is the author of Navigating Gendered Terrain: Stereotypes and Strategy in Political Campaigns (Temple University Press, 2015), as well as multiple book chapters on gender and American politics. Dittmar’s research focuses on gender and American political institutions, including Congress, with a particular focus on how gender informs campaigns and the impact of gender diversity among elites in policy and political decisions, priorities, and processes.
Rebecca Deen is Chair and Associate Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. An expert in US politics, she has published research findings on women in the political process, the U.S. presidency, and effective pedagogy in journals such as Women & Politics, State and Local Government Review, Congress & the Presidency and Judicature.
Vanessa Daniel is the founder and Executive Director of Groundswell Fund, the largest funder of the U.S. reproductive justice movement and of Groundswell Action Fund, the largest fund in the country centering giving to women of color-led 501c4 organizations.
A leader with deep roots in Milwaukee, Jennifer Epps-Addison, J.D., is currently the Network President and Co-Executive Director of the Center for Popular Democracy. Previously, she was also the Executive Director of Wisconsin Jobs Now, a nonprofit fighting for social and economic justice with collective, direct action as a fundamental organizing principle.
Experts in Wisconsin here.
Liz Theran
