Co-Founder and Executive Director
Ian Bassin is co-founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy. He previously served as Associate White House Counsel, where in addition to counseling the President and senior White House staff on administrative and constitutional law, his responsibilities included ensuring that White House and executive branch officials complied with the laws, rules and norms that protect the fundamentally democratic nature of our government. His writing on democracy, authoritarianism, and American law and politics has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon and other publications. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. *
Board Member
Jeff Berman is a founding partner of Magnet Companies. He previously served as President of Whalerock Industries, a media and technology company based in West Hollywood, and General Manager of Digital Media at the NFL after holding a series of positions at MySpace. Jeff was the independent director on the board of Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce) and has advised companies across a broad range of industries. From 2001-2005, he was Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Jeff has also served as a public defender in the District of Columbia and as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. from Connecticut College. *^
Co-Founder and Legal Director
Justin Florence has overseen the organization’s work to advance its mission, including legal, policy, advocacy and communications strategies, as Protect Democracy’s Co-Founder and Legal Director. Justin previously served in the Office of the White House Counsel as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President; as Senior Counsel on the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and in the Supreme Court and Appellate practices of two leading national law firms. Justin is a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, where he co-teaches the Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic. His writings on democracy and rule of law issues have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School. ^
Board Member
Jerry Hauser is the founding Chief Executive Officer of The Management ​Action​ Center. He was previously at McKinsey & Company, and has played leadership roles in a number of nonprofits. At Teach For America, he served as the second-in-command for seven years. He also served as the CEO of the Advocacy Institute. Before graduating from Yale Law School, where he was active in legal clinics and a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal, Jerry worked as a high school math and history teacher in Compton, California. He is the coauthor of the book Managing to Change the World. ^
Board Member
Richard R. Buery, Jr. is the Chief Executive Officer of the Robin Hood foundation, New York City’s largest anti-poverty organization. From 2014-2018, he served as Deputy Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives for the City of New York, in which capacity he implemented Pre-K for All, supported women- and minority-owned businesses, and oversaw a number of mayoral offices. In addition to Robin Hood, he has served as Chief Executive Officer at Achievement First, Chief of Policy and Public Affairs at the KIPP Foundation, and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Children’s Aid Society.  Richard is a graduate of Yale Law School and Harvard College. Richard founded his first nonprofit at a Roxbury housing development while still in college. He was a teacher in Zimbabwe, a campaign manager to former Cambridge Mayor Ken Reeves, and clerked at the Federal Court of Appeals in New York.  Richard is a Public Service Fellow at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where he served as Distinguished Visiting Urbanist during the Spring of 2019. He is also a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, a Senior Fellow at the GovLab at NYU, a partner at the Perception Institute. He serves on the boards of the Kresge Foundation, iMentor, United to Protect Democracy, Atria Health Collaborative, the Grace Church School, and on the Alumni Advisory Council of the Tsai Leadership Program at Yale Law School. ^
Board Member
Cecilia Muñoz is currently Vice President for Policy and Technology at New America, a Washington-based think tank. She served as Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council under President Obama, and earlier as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs where she oversaw the Obama Administration’s relationships with state and local governments. Before joining the Obama Administration, Cecilia spent 20 years at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization. In June 2000, she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in recognition of her work on immigration and civil rights. She also serves on the Board of the Kresge Foundation and the US Programs Board of the Open Society Foundations. *
Board Member
Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Before joining AEI, Dr. Schake was the deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. She has had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council at the White House. She has also taught at Stanford, West Point, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, National Defense University, and the University of Maryland. Dr. Schake is the author of five books, among them “America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved?” (Penguin Random House Australia, Lowy Institute, 2018); “Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony” (Harvard University Press, 2017); “State of Disrepair: Fixing the Culture and Practices of the State Department” (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); and “Managing American Hegemony: Essays on Power in a Time of Dominance” (Hoover Institution Press, 2009). *
The work of protecting our democracy is one that transcends party and ideology. We are proud to have a diverse array of experts who share our commitment to this mission and have offered their advice on this work. Some engage in specific projects, others at a more general level, and none bear responsibility for — nor even endorse — everything we do, but they believe, as we do, that all Americans must stand together in defense of our democratic institutions.
Author and Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics
Professor of Italian and History, New York University
Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University
Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Columnist, and Former Speechwriter to First Lady Nancy Reagan
Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity, Columnist, and Former White House Director of Public Liaison to President Ronald Reagan
Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
Former U.S. Representative (R-MO)
Former White House Counsel
Author, Political Analyst, and Former Chief Strategist, Bush-Cheney 2004
Former U.S. Representative (R-OK)
Co-CEO and Founder, Stand Up Republic
Former Assistant United States Attorney and Associate White House Counsel
Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
Former United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida
Lawyer, Constitutional Rights Advocate and Author
Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Professor of Government, Harvard University
Former United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington
Associate Professor of Political Science, The George Washington University
Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University
Professor of Government, Dartmouth College
Professor of Law, The George Washington University School of Law
Former Associate Attorney General of the United States
Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Former Assistant Attorney General
Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology, Yale University
Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University
Former Solicitor General of the United States
Professor of Law, University of Baltimore and Former Associate Independent Counsel in the Whitewater Investigation
Founder, Freedom to Marry
Professor of Government, Harvard University
History has shown that the best way to protect democracy is by standing united in its defense. Donate to help us to scale up our efforts to educate, advocate, organize, and litigate on behalf of the values we all hold dear.