Board Of Directors

David Fineman

Chair and Secretary

David Fineman is a partner at Royer, Cooper, Cohen, and Braunfeld law firm in Philadelphia, PA. He is the former Chair of the United States Postal Service.

Lavita Mcmath Turner

Vice Chair

Lavita McMath Turner is the Chief Diversity Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Board Member at The Democracy Commitment, a national initiative aimed at engaging community college students in civic learning and democratic practice. Formerly, she was the Director of Government and External Relations at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College in New York.

Toby Chaudhuri

Treasurer

Former Vice President, Strategic Communications and National Partnerships at the Public Broadcasting Service. He directed communications for several White House race-based Initiatives and democracy and governance projects for the U.S. State Department.

Robert Brandon

President Emeritus & Senior Advisor

Robert Brandon co-founded the Fair Elections Legal Network in 2006 as a national, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to remove barriers to registration and voting for traditionally underrepresented constituencies and improve overall election administration through administrative, legal, and legislative reform. Now, Fair Elections Center provides technical assistance, materials and legal analysis and support to a variety of mobilization organizations representing students and youth, minorities, and other underrepresented groups. Mr. Brandon has more than 50 years of public policy, legislative, media and campaign experience at the federal, state, and local levels. He has specialized in health policy, tax policy, access to higher education and internet policy at federal agencies, in Congress, and at the state and local level. Mr. Brandon has experience in all aspects of election law, how mobilization organizations interact with those laws and on voter suppression.

Rebekah Caruthers

President & CEO

Rebekah Caruthers is President & CEO at Fair Elections Center, a national voting rights organization. She served as Vice President for four and a half years. For 20 years prior, Caruthers worked on issue and electoral campaigns, candidates, and organizations like MoveOn.org, Everytown for Gun Safety, the National Democratic Training Committee, Equal Justice Works, and the National Network for Arab American Communities.

Lynette Quintero

Current Chair

Current Chair of Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project’s National Student Advisory Board. Before that, she was a Democracy Fellow for CVP at Pierce College. Lynette is a senior at UC Berkeley majoring in political science where she is a research assistant on Election Law and a Senior Class Council Board Member & Chair of Events. She is also the Communication’s Department lead for the ESL Student Program.

Gail L. Siegel

Policy Director (RETD)

Joi Chaney

Executive Director (Washington DC)

Joi is the executive director of the Washington Bureau and SVP for Policy and Advocacy at the National Urban League. She is the founder of J.O.I. Strategies, which develops strategies for organizations and companies seeking to achieve Justice, Opportunity, and Inclusion for America’s underserved communities. She is a former Chief of Staff to US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Advisor to the Chair of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the Obama-Biden Administration.

Maya Patel

Public Policy Master

Maya Patel is a Master in Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied chemistry and received a certificate in public policy. Maya primarily works on youth and student voting rights and environmental policy. She has held roles as the Texas State Coordinator at Campus Vote Project, Environmental Engagement Coordinator for Texas State Representative Gina Hinojosa, and as an MTV Leader for Change.

Clarissa Martinez-De-Castro

Deputy Vice President

As Deputy Vice President at UnidosUS (formerly National Council of La Raza), Clarissa leads efforts to advance fair and effective immigration policies and to expand Latino civic engagement by helping immigrants become citizens, citizens become voters, and the community overall become an active participant in policy debates. She also designed and currently leads the Rise Above campaign, an initiative to build a positive, accurate narrative of our changing America in order to foster collaborative action.

Jennifer Morrell

CEO and Co-Founder

Jennifer Morrell is the CEO and Co-Founder of The Elections Group, where she creates professional resources for elections officials and consults on election administration and auditing. A nationally recognized expert on election audits – specifically, Risk-Limiting Audits (RLA) – Morrell has successfully overseen RLA pilot programs in several states and authored a series on election audits, titled “Knowing It’s Right.” She serves as a subject matter expert and advisory board member for a number of national organizations. Morrell is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and was an elections official in Utah and Colorado. She is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs and completed a Master of Arts in Management at Webster University.

Michelle Bishop

National Disability Rights Network Manager

Michelle Bishop is a Voter Access & Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network where she leads a team to support the P&A network on voting rights and voter engagement for people with disabilities. She also works in coalition with the civil rights community in Washington, DC to ensure strong federal policy regarding voting rights and election administration from a voter-centric and intersectional perspective. She earned her MSW in Social and Economic Development from Washington University in St. Louis and BA in Sociology and English Literature from the State University of New York at Geneseo. Disabled herself, Michelle has over 15 years experience in the disability vote.

Sam Hirsch

Partner (Washington DC)

Sam Hirsch is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Jenner & Block LLP. Sam has practiced election, voting-rights, and redistricting law since the 1990s and has litigated cases in these fields in more than 20 states. His articles on redistricting and election administration have appeared in a broad range of publications, ranging from the Election Law Journal to The New York Times. From 2009 to 2017, Sam served in the U.S. Department of Justice as the Deputy Associate Attorney General and as the acting Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. Sam also maintains an active legal practice on behalf of Indian tribes. A native Kentuckian, Sam graduated in 1984 from Rice University and in 1993 from the Harvard Law School, where he was the Treasurer of the Harvard Law Review. Sam and his wife, Karin Green, have two adult daughters, Julia and Charlotte.