Co-Founder/Policy and Program Development Director

A bill, called the SB52 bill, has been proposed in California that would make the entirety of California a "sanctuary state". To discuss how this bill would work and what it would mean for immigration, we FEATURE Maria Echaveste. Maria, a senior fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Latin American Studies, has built a distinguished career working as a public policy consultant, lecturer, a senior White House official, long-time community leader, and corporate attorney. Her current work focuses on immigration, civic engagement, labor rights and education. Prior to cofounding the strategic and policy consulting group NVG, LLC, in 2002, she served as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for President Clinton from 1998 to 2001. In that position she focused on issues relating to immigration, civil rights, education, finance, Mexico and Latin America. Extensive media experience.

Founder and Director of Research

With Israel closing it's borders to Egypt following a terror attack by suicide bombers at two Coptic Christian churches in Egypt, we FEATURE Nichole Argo. Nichole is a Social Psychologist in the Departments of Engineering and Public Policy and Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Argo spent several years doing field work on political violence. She is one of the few experts on terrorism and political violence to have interviewed and lived with militants, and was one of the first to provide data to refute the “religion, poverty, or indoctrination” theories of terrorist motivation in 2003. Argo interviewed militants and bombers in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and Leeds (United Kingdom). In order to understand their lives, she lived amidst their communities. While living in Jerusalem, she interviewed twelve captured Palestinian bombers and three who were still at large. Media includes: Routledge, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Bomb Magazine, Chicago National Public Radio and Fox News.

Trial Lawyer, former prosecutor and Assistant Attorney General for MD Member, Supreme Court Bar

Neil Gorsuchis now the 113th justice of the Supreme Court. To discuss how he will impact the court, we FEATURE Debbie Hines. Debbie is a Washington, DC based trial attorney, legal analyst, former Baltimore prosecutor and member of the Supreme Court bar. Debbie is an expert in criminal law, high profile criminal cases, gun control and gun laws, police brutality, death penalty, domestic violence and Supreme Court cases. She often addresses legal/political issues at the intersection of gender, race and class. As a former felony prosecutor, she tried homicides, attempted murders, rapes, burglaries, robberies, narcotics and economic crimes. Media includes: Al Jazeera, BET, CBS, C-Span, CCTV, Fox 5 DC (“WTTG”), MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Sky News, Huffington Post.

Senior Climate Scientist and Director of Climate Science for the Climate and Energy Program

With news that the Great Barrier Reef has suffered from coral bleaching that has left two-thirds of the reef severely damaged, we FEATURE Brenda Ekwurzel. Brenda works on the national climate program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). She is leading UCS's climate science education work aimed at strengthening support for strong federal climate legislation and sound U.S. climate policies. Her specialty is isotope geochemistry, a tool she has used to study climate variability in places as disparate as the Arctic Ocean and the desert Southwest. She has published on topics that include climate variability and fire, isotopic dating of groundwater, Arctic Ocean tracer oceanography, paleohydrology, and coastal sediment erosion. Media includes: CNN (Dobbs, Situation Room), Fox News (O’Reilly, Cavuto), ABC World News with Charles Gibson, Good Morning America, USA Today, National Public Radio.