CONVERSATIONS ON DEMOCRACY
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WITH
NORM EISEN AND CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
MAY 26, 2022
7 PM ET
Ambassador Norman L. Eisen (ret.) is the Co-Founder and Executive Chair of the States United Democracy Center. An attorney and author who has served in a broad array of government roles, he was special counsel and special assistant to President Barack Obama for ethics and government reform from 2009-11. In that role, the press dubbed him “Mr. No” and the “Ethics Czar” for his tough anti-corruption approach. Following his service in the White House, he was our ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011-14, where he was noted for his rule of law and other initiatives. His books about the Czech Republic are The Last Palace (Crown 2018) and Democracy’s Defenders (Brookings 2020). He served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the impeachment and trial of President Donald J Trump from 2019-20. His memoir of the impeachment is A Case for the American People (Crown 2020). Eisen is currently a senior fellow at a D.C. think tank and a legal analyst for a cable television network in addition to his duties at States United. His writing has frequently appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, USA Today, and CNN. He has been named to the Washingtonian’s Most Influential People, Politico 50, and the Forward 50. Eisen was the inspiration for the crusading attorney Deputy Kovacs in Wes Anderson’s movie, “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
Christine Todd Whitman is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the States United Democracy Center and the former Governor of New Jersey. After her two terms as New Jersey’s first female Governor, she served in the cabinet of President George W. Bush as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Governor Whitman is the co-chair of the Meridian Institute Board and Chairman of the American Security Project. Previously she served as co-chair of the Commission on the Rule of Law and Democracy at the Brennan Center at New York University. Additionally she is Vice-Chairman of the Eisenhower Fellowships Board of Trustees and co-chair of the National Institute for Civil Discourse. She is the author of the New York Times best seller, It’s My Party Too.
UPCOMMING
BILL KRISTOL
JUNE 13, 2022
William Kristol is The Bulwark editor-at-large and a founding director of Defending Democracy Together, an educational and advocacy organization dedicated to defending America’s liberal democratic norms, principles, and institutions. Kristol has long been recognized as a leading participant in and analyst of American politics and has helped shape the national debate on issues ranging from American foreign policy to the meaning of American conservatism. Kristol was a founder of the Weekly Standard in 1995 and edited the influential magazine for over two decades. Before starting the Weekly Standard, Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped develop the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. Before that, Mr. Kristol served in senior positions in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations. Before coming to Washington, Mr. Kristol taught politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. He received his undergraduate degree and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
LISA MENSAH
AUGUST 2022
Lisa Mensah is President and CEO of Opportunity Finance Network (OFN), the
nation’s leading network of Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). OFN helps CDFIs leverage public funding with private investment from mainstream financial institutions, socially responsible investors, and philanthropic partners in underserved communities across America. Mensah joined OFN in March 2017.
In 2014, Mensah was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the US Senate for the position of Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development. Before this appointment, Mensah was the founding Executive Director of the Initiative on Financial Security at The Aspen Institute. Mensah began her career in commercial banking at Citibank before joining the Ford Foundation to manage the country’s largest philanthropic grant and loan portfolio of investments in rural America.
Mensah holds an M.A. from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced nternational Studies of The Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. from Harvard University.
BOB SHRUM
SEPTEMBER 2022
Bob Shrum is the Director of the Center for the Political Future and the Carmen H. and Louis Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics at USC Dornsife. A legendary political strategist, he was once described as "the most sought-after consultant in the Democratic Party," by The Atlantic Monthly. He was a speechwriter for Senator George McGovern in the 1972 presidential campaign and for Senator Edward Kennedy in the 1980 presidential campaign. He served as the Senator’s Press Secretary in the early 1980s and as a political consultant and strategist in his subsequent Senate campaigns. He was also the strategist in over 25 other winning U.S. Senate campaigns, eight successful campaigns for governor, successful campaigns for mayors in major American cities, and numerous campaigns for Congress and other statewide offices. His clients included Joe Biden, John Glenn, Barbara Mikulski, David Dinkins, and Tom Bradley - and John Kerry and Al Gore in their presidential races. Overseas his clients included Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the British Labour Party, the Prime Minister of Ireland, and the Presidents of Colombia and Bolivia.
SALIN GEERVARGHESE
OCTOBER 2022
Salin Geevarghese is the President & CEO of SGG Insight, LLC, a consulting firm offering comprehensive services to public, private, nonprofit and philanthropic sector leaders and organizations. He also serves as Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) as well as the founding Director of the Mixed-Income Strategic Alliance and its Innovation and Action Network. The Mixed-Income Strategic Alliance is a collaboration of CSSP, the National Initiative on Mixed Income Communities at Case Western Reserve University and Urban Strategies, Inc.
From April 2014 to January 2017, Geevarghese served in a senior appointed leadership post as HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of International and Philanthropic Innovation (within the Office of Policy Development and Research) during the Administration of President Barack Obama. Appointed by Secretary Shaun Donovan and serving under Secretary Julian Castro, in this role, Salin led an innovation team charged with engaging cross-sector and cross-border partners to harness and apply best practices, programs and policies for the benefit of communities and aligning common efforts. Among the most prominent roles, Geevarghese led the United States’ domestic preparations on the New Urban Agenda and co-led with the U.S. State Department its delegation in October 2016 to Quito, Ecuador for Habitat III, the largest conference in the world focused on sustainable and inclusive urbanization and the role of cities for growth and shared prosperity. The conference is organized by the United Nations and held every 20 years.
Prior to this appointment, Secretary Donovan appointed Salin as Acting Director of the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities. In that role, he was responsible for advancing housing and communities that increase affordability, cost savings, efficiency, and quality of life, while also expanding regional economic growth and opportunity. He provided technical and policy support for energy, green building, and integrated housing, transportation and economic development programs at HUD and around the nation. Salin came to the Obama Administration as a Senior Advisor and as part of the founding leadership of HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities and the Partnership for Sustainable Communities between HUD, DOT and EPA. Geevarghese also consulted on many of the place-based initiatives of the Administration as well as efforts to embed and institutionalize its key design and operational elements.
ANDREA BERNSTEIN
DATE COMING SOON
Peabody and duPont-Columbia award–winning journalist Andrea Bernstein is Co-Host of the Trump, Inc. Podcast, a co-production with ProPublica. She is the author of "American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power." Bernstein’s latest podcast, Will Be Wild, examines the events leading up to January 6th and will be released in April.
Bernstein covers the business of the Trump administration, and, with her colleague Ilya Marritz, has broken key stories, including those on how Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump avoided criminal indictment, Paul Manafort's money-laundering, Michael Cohen's fraudulent business practices, and Rudy Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine.
Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, who created the award-winning Trump, Inc. podcast for WNYC Studios before leaving New York Public Radio last month, will keep their focus on Washington as they set out to create their next show. Bernstein and Marritz have signed with Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios to create an investigative document series on the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The yet-to-be-titled series will launch in early 2022.
Bernstein, a long-time and regular contributor to NPR, has covered six national elections including the 2016 election, and her beats have included government, politics, transportation, environment, housing, and policing. At various points she's been assigned to cover Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson, Chris Christie, Bill de Blasio, and Andrew Cuomo. Her investigative reporting on the Bridgegate scandal with Matt Katz won WNYC News its first-ever Peabody award.
Bernstein was one of 12 US Journalists to win a prestigious year-long 2007 Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. She has won over 50 awards for her work, including the duPont-Columbia Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors award for radio, the National Press Club award for environmental reporting, and national Murrow (RTNDA) and Society for Professional Journalists awards for investigative reporting.
She has taught journalism at City College, was the Jack Newfield Professor of Investigative Journalism at Hunter College, and led trainings for journalists in several venues, including preparing reporters in Bhutan to cover their first-ever political campaign in that country's transition to democracy.
She was a political correspondent for the New York Observer for eight years, and her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, ProPublica, The Guardian, New York Magazine, The Nation, and the New York Daily News.
She graduated from Yale University, cum laude, with honors.
She lives in Brooklyn with her family.