David Chavern
News Media Alliance
President and CEO

As president of the news industry’s largest trade organization, Chavern is trying to rewire the digital marketplace so publishers can land fair value for journalism that’s being gobbled up by a few massive tech companies.

Teddy Downey
The Capitol Forum
CEO and Executive Editor

Downey runs the subscription-based site that focuses squarely on antitrust enforcement, corporate investigations, and mergers and acquisitions, often besting the better-resourced competition.

Mark Hansen
Kellogg Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick
Partner

Hansen is leading the team combating the Federal Trade Commission’s charge that Facebook operates as a monopoly. He notched an important court victory for the social-media giant last summer.

Mark Isakowitz
Google
Vice President, Government Affairs and Public Policy, US and Canada

With political criticism of Big Tech growing, Isakowitz is in charge of pushing back on behalf of one of Silicon Valley’s iconic brands. He has opposed a flurry of House leadership’s antitrust bills, claiming that several would “break” popular consumer services.

William Kovacic
George Washington University
Professor

A former FTC chairman, Kovacic remains one of the most respected voices on antitrust issues, often quoted to tap his deep trove of historical caseload knowledge.

Barry Lynn
Open Markets Institute
Executive Director

Having fought corporate concentration through multiple administrations, Lynn is finally seeing his anti-monopoly vision take root in the Biden administration.

Sarah Miller
American Economic Liberties Project
Executive Director and Founder

Miller has played a central role in elevating the once-sleepy world of antitrust issues among policymakers. Her anti-Facebook coalition ruffled feathers from DC to Silicon Valley.

Diana L. Moss
American Antitrust Institute
President

An economist by training, Moss conducted a deep analysis showing how the risk of price fixing grows when the government permits drug-company mergers. Her work spurred a review of the Federal Trade Commission’s merger policies.

John Schmidtlein
Williams & Connolly
Partner

When Google needed a defense against the government’s antitrust case, it turned to Schmidtlein, who has two decades of trial experience.

Jon Schweppe
American Principles Project, Director
Policy and Government Affairs

At a time when antitrust is a rare area with potential bipartisan agreement, Schweppe lobbied Republican lawmakers to get behind a half dozen bills that promote antitrust enforcement to blunt anticompetitive monopolies.

Matt Stoller
American Economic Liberties Project
Director, Research

In the two years since he published Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracyand launched his Substack, state and federal government agencies have filed more than a half dozen antitrust cases against Big Tech firms, which he attributes to his early work shedding light on the issues.

Jonathan Yarowsky
WilmerHale, Partner and Co-Chair
Public Policy and Legislative Affairs Practice

As the supply-chain bottleneck magnified the consequences of mergers, Yarowsky was called upon by Biden-administration officials to help recommend new antitrust structures that he says are forward-leaning but not “radical.”

Greg Baer
Bank Policy Institute
President and CEO

Even through the pandemic, Baer’s BPI—which represents universal, regional, and foreign banks—managed to increase the volume of research it provides for policy shapers, with a greater emphasis on the impact of fintech and cryptocurrency providers.

James Ballentine
American Bankers Association
Executive Vice President, Congressional Relations and Political Affairs

A former Capitol Hill staffer, Ballentine helped ABA’s efforts in pushing Congress to update the nation’s anti-money-laundering rules.

Kenneth E. Bentsen Jr.
SIFMA
President and CEO

The head of the trade association for the securities industry, representing 1 million employees, has thrown his support behind a transition away from LIBOR, the standard used to determine many interest rates.

Tim Berry
JPMorgan Chase
Head of Global Government Relations

A former top aide to House GOP leader Kev-in McCarthy, Berry can easily gather and dispense Republican thinking on financial and business policy.

Robert Broeksmit
Mortgage Bankers Association
President and CEO

Broeksmit applauded the Treasury Department’s move to suspend limits on purchases of select loans, which he warned was causing market disruptions.

Naomi Camper
American Bankers Association
Chief Policy Officer

Camper champions improving financial access for those who don’t have a bank, and she’s a leading advocate for corporations to fold social responsibility into their missions.

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Jake Chervinsky
Blockchain Association
Executive Vice President and Head of Policy

Chervinsky left Compound Labs last fall to join the association representing more than 60 cryptocurrency firms.

Kate Childress
Bank Policy Institute
Executive Vice President and Head of Public Affairs

Childress and her team have been closely involved in a handful of financial-services bills, including, perhaps most significantly, leading advocacy for the LIBOR transition bill.

Nicole Elam
National Bankers Association
President and CEO

An alum of JPMorgan Chase and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Elam immediately became the voice on Capitol Hill for minority banks—from United Bank of Philadelphia to Optus Bank in Columbia, South Carolina—when she assumed her current role last year.

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Tara Foscato
PNC
Managing Director and Senior Vice President, Federal Government Affairs

A former special assistant to the Federal Reserve, Foscato stands out among other regional bank lobbyists for her assertiveness, maintenance of relationships, and savvy judgment on when to deploy top-shelf executives to enter the legislative fray.

Kevin Fromer
Financial Services Forum
President and CEO

Fromer represents the regulatory and legislative interests of the US’s eight largest globally regulated banks and has engaged with the Biden administration on how to create a more inclusive economy and reduce the carbon footprint of member institutions.

Tom Gannon
H&R Block
Vice President and Chief Government Relations Officer

After more than a decade with Mastercard, Gannon is managing legislative and regulatory strategy for the massive tax-preparation company, which operates 10,000-plus offices nationwide.

Tina Giorgio
ICBA Bancard
President and CEO

A former community banker, Giorgio runs Bancard operations for ICBA, which represents nearly 50,000 locations across the US. She’s steeped in the ever-changing developments on payment processes.

Tiffany Haas
Financial Services Forum
Co-Head of Government Affairs

Haas represents chief executives of the eight largest US financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Citigroup.

Bridget Hagan
Mindset
Partner

In her position with this bipartisan policy firm, Hagan works with financial and insurance institutions to help clarify regulatory provisions, credit rankings, and international insurance capital standards.

Richard Hunt
Consumer Bankers Association
President and CEO

Hunt, who is planning to step down this summer, has been an acerbic critic of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, pushing for it to be replaced due to what he calls a “flawed leadership structure.”

Dennis Kelleher
Better Markets
Cofounder, President, and CEO

At a time when Big Finance has deeper pockets than its foes, Kelleher isn’t afraid to go against the grain in promoting the public interest, including insisting that the reappointment of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell be very carefully reviewed, even though he enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

Aaron Klein
Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow

A former Treasury Department aide, Klein has shed light for policymakers on how banks wield overdraft fees to boost profits with almost no risk.

Jane Larimer
Nacha
President and CEO

Nacha governs the system that allows direct deposits to land in our accounts, and Larimer collaborated with the Treasury Department to improve the speed and accuracy of the monthly recurring child-tax-credit payments.

Walton Liles
Blue Ridge Law & Policy
Cofounder and Principal

Liles is one of the best-connected operators in the financial-services world, having developed strong relationships from Capitol Hill to the White House.

Drew Maloney
American Investment Council
President and CEO

In his role representing private-equity firms, Maloney waged an aggressive campaign against tax provisions that impacted carried interest as part of Democrats’ Build Back Better plan.

Doyle Mitchell
Industrial Bank
President and CEO

As head of one of the only minority depository institutions in the Washington area, Mitchell has found himself testifying on Capitol Hill on behalf of independent community bankers.

Bill Nelson
Bank Policy Institute
Executive Vice President and Chief Economist

Nelson translates the ins and outs of monetary policy to influencers and wields data to break down emerging trends such as green lending.

Rob Nichols
American Bankers Association
President and CEO

An advocate for the nation’s $23.3-trillion banking industry, Nichols worked to remove the IRS reporting provision from the House version of the Build Back Better plan.

Andrew Olmem
Mayer Brown
Partner

A former deputy director of the National Economic Council in the Trump administration, Olmem is now lobbying on behalf of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US.

Michael Paese
Goldman Sachs
Global Head, Office of Government Affairs

Heralded by some as the most influential financial-services lobbyist in Washington, Paese has long held a goal to blow up the Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from conducting certain investment activities and limits their dealings with hedge funds.

Brendan Reilly
Barclays
Managing Director and Head of US Regulatory Policy and Government Relations

A JPMorgan Chase alum, Reilly helms the Washington team for Barclays—which man-ages clients’ money in more than 40 countries—as its investment-banking portfolio grows.

Rebeca Romero Rainey
Independent Community Bankers of America
President and CEO

Romero Rainey came out against a Treasury Department proposal requiring financial institutions to report customer account information to the IRS.

Jason Rosenberg
JPMorgan Chase
Managing Director and Head of US Government Relations

Rosenberg’s influence on Capitol Hill is comparable only to Michael Paese’s. Those who know him say his secret is to wield maximum impact without a trace of fingerprints.

Dan Smith
Consumer Bankers Association
Executive Vice President and Head of Regulatory Affairs

With more than two decades of legislative and regulatory experience, Smith spent much of the last year helping coordinate banks’ distribution of economic-impact payments from the CARES Act.

Kristin Smith
Blockchain Association
Executive Director

Smith represents the most prominent cryptocurrency organizations, pushing lawmakers for a comprehensive tax structure for these multiplying e-currencies.

Michael Thompson
Goldman Sachs
Managing Director and Head of US Government Affairs

On most legislation in the financial-services realm, Goldman is the Goliath on Capitol Hill, and Thompson is well known for having the ears of all the key players.

Jamie Wall
Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association
Executive Vice President, Advocacy

The voice for the nation’s securities industry, Wall has expanded her team to ten advocacy experts educating policymakers on the capital-gains and dividend tax rates and how those incentivize investment and enhance retirement savings.

Alison Weiss
MassMutual
Head of Government Relations

Weiss spent the last year developing the effort to index outdated interest rates in the IRS code to improve financial protection for small businesses and families during an economic crisis.

Miller Whitehouse-Levine
DeFi Education Fund Policy
Director

Whitehouse-Levine is attempting to reshape the debate around decentralized finance—the idea that transactions don’t need to rely on a central system—by deploying a team to meet with every congressional office by April.

Candida Wolff
Citigroup
Executive Vice President, Global Government Affairs

A leading woman in the banking industry, Wolff has legislative prowess that derives from her time formulating strategy in the White House and for Republican leadership on the Hill.

Ivan Zapien
Hogan Lovells
Partner

Zapien, a former Democratic chief of staff in the House and Senate, is plugged into the latest legislative maneuverings on everything from debt-ceiling standoffs to infrastructure.

José Andrés
World Central Kitchen
Founder and Chief Feeding Officer

DC’s celebrity chef uses his global profile to mobilize on behalf of the hungry (and, more recently, refugees from war-torn Ukraine), urging Congress to expand FEMA’s emergency food program and continue to prop up the rebuilding restaurant industry.

Bruce Andrews
Intel
Corporate Vice President and Chief Government Affairs Officer

Andrews left SoftBank for Intel to help lead the company’s push for semiconductor investment, which the federal CHIPS Act is designed to help stem.

Binyamin Appelbaum
New York Times
Editorial Board Writer

The lead writer on economic and business issues for the Gray Lady, Appelbaum designs arguments as varied as the case for taxing the wealthy and why Americans should ditch TurboTax.

Kate Bahn
Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Chief Economist and Director, Labor Market Policy

Bahn is in the business of reshaping the narrative about how the labor market functions.

Sirisha Bandla
Virgin Galactic
Vice President, Government Affairs

Bandla is not only lobbying on behalf of the future of tourism—she’s along for the ride, having been one of two women to fly to the edge of space with Richard Branson last summer.

Abigail Blunt
Kraft Heinz
Strategic Adviser, Government and Environmental, Social, and Governance Affairs

Blunt changed roles last year, shifting from day-to-day issues to focus on broader, long-term, and global company challenges.

Joshua Bolten
Business Roundtable
President and CEO

The former chief of staff to President George W. Bush championed passage of last year’s infrastructure bill, advocating for both small and larger businesses that signaled their support.

Betsy Booren
Tyson Foods
Managing Director, Regulatory Policy and Business Intelligence

Before her recent move from the Consumer Brands Association, she was an intermediary between member companies (like ButcherBox and PepsiCo) and OSHA, the FDA, and the White House in designating her industry’s workers as “essential” in the pandemic.

Neil Bradley
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Executive Vice President, Chief Policy Officer, and Head of Strategic Advocacy

Bradley rallied opposition to the Democrats’ reconciliation package, which included tax hikes, the ultimate anathema to business groups. But he’s also been tasked with soothing tensions after the Chamber endorsed a slate of congressional Democrats for reelection.

Heidi Brock
American Forest & Paper Association
President and CEO

As Americans continue to shift more of their purchasing power online, the trend has been a boon to cardboard manufacturers, leading to a thicket of potential regulatory challenges that Brock has been navigating for AF&PA members.

Roxanne Brown
United Steelworkers
International Vice President at Large

In support of the bipartisan infrastructure package, USW launched a “We Supply America” campaign to highlight all the elements that go into keeping the country running, from roads to pipes to water-system maintenance.

Dan Bryant
Walmart
Senior Vice President, Global Public Policy and Government Affairs

With stints at PepsiCo and the Department of Justice under his belt, Bryant now helms government affairs for the world’s largest private employer.

Ron Busby
US Black Chambers
President and CEO

In response to a flood of African American business closures, Busby launched the country’s first-ever national certification program for Black-owned businesses.

Dawn Buth
National Collegiate Athletic Association
Director, Government Relations

As Congress ramps up its scrutiny of college athletics—including introducing a bill to force the NCAA to change how it investigates schools—Buth is working to beat back claims that it’s a monopoly in need of more guardrails.

Stephen Ciccone
Toyota
Group Vice President, Government Affairs

Toyota lobbied against a tax incentive that would have been available only to consumers purchasing electric vehicles made by organized labor. The proposal was backed by the White House and the United Auto Workers.

Suzanne Clark
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
President and CEO

In her first year, the Chamber boss pledged to form the biggest coalition businesses ever put together to defeat the Democrats’ reconciliation package.

Brian Conklin
SoftBank Group
Senior Vice President, Managing Partner, and Head of Global Government Affairs

The former Bush-administration official helms advocacy for this Japanese multinational conglomerate, which has an estimated annual revenue of nearly $60 billion.

Ashley Davis
West Front Strategies
Founding Partner

An alum of the George W. Bush White House, Davis worked on drug-pricing provisions in the Build Back Better legislation that eventually were scrapped by Democrats.

Brian Dodge
Retail Industry Leaders Association
President

Dodge led a coalition of businesses asking Congress to pass the INFORM Consumers Act, which would crack down on the proliferation of counterfeit and stolen goods being sold on the internet.

Roger Dow
U.S. Travel Association
President and CEO

Dow says businesses have been too restrictive in letting employees return to in-person meetings and conventions, but he believes corporate travel will rebound this year.

Zippy Duvall
American Farm Bureau Federation
President

Duvall lobbied against Democrats’ Build Back Better spending proposals and tax increases, which he said would be shouldered by America’s farmers and ranchers who have fed the country during the pandemic.

Katie Beirne Fallon
McDonald’s
Executive Vice President and Chief Global Impact Officer

Few companies have the reach of the Golden Arches, which serves more than 65 million customers a day. The former Obama-administration aide added a new dedicated Global Impact Team to bring together dozens of global policy and sustainability experts.

Derrick Figures
Sierra Club
Director, Labor and Economic Justice Program

Figures, who previously worked at the American Federation for Teachers, championed the PRO Act, which would enshrine all workers’ rights to join a union.

Susan Fox
Walt Disney Company
Senior Vice President, Government Relations

Fox, who has been with Disney for two decades, was tapped last winter to succeed Richard Bates, who died unexpectedly. The sprawling media company is attracting greater congressional scrutiny for its filming in China.

Geoff Freeman
Consumer Brands Association
President and CEO

Freeman, whose association represents more than 1,700 popular brands, became one of the leading voices urging the Biden administration to offer more clarity and specifics on how companies should handle vaccination requirements.

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Jon Gold
National Retail Federation
Vice President, Supply Chain and Customs Policy

As a representative for apparel companies, Gold expressed frustration at the Biden administration’s refusal to lift the Chinese tariffs imposed by the Trump White House.

Susanne Sachsman Grooms
Kaplan Hecker & Fink
Partner

A former chief counsel to Representative Elijah Cummings, Grooms slid into the private sector this year to launch a congressional-investigations practice that advises companies on how to deal with House Oversight Committee inquiries.

Caroline L. Harris
Capitol Tax Partners
Partner

A former tax attorney at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Harris now provides advice for clients looking to navigate complex tax proposals, including businesses with interests before Congress.

Mary Kay Henry
Service Employees International Union
International President

Arguably the most influential union voice within the White House, Henry mobilized SEIU members to focus on promoting the core elements of Biden’s Build Back Better plan.

Jennifer Hillman
Council on Foreign Relations
Senior Fellow, Trade and International Political Economy

Hillman wrote a paper on why China isn’t likely to invest in Afghanistan, even after the US withdrawal last summer.

Desiree Hoffman
UAW
International Representative

For Hoffman, last year was consumed with combating auto-industry opposition to the electric-vehicle tax credit included in Build Back Better.

Robert Holleyman
Crowell & Moring
Partner

A former deputy US trade representative, Holleyman has experience in China, India, and beyond, with a special focus on the digital economy, market access, and cross-border data flows.

Selina Jackson
Procter & Gamble
Senior Vice President, Government Relations and Public Policy

A former World Bank special representative, Jackson leads a P&G team of more than 60 policy and advocacy experts who make up a potent presence on Capitol Hill.

Chris Jahn
American Chemistry Council
President and CEO

Jahn opposed any budget pay-fors that would reinstate long-expired Superfund taxes. He warned that they would increase costs on a variety of materials.

Everett Kelley
American Federation of Government Employees
National President

The head of the largest union representing federal employees, Kelley appeared before Congress to push for more rights and protections for transportation-security officers in the increasingly turbulent skies.

Edward Kelly
International Association of Fire Fighters
General President

Kelly, who represents 325,000 members, worked with Michigan congressman Dan Kildee on a provision in the reconciliation package to protect them from gear made with toxic chemicals.

Sean Kennedy
National Restaurant Association
Executive Vice President, Public Affairs

Kennedy scored a win in getting the Small Business Administration to expand its loan program as restaurants continue to face uncertainty amid the lingering pandemic.

Tom Kuhn
Edison Electric Institute
President

Kuhn represents America’s investor-owned electric companies, which are on the hunt for funding mechanisms to transition to carbon-free technologies.

Stephen Lamar
American Apparel & Footwear Association
President and CEO

Lamar was one of the first to sound the alarm on supply-chain disruptions that triggered shortages and price increases on clothing and shoes.

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Mike Layman
International Franchise Association
Senior Vice President, Government Relations and Public Affairs

Layman fought against the Democrats’ PRO Act, a bill aimed at boosting labor, which he has called an “existential threat” to the recovery of franchises.

Brett Loper
American Express
Executive Vice President, Government Affairs

Loper uses his Capitol Hill experience to navigate the policies impacting the credit-card company that issues the most transactions in the world.

Katherine Lugar
American Beverage Association
President and CEO

Lugar heralded a bipartisan legislative push to bring more transparency to the price of aluminum, the largest commodity cost for beverage makers.

Robb MacKie
American Bakers Association
President and CEO

MacKie warned his members and policymakers about the rising prices in 49 of the top 50 ingredients, potentially raising the cost of baked goods by 5 to 10 percent.

Sean McGarvey
North America’s Building Trades Unions
President

McGarvey vigorously pressured House lawmakers to accelerate the infrastructure bill, calling the bargaining process between moderates and liberals a “nightmare in Washington.”

Jim McGreevy
Beer Institute
President and CEO

McGreevy has lobbied strongly against aluminum tariffs while continuing his campaign to make his organization the country’s premier trade group for brewers.

Bill Miller
American Gaming Association
President and CEO

After the roughest year in its history, with nearly 130 casinos transforming into vaccination clinics, Miller is convinced that the gaming industry is back on its strongest footing ever.

Jonathan Nabavi
National Football League
Vice President, Public Policy and Government Affairs

As legalized sports betting grows, Nabavi has been in contact with lawmakers at all levels to protect the league’s interests on issues of data use, information sharing, and types of objectionable betting practices.

Aric Newhouse
National Association of Manufacturers
Senior Vice President, Policy and Government Relations

Newhouse didn’t mince words in his work lobbying against Democrats’ proposed corporate-tax increases in the Build Back Better plan, declaring to the Washington Post: “We’re doing it in every way you can imagine.”

Terry O’Sullivan
Laborers’ International Union of North America
General President

A fiery orator unafraid to pull punches, O’Sullivan accused the Biden administration of “pandering to environmental extremists” when it canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.

Eli Peterson
TransUnion
Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel

Peterson leads the firm’s cross-business strategy, with a particular focus on privacy matters, regularly engaging policymakers on how to safeguard consumers’ information.

Paul Richman
Insured Retirement Institute
Chief Government and Political Affairs Officer

Richman guides the trade association that represents the supply chain for the insurance retirement industry, which explores what safety-net retirees will need. He was a leading proponent of the Secure Act 2.0, a plan to help 401(k) holders boost their retirement savings.

Charles H. Rivkin
Motion Picture Association
Chairman and CEO

Rivkin, who represents not only the old movie studios but also their rival disrupter Netflix, led a global coalition to reduce digital piracy and protect original creativity.

Chip Rogers
American Hotel and Lodging Association
President and CEO

Rogers won an ECPAT-USA Freedom Award in June for his campaign to train hundreds of thousands of hotel employees in how to prevent human trafficking.

Randy Russell
Russell Group
President

An agricultural-policy expert who also worked for the Pillsbury Company, Russell is steeped in the country-of-origin labeling debate, helping alter a provision that was later revoked by the World Trade Organization.

William Samuel
AFL-CIO
Director, Government Affairs

Samuel became a leading advocate for moving the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan with expediency, hailing it as the largest investment in workers since the New Deal.

Lee Saunders
American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees
President

Saunders helped secure $350 billion in direct aid to states, cities, and towns to prevent public-sector layoffs and restore essential services.

Jock Scharfen
Cargill
Senior Vice President, Global Government Relations

Having served on the National Security Council for three Presidents, Scharfen brings a global perspective as Cargill, the Minnesota-based food corporation, expands its Asia-Pacific footprint.

Matthew Shay
National Retail Federation
President and CEO

Shay advocates for the nation’s largest private-sector industry, representing more than 50 mil­lion workers.

Liz Shuler
AFL-CIO
President

Elected in August after the sudden death of Richard Trumka, Shuler is the first woman to lead the federation in its 66-year history. She advocated for workers’ strikes to place pressure on businesses and politicians.

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Lonnie R. Stephenson
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
International President

Though opposed to the Green New Deal, the IBEW’s Stephenson lent important support to President Biden’s jobs plan, which he thinks will spur a renaissance in manufacturing.

Chris R. Swonger
Distilled Spirits Council of the United States
President and CEO

Swonger and his team worked to have the HALT and RIDE acts included in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, a provision that aims to utilize in-vehicle technology to prevent drunk driving.

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Jay Timmons
National Association of Manufacturers
President and CEO

NAM, which represents 14,000 companies, helped manufacturers promote vaccination, and Timmons led by example. After mandating Covid vaccines for employment at NAM, he achieved 100-percent compliance by August.

Julie Tippens
American Federation of Government Employees
Director, Legislative, Political, and Mobilization Departments

Tippens was brought aboard the union last fall after spending decades on Capitol Hill as chief of staff to three different members.

Don Vieira
Sequoia Capital
Global Chief Legal Officer

Vieira, a former Justice Department chief of staff, helps advise on financial reviews conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US.

Lezlee Westine
Personal Care Products Council
President and CEO

Westine’s 600-member cosmetic and personal-care companies include Idaho’s Artisan Labs, Texas’s Jack Black, and New York’s Revlon.

Robert Yeakel
National Grocers Association
Director, Government Relations

Yeakel’s group represents thousands of retailers, wholesalers, and suppliers during a period when the industry remains on the frontlines of Covid-related health and inflation issues.

James Ackerman
Prison Fellowship
President and CEO

Ackerman runs the Christian-rooted fellowship maintaining that prisoners and former prisoners can be restored to more productive lives within and outside of incarceration.

Roy Austin
Meta
Vice President, Civil Rights, and Deputy General Counsel

Austin built a ten-person team focused on addressing how the social-media giant—the recently rebranded parent company of Facebook—impacts historically marginalized communities.

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Nihad Awad
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Cofounder and Executive Director

When Customs and Border Protection officials seized a shipment of tiles to decorate Muslim holy spaces, it was Awad—high-profile leader of the advocacy group for America’s 3.5 million Muslims—who was out front calling for their release.

Kris Brown
Brady
President

Even as the gun issue seemed to lose political urgency last year, Brown—head of this gun-violence-prevention group named for Jim and Sarah Brady—continued to lobby for a law that would make it illegal to sell or transfer any firearm without a background check.

Paul Butler
Georgetown Law
Professor

One of DC’s most recognizable experts on legal issues around police overreach, he was a legal analyst during NBC’s coverage of the verdict in Ahmaud Arbery’s murder. Butler pointed out that while criminal trials aren’t instruments of social change, they can indicate progress in equal-justice cases.

Melanie L. Campbell
National Coalition on Black Civic Participation
President and CEO

Campbell has been at the tip of the full-throttle effort to push Congress to pass voting-rights reforms, staging demonstrations on Capitol Hill.

Sheryll Cashin
Georgetown Law
Professor

Cashin testified before a House subcommittee on exclusionary single-family zoning, which looms as one of the hottest intra-Democratic issues, especially in the country’s pricier blue parts. She earned national media attention for her account of the rescinding of a Maryland light-rail project that would have benefited Black neighborhoods.

Joi O. Chaney
National Urban League
Executive Director, Washington Bureau, and Senior Vice President, Policy and Advocacy

Chaney was intimately involved in securing and choreographing meetings between civil-rights groups and West Virginia senator Joe Manchin during the debates over voting rights.

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David Cole
American Civil Liberties Union
National Legal Director

Cole has clung to the view that the ACLU must defend free-speech rights of even those it opposes politically.

Amber Goodwin
Community Justice Action Fund
Founding Director

Goodwin was invited to the White House last spring for an event on gun violence and has testified before the House Judiciary Commit-tee to shed light on how the issue affects minority communities.

Holly Harris
Justice Action Network
President and Executive Director

Harris became a stinging critic of the Biden administration for failing to extend a home-confinement program for prisoners that was started during the pandemic.

Wade Henderson
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Former Interim President and CEO

Henderson lambasted Senate Republicans in an op-ed for opposing the nomination of Muslim American Dilawar Syed to a leadership post in the Small Business Administration.

Ron LeGrand
National Criminal Justice Association
Policy Director

An attorney and former congressional staffer, LeGrand has consulted on criminal-justice issues for a host of clients, including Americans for Prosperity and Human Rights Watch.

Jim Pasco
National Fraternal Order of Police
Executive Director

As Congress debated efforts to reform policing, Pasco was point man for the union representing the officers—a union that some activists accused of impeding reform. Nonetheless, he had direct contact with senators Tim Scott and Cory Booker.

Liz Seaton
National LGBTQ Task Force
Policy Director

Seaton ensured that her group pressured the Biden administration to preserve the public-housing funding and vouchers included in the Build Back Better plan, arguing that a stable home is essential for marginalized communities to acquire economic justice.

Hilary O. Shelton
NAACP
Director, Washington Bureau, and Senior Vice President, Advocacy and Policy

As policy director for the country’s oldest and largest civil-rights organization, Shelton has a portfolio as wide as his reputation is authoritative.

Vincent Talucci
International Association of Chiefs of Police
Executive Director and CEO

Talucci offered a key endorsement of Kristen Clarke, President Biden’s choice to run the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which handles high-profile police-misconduct cases.

Danny Vargas
VARCom Solutions
President and Founder

Vargas orchestrated a multifaceted, bipartisan effort to pass and enact a law authorizing the creation of the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of the American Latino.

Chuck Wexler
Police Executive Research Forum
Executive Director

In a turbulent era of police coverage, Wexler—whose organization conducts independent research and produces reports on policing—has advocated for fostering better relationships with media to produce stories showing police as servants rather than villains.

George David Banks
Bipartisan Policy Center
Fellow

A rare Republican climate activist, Banks was chief strategist for the minority on the Climate Crisis Committee, helping GOP leaders develop a policy strategy for when their party returns to the majority.

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Paul Bledsoe
Progressive Policy Institute
Strategic Adviser

A Clinton-administration alum, Bledsoe has been raising awareness about the need to limit near-term temperature increases to preserve natural systems around the globe.

Carol Browner
Covington
Senior of Counsel

With the longest tenure of anyone as EPA administrator on her résumé, Browner has sterling clout in the environmental community, especially during a Democratic administration.

Rachel Cleetus
Union of Concerned Scientists
Policy Director, Climate & Energy Program

Cleetus, a policy expert at the nonprofit founded at MIT, testified before Congress to explain why more laws are needed to force fossil-fuel companies to disclose climate risks of their actions.

Zack Colman
Politico
Climate and Energy Reporter

Colman has spearheaded reporting on a series of stories about the cultural divisions within some of the most established environmental organizations, turning heads inside this policy silo.

David Doniger
Natural Resources Defense Council
Senior Strategic Director, Climate & Clean Energy Program

Doniger is asking conservatives not to surrender on the issue of climate change, arguing that a real competition for environmentally conscious voters would spur legislative progress.

Leslie Fields
Sierra Club
National Director, Policy Advocacy and Legal

Fields, a former law professor at Howard University, has pushed the Sierra Club internally to invest time and resources in local environmental-justice issues.

Rich Gold
Holland & Knight
Public Policy Leader

Gold has advocated for the Reconnecting Communities Act, a grant program to benefit infrastructure-reuse projects around the country.

Elizabeth Gore
Environmental Defense Fund
Senior Vice President, Political Affairs

Gore gets into the weeds on legislative initiatives as varied as refurbishing orphan wells and the electrification of heavy-duty vehicles.

Lila Helms
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
Executive Vice President, External Affairs

Helms helps direct the thousands of cleanup projects funded by NFWF, which has also devoted billions to conservation measures.

Gene Karpinski
League of Conservation Voters
President

Karpinski has overseen the league’s largest-ever off-year advocacy campaign, urging passage of the Build Back Better legislation, which he believes would be the strongest climate-policy initiative in US history.

Joshua Siegel
Politico
Energy and Climate Reporter

Siegel has closely chronicled the slow-moving evolution of Republicans’ positioning on climate change, establishing his work as imperative reading for those working on environmental issues.

Shelley Vinyard
Natural Resources Defense Council
Boreal Corporate Campaign Manager

Vinyard keeps close tabs on companies’ environmental impact, recently bringing scrutiny to Procter & Gamble’s role in driving deforestation.

Jason Walsh
BlueGreen Alliance
Executive Director

Walsh, who leads an organization dedicated to melding labor and environmental coalitions, testified before the Senate Finance Committee last spring about how the United States could create economic opportunities by improving its offshore-wind supply chain.

Durwood Zaelke
Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development
Founder and President

A pioneer on the need to cut greenhouse gases outside of carbon dioxide, Zaelke was described by one peer as the most influential operator on climate you’ve never heard of.

Cyril T. Zaneski
E&E News
Executive Editor

Through its five daily publications, Zaneski’s E&E News—acquired by Axel Springer through its purchase of Politico—is a natural stop for government decision makers and business leaders seeking reporting on energy and environment issues.

Dean Baker
Center for Economic and Policy Research
Cofounder and Senior Economist

Baker is a go-to resource for media trying to make sense of how conscious policymaking decisions prioritized the wealthy’s interests over those of ordinary citizens.

Oren Cass
American Compass
Founder and Executive Director

The former Bain consultant is constructing a counterintuitive economic philosophy on the right that’s rooted in greater government intervention to achieve “common-good capitalism.”

Frank Clemente
Americans for Tax Fairness
Executive Director

Clemente led a progressive campaign on Capitol Hill to raise $2 trillion in revenue through higher taxes on the rich and corporations, an effort that moderate Democrats pared back.

Judy Conti
National Employment Law Project
Government Affairs Director

Among economics and labor reporters, Conti is considered a dependable resource who knows more about the intricacy of unemployment issues than almost anyone else in this town.

Tyler Cowen
George Mason University
Mercatus Center Chairman and Faculty Director

Cowen has written with concern about how Covid-19 is affecting broader, long-term migration around the world and presenting a threat to economic globalism.

Adam Hersh
Economic Policy Institute
Visiting Economist

At the beginning of last year, Hersh released a series of reports that became the basis for the scale of fiscal stimulus needed for the US economy to propel itself out of the pandemic. Later, President Biden cited Hersh’s job estimates for the infrastructure and Build Back Better plans.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin
American Action Forum
President

The former Bush-administration Congressional Budget Office director is a leading voice on the right, who joined with Moody’s Mark Zandi and Harvard’s Doug Elmendorf to warn of higher inflation if Democrats pass their $2-trillion spending package.

Greg Ip
Wall Street Journal
Chief Economics Commentator

Ip has drawn a readership for his finessed nuance. After a global climate-change report was released, he noted implications that were, he wrote, “both encouraging and sobering.”

Eli Lehrer
R Street Institute
President

Funded by both the Koch brothers and George Soros, this free-market think tank tackles issues falling just outside the mainstream, such as electricity policy, flood insurance, and disinformation on college campuses.

Maya MacGuineas
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
President

MacGuineas paints a bleak picture of America’s fiscal policy, underscoring that US debt is still growing faster than the broader economy.

C. Nicole Mason
Institute for Women’s Policy Research
President and CEO

With research experience in economic security, poverty, and entitlement reform, Mason is one of the youngest people and one of the few women of color to head a DC think tank.

Joyce Y. Meyer
American Council of Life Insurers
Executive Vice President, Government Relations

Meyer’s time working in both the House speaker’s office and the White House has helped her build a Rolodex to assist ACLI member companies in navigating questions about retirement security.

Susan K. Neely
American Council of Life Insurers
President and CEO

Neely is proud of a comprehensive program that ACLI created to close the racial-wealth gap by advancing access to financial security in underserved communities.

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Sharon Parrott
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
President

Parrot argued to policymakers that the biggest risk of Democrats’ signature spending initiative was that it would shrink because lawmakers weren’t willing to raise taxes and squeeze savings out of drug companies.

Adam Posen
Peterson Institute for International Economics
President

Posen, a former monetary-policy maker for the Bank of England before taking over this venerable think tank, predicts that inflation will remain above 3 percent throughout 2022 but will then gradually recede.

Brian Riedl
Manhattan Institute
Senior Fellow

Riedl composed a 118-page book of charts on spending, taxes, and deficits, which included many findings that buck conventional wisdom.

Manny Rossman
Harbinger Strategies
Partner

A former aide to Senate Republican leadership, the well-wired Rossman is an in-demand counselor on the intricacy of tax issues for members of both parties.

Daniel M. Rothschild
George Mason University
Executive Director, Mercatus Center

An R Street Institute alumnus, Rothschild heads the economics center’s strategy and programs, wielding influence via his articles published by the Wall Street Journal, Reason magazine, and the Heritage Foundation, among others.

Richard Rubin
Wall Street Journal
US Tax Policy Reporter

Rubin has established himself as one of the most important journalists on economics for his explanatory reporting, such as his piece detailing who exactly would pay for a corporate tax increase.

Heidi Shierholz
Economic Policy Institute
President

Shierholz—whose think tank skews liberal—has pushed back on Republican claims that the recovery package led to the inflation spike, pointing to Covid’s supply shortage and a shrinking corporate tax base as the main contributors.

William E. Spriggs
Howard University
Professor of Economics
AFL-CIO
Chief Economist

Spriggs’s dual roles make him a frequently quoted analyst on how race and gender impact the labor force and unemployment statistics.

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John Stanton
Hogan Lovells
Senior Counsel

A premier Washington tax lobbyist, Stanton boasts a diverse portfolio that includes navigating global tax issues, state pension plans, and changes to gaming regulations.

Jeff Stein
Washington Post
White House Economics Reporter

Stein became the reporter to talk to for 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns rolling out their econ policies. Now he’s usually first to get his hands on the Biden administration’s proposals.

Jim Wallis
Georgetown University
Inaugural Chair and Director, Center on Faith & Justice

After scoring an invitation to the White House with other faith leaders, Wallis requested prayers for his “biblical priorities,” such as the earned-income tax credit and an expansion of housing vouchers.

David Wessel
Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow

Wessel’s book Only the Rich Can Play details exactly how opportunity zones ultimately made their way into the 2017 tax bill.

Matthew Yglesias
Slow Boring
Founder and Editor

Yglesias’s witty and pervasive Twitter presence can annoy progressives, but through his Substack newsletter, Slow Boring, he still counts as one of the most influential voices on the policies shaping the administration.

John Bailey
Walton Family Foundation
Adviser
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Fellow

Realizing that the debate around school reopenings during the pandemic was based on a flurry of different findings, Bailey set out to create a single comprehensive report summarizing 130 studies to help guide policymakers.

Mario Beovides
NALEO Educational Fund
Director, Policy and Legislative Affairs

Beovides was elevated to this position after guiding the leading Latino nonprofit’s work on finding ways to boost diversity in the federal workforce.

Katherine Bradley
CityBridge
Founder and Board Chair

Peers characterize Bradley as highly influential with policy shapers because of her wide network in the educational-entrepreneurship community and her unrelenting drive.

Kathleen deLaski
Education Design Lab
Founder

The social entrepreneur is trying to bend federal policymakers to permit more financial aid for students who pursue non-college-credit, workforce-relevant programs.

Max Eden
American Enterprise Institute
Research Fellow

Eden rubs some on the left the wrong way, but even his ideological foes credit him with reshaping debates on school discipline and critical race theory.

Denise Forte
Education Trust
Interim CEO

A former senior fellow at the Century Foundation, Forte sits at the heart of any policy battle where civil rights and education intersect, most recently the federal Pell Grant program.

Wayne A.I. Frederick
Howard University
President

Writing in the New York Times, Frederick—who is also a surgeon at Howard University Hospital—made an appeal to the healthcare industry to invest more in patient outreach to minorities, whose care was disrupted during the pandemic.

Mildred García
American Association of State Colleges and Universities
President

García has worked to lure resources to underfunded regional colleges and universities that serve first-generation Americans, low-income students, and people of color.

Alexis Goldstein
Open Markets Institute
Director, Financial Policy

One of the leading proponents for canceling student debt, Goldstein takes to TV to hammer away at tax inequities that favor the wealthy.

Steve Hanke
Cato Institute
Senior Fellow

Though the Biden administration removed him from a federal education board, heavy hitters on the right—including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—still seek out Hanke’s wisdom.

Rick Hess
American Enterprise Institute
Senior Fellow

Hess is an acerbic critic of liberals who he says are seeking to scrap long-held education barometers in favor of equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Richard Kahlenberg
Century Foundation
Director, K–12 Equity, and Senior Fellow

Kahlenberg has focused on how segregated zoning policies prohibit the construction of affordable housing and bar millions from attending strong schools.

Vic Klatt
Penn Hill Group
Principal

A go-to Republican lobbyist on education issues, Klatt has long relationships with everything from early-childhood-education providers to universities.

Stefan Lallinger
Century Foundation
Senior Fellow and Director

Among his peers, Lallinger is considered a rising star on issues of racial equity in education, heading a group committed to a campaign aimed at reducing learning gaps in race and class.

Dana Laurens
Education Reform Now
National Deputy Director, Advocacy, Policy Engagement, and Partnerships

Laurens’s group requested that the Education Department force states to administer high-quality assessments of their schools after the pandemic ravaged classroom progress.

Lodriguez Murray
United Negro College Fund
Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Government Affairs

As the debt-cancellation debate languished nationally, Murray touted HBCUs that led the way by scrubbing students’ college bills unilaterally.

Becky Pringle
National Education Association
President

After taking the helm mid-pandemic at the 3-million-member organization representing schoolteachers, Pringle resisted pressure to insist on vaccine mandates for America’s largest teachers’ union.

Nina Rees
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
President and CEO

A former policy assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, Rees highlights rankings that show charter schools now make up a quarter of the top 100 US high schools.

Jenny Rickard
Common App
President and CEO

Following Common App’s removal of criminal-history and school-discipline questions, FAFSA—the entity tasked with determining student loans—announced last summer that a drug conviction would no longer endanger an applicant’s ability to receive financial aid.

Andrew J. Rotherham
Bellwether Education Partners
Cofounder and Partner

Rotherham leads a national nonprofit dedicated to improving outcomes for underserved students and has brought light to the thousands of students who vanished from learning during the pandemic.

Marguerite Roza
Georgetown University
Research Professor and Edunomics Lab Director

Roza heads a research center focused on modeling education-finance policy and practice, making her a sought-out expert for wired education influencers and policymakers.

Laura Slover
CenterPoint Education Solutions
CEO

Slover runs the education nonprofit that has worked with 178,000 teachers in 22 states to keep them up to date on the latest changes and emerging trends.

Ben Wallerstein
Whiteboard Advisors
CEO and Cofounder

If there’s a deal taking place in the private sector of education, Wallerstein—who launched his company more than a decade ago—is probably involved.

Randi Weingarten
American Federation of Teachers
President

Major education issue on the table? It’s a good bet this high-profile union executive of three decades is in the room with the nation’s top leaders to shape it.

Joanne Weiss
Weiss Associates
President

The former Department of Education chief of staff is a key behind-the-scenes player who links policy and philanthropy on a number of important issues and was ahead of the curve in developing guidance on how to teach during the pandemic.

Bryan Anderson
Southern Company
Executive Vice President and President, External Affairs

The former Coca-Cola executive helms policy and strategy for the country’s second-largest utility company, which serves 9 million customers.

Randolph Bell
Atlantic Council Global Energy Center
Director

Bell’s program, which focuses on how energy solutions can have a worldwide impact, lured A-grade businesses and lawmakers to its annual forum, drawing tens of thousands of participants from around the globe.

David Brown
Constellation
Senior Vice President, Federal Government Affairs and Public Policy

Brown, heralded by peers as one of the wisest energy minds in town, has lobbied policymakers to recognize nuclear energy for its clean-air attributes.

Michael Catanzaro
CGCN Group
President and Chief Policy Officer

Having worked in the White House Council on Environmental Policy in the George W. Bush administration and served as an adviser to former House speaker John Boehner, Catanzaro has years of connections to wield when clients approach with energy issues.

Neil Chatterjee
Hogan Lovells
Senior Adviser

As an energy regulator, Chatterjee butted heads with former President Trump over carbon pricing, but as a onetime aide to Senator Mitch McConnell, he still holds sway on the Hill.

Marty Durbin
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Senior Vice President, Policy

Durbin advocated for approval of an international treaty called the Kigali Amendment, which requires companies to phase out HFC chemicals used in refrigerators and air conditioners and will incentivize the development of replacement technology.

Alex Flint
Alliance for Market Solutions
Executive Director

Flint stands out in conservative circles for trying to get Republicans to support a carbon tax now to head off an even larger regulatory regime.

Josh Freed
Third Way
Senior Vice President, Climate and Energy

Freed is credited with bringing different voices together and changing the energy dialogue and strategy on the left, particularly around nuclear energy.

Jason Grumet
Bipartisan Policy Center
Founder and President

Though he now helms the Bipartisan Policy Center, Grumet’s background is in energy, lending him tremendous power to convene disparate interests.

Katherine Hamilton
38 North Solutions
Chair

Hamilton advocated for the Clean Energy & Sustainability Accelerator, a $20-billion program designed to build energy storage, transmission, and microgrid tax credits in the Build Back Better plan.

Aliya Haq
Breakthrough Energy
Vice President, US Policy and Advocacy

Founded by Bill Gates, this group has a goal of accelerating the energy transition to every economic sector. Haq carries to policymakers its objective of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Karen Harbert
American Gas Association
President and CEO

As head of the primary trade group for gas utilities, Harbert is striking the delicate balance of embracing emission reductions and warding off those who want to put them out of business.

Abigail Ross Hopper
Solar Energy Industries Association
President and CEO

Hopper pushed the Biden administration to end tariffs imposed on solar equipment, arguing that they’ve proven ineffective and will hamper domestic solar development.

Karen Knutson
Chevron
Vice President and General Manager, Government Affairs

A former chief of staff to Senator Lisa Murkowski who once worked for GE, Knutson has juice among Senate Republicans and veteran players in the energy sector.

John F. Kotek
Nuclear Energy Institute
Senior Vice President, Policy Development and Public Affairs

Kotek has spent most of the past year trying to ensure that nuclear energy is included in programs designed to decarbonize global energy consumption.

Frank Macchiarola
American Petroleum Institute
Senior Vice President, Policy, Economics, and Regulatory Affairs

When the Biden administration requested that the FTC investigate oil companies for “potentially illegal conduct,” it was Macchiarola who fired back at the President.

Sasha Mackler
Bipartisan Policy Center
Executive Director, Energy Project

Mackler advocated many of the energy provisions in the infrastructure bill directly to key senators from both parties.

Marco Margheri
Eni
Head of US Relations
Eni New Energy Inc.
Chairman

Margheri is point man for this global energy company that operates in 68 countries, producing decarbonized gas and biofuels. Peers say he’s involved in nearly every important energy conversation and is universally admired.

Beverly K. Marshall
Nuclear Energy Institute
Vice President, Governmental Affairs

Marshall led a campaign to convince Congress and the Biden administration to value existing nuclear energy, which she feared could be lost in the transition to alternative fuels.

Jim Matheson
National Rural Electric Cooperative Association
CEO

Matheson, whose association represents 900 electric cooperatives nationwide, warned the administration that a clean-electric standard could cost rural Americans significantly more than it would the rest of the country.

Bob McNally
Rapidan Energy Group
Founder and President

A former National Security Council member who now works for Rapidan—which helps corporations manage energy risks and opportunities—McNally asserted that spiking gas prices were just the tip of the spear in a larger inflation problem.

Phil Musser
NextEra
Vice President and Head of Government Affairs

Musser has driven many of the renewable-energy policies included in Build Back Better on behalf of NextEra, which in 2020 took over ExxonMobil as the country’s largest energy company.

Rich Powell
ClearPath
Executive Director

Powell pushed for key energy provisions in the infrastructure bill, including incentives for a variety of new emission-reducing technologies.

Heather Reams
Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions
Executive Director

Reams has brought conservative Republicans in-to the debate over how they can develop a more forward-facing policy that balances energy, economic, and environmental needs.

Todd Snitchler
Electric Power Supply Association
President and CEO

Snitchler, who represents America’s power suppliers, has devoted his time to examining how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s actions are affecting the markets and working issues around the arcane minimum-offer price rule, which impacts how companies bid into power markets.

Mike Sommers
American Petroleum Institute
President and CEO

When the Sommers-led American Petroleum Institute came out in support of carbon pricing, the move took many GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill by surprise and altered the debate frame for some legislators.

Mary Streett
British Petroleum
Senior Vice President, Americas Communications and Advocacy

Streett relayed the oil giant’s backing of direct federal regulation of methane emissions, signaling support for reinstating a regulation relaxed by the Trump administration.

Sam Thernstrom
Energy Innovation Reform Project
Founder and CEO

Thernstrom’s group has been the thought leader behind the quiet bipartisan energy legislation that includes a clean-electricity standard.

Karen Wayland
GridWise Alliance
CEO

As a former staffer to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, Wayland is well connected among Democratic leadership and conveys the need for massive transmission investment to meet this administration’s ambitious climate goals.

Alex Whitaker
National Association of State Chief Information Officers
Director, Government Affairs

At the National Governors Association—where he worked until February before moving to this position—Whitaker communicated governors’ requests to federal lawmakers for provisions in the infrastructure bill.

Dena Wiggins
Natural Gas Supply Association
President and CEO

Wiggins is known for punching above her weight in a sector with much larger players, and she has focused on the importance of liquefied natural gas in her pitch to lawmakers.

Brian Wolff
Edison Electric Institute
Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President, Public Policy and External Affairs

Wolff, whose organization represents all US investor-owned electric companies, is pushing to accelerate utilities’ reduction of carbon emissions by focusing on advanced renewables such as super-hot geothermal, hydrogen, and ammonia.

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Heather Zichal
American Clean Power Association
CEO

Zichal is touting record-clean power installations over the last year and using that growth to lobby for long-term energy policy in Washington.

Michael Abramowitz
Freedom House
President

Writing in the Washington Post last fall, Abramowitz urged the Biden administration to pressure fellow democracies to support human-rights defenders, journalists, and democracy activists around the globe.

Bunmi Akinnusotu
Howard University
Deputy Director, Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Program

Described as the “Oprah of foreign policy,” Akinnusotu is a former Obama-administration appointee who is now building the talent pipeline of Foreign Service officers through the university.

Andrew Albertson
Foreign Policy for America
Executive Director

As head of this nonprofit, Albertson has organized coalitions to help build pressure to approve a fleet of President Biden’s ambassadors as well as State Department and USAID nominees.

Alyssa Ayres
George Washington University
Dean, Elliott School of International Affairs

The first female permanent dean of GW’s Elliott School, Ayres is an expert on South Asia who has pushed for more US investment in India’s democracy to serve as a counterweight to regional foes.

Mark Begich
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck Strategic Consulting
Adviser

The former Alaska senator’s lobbying clientele includes Pakistan’s government as it navigates US relations in the wake of the destabilizing humanitarian crisis in neighboring Afghanistan.

Emma Belcher
Ploughshares Fund
President

After the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently ceased funding organizations seeking to reduce nuclear weapons, Belcher is sounding an alarm that the movement is at a precarious juncture in need of fresh urgency.

Jeremy Ben-Ami
J Street
President

Ben-Ami pressed for a quick resolution to the outburst of violence between Israel and Palestine last May, while reiterating support for a two-state solution.

Bill Bishop
Sinocism
Author and Publisher

Bishop’s Substack—commentary mixed with a curation of Chinese-news bits—is delivered to thousands of foreign-policy wonks and analysts who formulate emerging ideas.

Rosa Brooks
Georgetown Law
Professor and Associate Dean

A former Defense official during the Obama presidency, Brooks faulted both military and civilian leaders for pretending to believe that the Afghan army was capable enough to defend itself.

Brett Bruen
Global Situation Room
President

When Bruen—a former director of Global Engagement in the Obama administration—wrote an op-ed calling for national-security adviser Jake Sullivan to be fired, it rattled Washington’s tight-knit national-security circle.

Eliot A. Cohen
John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
Professor

Cohen’s two-year term as the school’s dean concluded in June, but he remains a revered presence in conservative foreign-policy circles, even as he embraces a forceful anti-Trump posture.

Elbridge Colby
American Global Strategies
Senior Adviser

A former top defense official in the Trump administration, Colby was featured in the New Yorker for his push to position most of the US’s military policy to be geared toward China.

Cathy Feingold
AFL-CIO
Director, International Department

Feingold, who is also deputy president of the International Trade Union Confederation, was the AFL-CIO’s lead staffer in negotiating and implementing the new labor-rights provisions in the United States–Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Michèle Flournoy
WestExec Advisors
Cofounder and Managing Partner

While she wasn’t tapped to be Biden’s Defense Secretary, Flournoy’s reputation in Washington’s foreign-policy establishment remains shimmering, including with key White House staff.

Bonnie S. Glaser
German Marshall Fund
Director, Asia Program

With a robust Twitter feed and podcast, Glaser serves as a constant stream of information on developments in China and Indo-Pacific security flare-ups.

Todd Harrison
Center for Strategic & International Studies
Director, Defense Budget Analysis

Harrison published a study of options to protect space systems from counterspace weapons, a topic seldom discussed in public that caught the eye of military and security stakeholders.

Heather Hurlburt
New America
Director, New Models of Policy Change

Hurlburt is determined to make the humanitarian consequences of conflicts more central to discussions around wars and withdrawals.

David Ignatius
Washington Post
Foreign Affairs Columnist

Now in his third decade as a columnist, Ignatius boasts rarely matched sources inside the Biden administration, intelligence agencies, and governments around the world.

Alex T. Johnson
Open Society Foundations
Director, Global Partnerships, Eurasia Program

Much of Johnson’s work—dealing with human-rights defenders in dangerous countries—is too sensitive to disclose.

Fred Kagan
American Enterprise Institute
Senior Fellow and Director, Critical Threats Project

Since serving as an outside adviser to President George W. Bush on the Iraq “surge,” Kagan has assumed an equally hawkish posture as a critic of American retreat.

Brian Katulis
Center for American Progress
Senior Fellow

Katulis is credited by peers for a thoughtful and measured foreign-policy approach that both centrist Democrats and progressives will listen to.

Howard Kohr
American Israel Public Affairs Committee
CEO

Few foreign-affairs lobbies wield the kind of influence AIPAC does. When new Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett made his first trip to the US, Kohr was one of his first-priority meetings.

Elisa Massimino
Georgetown Law
Chair, Human Rights, and Executive Director, Human Rights Institute

Last summer, the former Human Rights First president was tapped to lead Georgetown’s Human Rights Institute, a program designed to train the next generation of advocates.

Evan Medeiros
Asia Group
Senior Adviser

Medeiros has argued that Beijing is a more capable threat than Moscow was during the height of the Cold War but that regime change is off the table.

Robert O’Brien
American Global Strategies
Chairman

O’Brien—who, as Donald Trump’s final national-­security adviser, angered the President for assisting with the Biden transition—briefed the entire GOP caucus on Afghanistan in August, but he has also fostered key cross-aisle relationships, including with Biden national-security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Trita Parsi
Quincy Institute
Cofounder and Executive Vice President

Once President Biden made his Afghanistan withdrawal decision, Parsi helped cobble together a coalition of organizations to support the move and a foreign policy that isn’t centered around military aggression.

Chris Purdy
Human Rights First
Director, Veterans for American Ideals & Outreach

Low-key but results-oriented, Purdy played an important behind-the-scenes role in advocating for special immigrant visa seekers and the subsequent scramble to evacuate Afghan refugees.

Ben Rhodes
Writer, Speaker, Former Adviser to President Barack Obama

The onetime Obama national-security adviser and author is among the most frequently quoted and cited foreign-policy voices outside the current administration.

Josh Rogin
Washington Post
Columnist

Rogin has assumed a larger microphone since moving into his columnist role, breaking explosive news last fall about the Biden administration’s pressure on Senate Democrats to back off a repudiation of China’s treatment of the Uyghur people.

Dennis Ross
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Counselor and Distinguished Fellow

Ross—a bigwig in the Obama, Clinton, and George H.W. Bush administrations—made the case to policymakers that one way to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions is to equip Israel with a 30,000-pound mountain-buster bomb.

Douglas Rutzen
International Center for Not-for-Profit Law
President and CEO

Rutzen was tapped to help organize civil-society groups to participate in President Biden’s Democracy Summit, where he asked governments to prepare for future pandemics via prevention and democratic principles.

Robert Satloff
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Executive Director

Satloff is well connected with foreign leaders, and in November he met with the deputy supreme commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces to recognize the country’s peace agreement with Israel.

Kori Schake
American Enterprise Institute
Director, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies

An NSC member during the George W. Bush administration, Schake condemned the Trump White House’s agreement with the Taliban, which precipitated Biden’s withdrawal, as “one of the most disgraceful” in history.

Loren DeJonge Schulman
Partnership for Public Service
Vice President, Research and Evaluation

Schulman, who tracks presidential appointees, argues that the Senate’s deeply politicized confirmation process has become a serious threat to national security.

Vikram Singh
United States Institute of Peace
Senior Adviser, Asia Center

A former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia, Singh achieved his most direct impact this past year through raising $2 million for Afghanistan relief and chartered planes. One of the rescued families stayed with him over the 2021 holidays.

Camille Stewart
Google
Global Head, Product Security Strategy

A former Deloitte consultant and Obama official, Stewart hopped to Google to handle its cybersecurity and misinformation policy at a time when many corporations are behind on attracting such talent.

Robert Stryk
SPG Company
Chairman

Stryk is known as a global fixer who dives into dicey foreign-policy quandaries, representing clients from Afghans opposing the Taliban to Julian Assange to the Kenyan president.

Yasmine Taeb
Center for International Policy
Emeritus Senior Fellow

Taeb was involved in the coordinated effort on the left to influence Biden’s personnel appointments on national security and foreign policy.

Shibley Telhami
Brookings Institution
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy

Telhami has published several articles arguing that a growing number of Americans want the US to be more critical of Israel, altering the conventional wisdom around the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

William Wechsler
Atlantic Council
Director, Middle East Programs

A former deputy assistant secretary of Defense in the Obama administration, Wechsler is now on the outside offering policymakers analysis of counterterrorism policy.

Thomas Wright
Brookings Institution
Director, Center on the United States and Europe

In a book, Aftershocks, investigating how the US response to the pandemic affected the international order, Wright and his coauthor found that nationalism and unilateralism triumphed over cooperation.

David Becker
Center for Election Innovation & Research
Executive Director and Founder

Becker spearheaded the Election Official Legal Defense Network to provide pro bono legal assistance to election officials who are increasingly under siege by lawsuits challenging their work.

Noah Bookbinder
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington
President and CEO

Bookbinder’s CREW launched a live tracker of corporate political giving to Congress members who voted against certifying the 2020 election, pressuring Toyota and other companies to reverse course and halt their contributions to those lawmakers.

Danielle Brian
Project on Government Oversight
Executive Director

Brian pushed to eliminate the Pentagon’s Overseas Contingency Operations account, a fund that she said resulted in a trove of wasteful spending unrelated to war efforts.

Kelly Burton
National Democratic Redistricting Committee
President

Burton built a centralized hub for Democrats’ redistricting strategy that now commands a $100-million budget and a staff of more than 60 who file legal challenges and advocate for federal legislation to ban gerrymandering.

Virginia Canter
Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington
Chief Ethics Counsel

Canter authored a report investigating how members of the Biden administration handled financial conflicts of interest. She used it as a call for senior government officials to divest individual stock holdings and reinvest the proceeds in mutual funds.

Lee Drutman
New America
Senior Fellow

Embracing the case that the two-party system is a threat to democracy, Drutman advocates for the creation of a new center-right GOP.

Norman Eisen
Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow

Eisen wrote an extensive report on the five areas in which the Trump Organization is most vulnerable to criminal charges, setting a bar for future Presidents with private business holdings.

Austin Evers
American Oversight
Executive Director

A former State Department counsel, Evers is regularly quoted by journalists on an assortment of ethics issues.

Scott Fay
End Citizens United Action Fund
Director

Fay ran the wing of this group’s operation responsible for overseeing its $30-million campaign in favor of the For the People Act, and he was its main point person on Capitol Hill.

Lisa Gilbert
Public Citizen
Executive Vice President

Heralded by colleagues as a master at translating coalition talk into action, Gilbert was instrumental in forming the Democrats’ For the People Act, which has been stymied by Republicans.

Jeff Hauser
Revolving Door Project
Executive Director

Hauser keeps a close eye on the lobbyist-to-government-employee pipeline, with a particular interest in limiting the influence of corporations.

Eric H. Holder Jr.
Covington
Senior Counsel

The third-longest-serving attorney general in US history is spending most of his time battling Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts to their advantage.

Craig Holman
Public Citizen
Government Affairs Lobbyist

Holman knocked the Biden administration for permitting a top adviser, Anita Dunn, to avoid disclosing her personal finances and business interests.

Sheila Krumholz
OpenSecrets
Executive Director

When reporters need a statistic on money and influence in Washington, they inevitably turn to Krumholz.

Sarah Longwell
Longwell Partners
President and CEO

As publisher of the Bulwark, Longwell created a space for conservative-leaning voices and policymakers to defend democratic norms and values and promote executive reforms.

Tiffany Muller
End Citizens United Action Fund
President and Executive Director

This Democratic political-action committee ran TV ads in a handful of swing states that focused on strengthening ethics rules and emphasizing secure elections, a move that heightened emphasis on the issues.

Norman Ornstein
American Enterprise Institute
Senior Fellow Emeritus

A Washington institution for four decades, Ornstein regularly weighs in on everything from congressional strategy to political campaigns and the future of democracy.

Trevor Potter
Campaign Legal Center
Founder and President

When Democrats held hearings on their sweeping voting reforms, Potter served as one of their lead witnesses, warning of a democracy “in need of repair.”

Molly Reynolds
Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies

Reynolds contributed to the arguments over Senate filibuster reform and use of the reconciliation process. She also worked with the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress on ways to improve how the House functions.

Rob Richie
FairVote
President and CEO

Richie watched one of his favorite causes—ranked-choice voting—play out in the high-profile New York mayoral race and argued that the city’s reporting problems aren’t typical.

Dan Schuman
Demand Progress
Policy Director

A self-described “Congress nerd,” Schuman is a fervent transparency advocate who is constantly challenging policymakers on the secrecy of government institutions.

Jacqueline Simon
American Federation of Government Employees
Public Policy Director

Simon says federal employee unions do a superior job of producing pay equity across gender and racial lines than the private sector.

Max Stier
Partnership for Public Service
President and CEO

An advocate for federal workers, Stier’s group commissioned a study highlighting the competitive gap that Washington’s bureaucracy faces in relation to the private sector.

John Tye
Whistleblower Aid
Founder and Chief Disclosure Officer

Tye represented a whistleblower whose revelations triggered a criminal investigation of Michael Pack, CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, who was swiftly fired by President Biden.

Jane Adams
Johnson & Johnson
Vice President, US Federal Government Affairs and Canada

Outside the gargantuan task of vaccine distribution, Adams’s portfolio also includes drug pricing and legal issues around opioids for one of the largest healthcare companies on the planet.

Cory B. Alexander
UnitedHealth Group
Strategic Adviser

An alum of Representative Steny Hoyer’s office, Alexander now advises the company on the political environment and long-term changes in healthcare.

Diana Berrent
Survivor Corps HQ
Founder

Through the formation of a Facebook group, Berrent started the largest grassroots Covid-patient movement in the world, leading to presentations before the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and a White House coronavirus task force.

Brian Blase
Paragon Health Institute
President

A former special assistant to President Trump, Blase wants Paragon, which launched last November, to grow into the premier health-policy think tank in the country, conducting both state and federal research and analysis.

Sheila P. Burke
Baker Donelson
Strategic Adviser

A former chief of staff to Senate majority leader Bob Dole, Burke holds decades of Washington experience and a large list of clients while teaching a course on health policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Stuart Butler
Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies

Butler has written that simply reducing distrust and poor communication with minority communities would go a long way in lowering healthcare inequities.

Michael Cannon
Cato Institute
Director, Health Policy Studies

Cannon regularly unfurls counterintuitive analysis, such as contending that the problem with congressional healthcare subsidies is that they often lead to higher overall prices.

Olivia Cappello
Planned Parenthood
Press Officer, State Media Campaigns

After performing state policy work for Guttmacher, Cappello moved to Planned Parenthood to wage the war for abortion advocacy in emerging fights all over the country.

James Capretta
American Enterprise Institute
Senior Fellow and Milton Friedman Chair

Capretta has argued that bipartisan compromise is key to closing the healthcare coverage gap and achieving more transparency on prices.

Joseph Damond
Biotechnology Innovation Organization
Deputy Chief Policy Officer and Executive Vice President, International Affairs

In his capacity representing pharmaceutical companies, Damond has pushed against a waiver for vaccine patents and other pandemic drugs, citing rapidly expanding production ability.

Marjorie Dannenfelser
Susan B. Anthony List
President

One of the most visible antiabortion voices among policymakers, Dannenfelser called the Supreme Court’s May 2021 announcement that it would consider a Mississippi challenge to Roe v. Wade “a landmark opportunity to recognize the right of states to protect unborn children.”

Chip Davis
Healthcare Distribution Alliance
President and CEO

Davis’s HDA launched an advertising campaign last summer to highlight the distribution work that healthcare companies provided during the strain of the pandemic.

Debra DeShong
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
Executive Vice President, Public Affairs

DeShong campaigned vigorously against Democrats’ prescription-drug legislation and helped marshal a case that prevented H.R. 3 from ever receiving a vote, proving the enduring power of the pharmaceutical industry.

Dan Diamond
Washington Post
National Health Reporter

Diamond’s reporting last spring on the burgeoning business of fake vaccination cards was demonstrably ahead of the curve, prompting US Attorneys to begin prosecuting pharmacists for fraudulent sales.

Christine Eibner
RAND Corporation
Senior Economist

Eibner—who specializes in payment, cost, and coverage aspects of healthcare—worked on a contract with the Department of Health & Human Services that focused on the social determinants of health and underserved populations.

Brett Ewer
CrossFit
Head of Government Relations

Representing CrossFit’s more than 15,000 locations nationwide, Ewer fought for an additional round of targeted federal relief—totaling about $30 billion—to stave off gym closures due to fluctuating pandemic rules.

Matt Eyles
AHIP
President and CEO

As private insurers pushed back against efforts to expand public benefits, Eyles presented a case to policymakers that adding dental, hearing, and vision benefits to Medicare could push up premiums and lower rebates.

Lawrence Gostin
Georgetown Law
Professor of Global Health Law

Gostin consulted with the Biden administration on its pandemic response, warning that most of its planned steps to deal with the next wave of the virus were only modest expansions of existing policies that may not dramatically help.

Scott Gottlieb
American Enterprise Institute
Senior Fellow

The former FDA commissioner published a widely talked-about book, Uncontrolled Spread, about what went wrong on Covid-19 and how intelligence agencies can prevent the next pandemic.

Aron Griffin
AHIP
Senior Vice President, Federal Affairs

When President Biden announced his plan to require private insurers to cover the costs of home Covid tests, Griffin’s AHIP expressed concern that the measure could spark higher healthcare premiums.

Sudafi Henry
theGROUP
Partner

As former legislative-affairs director for Joe Biden when he was Vice President, Henry was a natural choice for Pfizer to enlist for its amped-up advocacy efforts.

G. William Hoagland
Bipartisan Policy Center
Senior Vice President

Hoagland reached a rare bipartisan consensus with former senator John Sununu and former representative Patrick Kennedy on the need to integrate primary-care and behavioral-health services into possible legislation.

Stacey Hughes
American Hospital Association
Executive Vice President

Even before assuming her new role with AHA, Hughes was considered a hugely influential healthcare voice with deep wells of respect on both sides of the political aisle.

Chris Jennings
Jennings Policy Strategies
Founder and President

While he operates mostly behind the scenes, policymakers and stakeholders rely on Jennings’s analysis of healthcare issues, particularly ways to lower premiums and close the coverage gap in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid.

Chip Kahn
Federation of American Hospitals
President and CEO

In representing the investor-owned hospital community, Kahn is praised by colleagues for his ability to see around corners on both the policy and the politics of healthcare.

Genevieve Kenney
Urban Institute
Vice President, Health Policy

With 25 years of experience analyzing healthcare, Kenney is an in-demand expert on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, having published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles.

Jay Khosla
Humana
Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs

A former top health adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign, Khosla spent the past year trying to improve equity by factoring in social determinants of health for the nation’s third-largest insurance company.

Mary Landrieu
Van Ness Feldman
Senior Policy Adviser

Landrieu has leveraged her strong bipartisan congressional relationships to lobby for an increase in the adoption tax credit and improved foster-care services for vulnerable youth.

Courtney Lawrence
Cigna
Managing Director, Government Affairs

A former HHS official, Lawrence now lobbies the agency and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid on behalf of the $540-billion healthcare company.

Nancy LeaMond
AARP
Executive Vice President

LeaMond, who represents the 38-million-member seniors’ organization, has lobbied for a family-caregiver tax credit of up to $5,000 to offset out-of-pocket expenses associated with lending aid to loved ones.

Dan Leonard
Association for Accessible Medicines
President and CEO

Leonard, whose organization works on behalf of generic and biosimilar medications, is predicting a boom in the generic-drug market over the next decade.

David Leonhardt
New York Times
Senior Writer, “The Morning”

Amassing a daily readership of more than 5 million for his am newsletter, Leonhardt has become the conscience of Covid journalism, carefully tracking the latest data and trends without alarmism.

John Lepore
Moderna
Senior Vice President, Government Engagement

Lepore recalls how Moderna went from a company few knew about to one with which lawmakers all over the globe suddenly wanted contact. He served as the company’s liaison to not only the White House and Congress but foreign embassies.

Jeanne Mancini
March for Life Education & Defense Fund
President

Mancini is the central organizer for the annual antiabortion march in Washington, which draws thousands and engages dozens of mostly Republican lawmakers.

Michelle McMurry-Heath
Biotechnology Innovation Organization
President and CEO

McMurry-Heath, whom President Biden considered to lead the FDA, says BIO’s Craigslist-like matching service facilitated hundreds of collaborations between companies that were critical in 1,000-plus Covid research-and-development programs.

Farzad Mostashari
Aledade
Founder and CEO

A former epidemic officer at the CDC, Mostashari now runs a startup that partners with nearly 800 primary-care practices building new payment models for medical care.

Elizabeth Nash
Guttmacher Institute
Principal Policy Associate, State Issues

Nash is quoted in more than 500 media publications a year for her work tracking abortion, contraception, and sex-education issues.

Mark Parkinson
American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living
President and CEO

Parkinson vehemently argued against a legislative provision that would require nursing homes to have a registered nurse on staff 24 hours a day, unless it was funded.

Richard Pollack
American Hospital Association
President and CEO

Pollack partnered with organizations such as the National Urban League and UnidosUS on vaccination campaigns in vulnerable communities. His association, which represents 5,000 hospitals and healthcare providers, was one of the first such groups to support vaccine mandates for hospital workers.

Lori Reilly
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
COO

PhRMA, the major drug-industry lobby, led its al­lies in spending nearly $20 million on advertising to oppose Medicare drug-pricing reform last year, maintaining that it would stifle innovation.

Elena Rios
National Hispanic Medical Association
President and CEO

Rios celebrated a hard-fought provision included in the Build Back Better plan that dramatically caps the price of insulin medication.

Sara Rosenbaum
George Washington University
Professor of Health Law and Policy

Rosenbaum commissioned a study that showed that states that have implemented family-planning policies have strengthened outcomes for their Medicaid population.

Elisabeth Rosenthal
Kaiser Health News
Editor in Chief

The former New York Times correspondent helms this nonprofit dedicated to national health news, covering everything from Covid to consumer-insurance policy.

Matt Salo
National Association of Medicaid Directors
Executive Director

Salo argued that the FDA’s approval of a new expensive drug claiming to treat Alzheimer’s could threaten the solvency of the Medicaid program.

Melissa Schulman
CVS Health
Senior Vice President, Government and Public Affairs

A former staffer for Congressman Steny Hoyer, Schulman spearheaded the coordinated efforts on Covid testing and vaccinations for the largest pharmacy chain in the country.

JC Scott
Pharmaceutical Care Management Association
President and CEO

Scott worked to include a repeal of the last administration’s prescription-drug rebate rule in the Democrats’ reconciliation package.

Stephanie Silverman
Venn Strategies
Founder and CEO

Silverman pushed a campaign for the American Diabetes Association that helped secure early access to vaccines for people with diabetes and capped the copay for insulin in the Build Back Better bill that passed the House.

Bill Sweeney
AARP
Senior Vice President, Government Affairs

Sweeney is lobbying the opposite position of PhRMA’s, pushing for as generous an expansion as possible when it comes to Medicare reform and added benefits.

Alex Tabarrok
George Mason University
Professor of Economics

Tabarrok weighed heavily into the conversation about how to handle Covid-19, arguing in media outlets that widespread rapid testing could end the mask debate in schools and workplaces and at celebrations.

Brad Tallamy
Merck
Executive Director, Policy and Government Relations

Tallamy left the drug wholesaler Amerisource­Bergen for Merck in the fall, just as Merck’s Covid-treatment pills were earning scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration.

Grace-Marie Turner
Galen Institute
President

Twenty-seven years ago, Turner founded this public-policy institute dedicated to fostering free-market healthcare ideas and critiques of government-run expansions.

Stephen Ubl
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
President and CEO

Ubl fought hard against a measure designed to lower prescription-drug prices and placed a seven-figure advertising buy to pressure lawmakers.

Jennifer Walton
Pfizer
Head of Office and Vice President, US Government Relations

Business leaders cited Walton as a key player this past year during the shifting winds of the pandemic and as Pfizer began to develop prescription Covid treatments needing a federal stamp of approval.

Scott Whitaker
AdvaMed
President and CEO

Whitaker has heralded the repeal of the federal tax on medical devices, saying it has allowed his industry to increase jobs and expand patient research.

Mark Wilson
American Health Policy Institute
President

Wilson, whose organization provides healthcare advice to employers, locked heads with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the incentives businesses may offer employees to get vaccinated, urging more specific guidance.

Eleanor Acer
Human Rights First
Senior Director, Refugee Protection

Acer came down hard on the Biden administration for its expulsion of asylum seekers, accusing them of replicating Trump’s “cruel and illegal playbook.”

Nazanin Ash
Welcome.US
CEO

Ash was one of the leaders at the table last fall when the White House convened a conversation with allies who helped Afghans resettle in the United States.

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Ronnate Asirwatham
Network
Director, Government Relations

Asirwatham is the lead lobbyist on immigration for this Catholic group, which condemned the Biden administration for its forcible removal of asylum seekers.

Roy Beck
NumbersUSA Education and Research Foundation
President

Beck advocates for permitting fewer immigrants into the country, arguing that visa programs keep American workers underemployed.

Michael Breen
Human Rights First
President and CEO

Breen firmly opposed the Biden administration’s hard deadline of leaving Afghanistan and pushed for the continued evacuation of allies.

Mario E. Dorsonville
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Chairman, Committee on Migration

Dorsonville, an auxiliary bishop of Washington who was born in Colombia, has objected to fast-track deportations of undocumented families.

Claudia Flores
Center for American Progress
Associate Director, Policy and Strategy

Flores is lauded as a powerhouse among DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) advocates, especially due to her pervasive presence in Spanish-language media outlets.

Carlos Gutierrez
TheDream.US
Cofounder

Gutierrez warns political allies that if the immigration issue is reduced to simply creating “a path to citizenship,” it will kill attempts at any types of reform.

Patrice Lawrence
UndocuBlack Network
Executive Director

Lawrence lobbied members of the Congressional Black Caucus on a path to citizenship for undocumented people, including DACA recipients and those with temporary protected status.

Jose Magaña-Salgado
Masa Group
Principal and Founder

Magaña-Salgado, who previously led the immigration-policy portfolio for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, has assisted in drafting immigration platforms for several presidential candidates.

Doris Meissner
Migration Policy Institute
Senior Fellow and Director, US Immigration Policy Program

Meissner, who ran the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the 1990s, said the Biden administration appeared surprised by the influx of migrants surging through the southern border.

Arturo Sarukhan
Sarukhan + Associates
Founder and President

The former Mexican ambassador to the US who is also a senior nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, Sarukhan carries a bundle of connections on both sides of the border.

Todd Schulte
FWD.us
President and Executive Director

While the immigration provisions included in Build Back Better fell short of an explicit pathway to citizenship, Schulte still tossed his support behind the targeted provisions of work permits and deportation protections.

Eric Schwartz
Refugees International
President

In response to President Biden’s executive order last winter, Schwartz launched a special task force designed to underscore how climate change is a significant driver of forced migration around the world.

Frank Sharry
America’s Voice
Executive Director

Sharry, whose organization’s goal is to build public support for a liberal immigration policy, is a source of pressure on lawmakers from both parties. He has urged Democratic lawmakers to confront GOP attacks on immigration head-on and has held moderate Democrats accountable for their campaign promises.

Gina Adams
FedEx
Corporate Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs

Adams has had to navigate a litany of logistics with flights, cargo ships, ports, and trucks as the supply chain has squeezed the giant shipping company during the pandemic.

Stephen Alterman
Cargo Airline Association
President

Alterman expressed significant concern that the Biden administration’s employer-based vaccine mandate would inhibit his industry’s ability to retain workers through the busy holiday season.

Christine Burgeson
Airlines for America
Senior Vice President, Global Government Affairs

Burgeson navigated the federal payroll-support program designed to assist airline workers, leveraging her connections on the Senate Commerce Committee.

Nicholas E. Calio
Airlines for America
President and CEO

As representative for the major airlines, Calio appeared at a White House roundtable to announce that the companies would voluntarily boost their production of sustainable aviation fuel.

Art Cameron
Boeing
Vice President, Federal Legislative Affairs

Cameron had to deal with an FAA complaint that the jet maker had appointed safety engineers to oversee airplane work that didn’t meet the agency’s standards.

Mèlika Carroll
Sonder
Vice President, Corporate Affairs

Carroll helped this next-generation hospitality company create its environment, social, and governance reporting system to prepare for compliance with new SEC guidance expected in 2022.

Theresa Fariello
United Airlines
Senior Vice President, Government Affairs

Fariello contributed to successfully securing additional funding relief for the airlines due to the pandemic as the industry has navigated how the newest variants impact travel.

Nathan Gatten
American Airlines
Senior Vice President, Government Affairs

Gatten participated in a White House roundtable of transportation officials on Operation Allies Welcome, the plan to welcome allied Afghans into the US.

Ian Jefferies
Association of American Railroads
President and CEO

Railroads were a big winner in the infrastructure package, which Jefferies vigorously lauded as a muscular vehicle for economic growth.

Michael Johnson
National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association
President

Johnson was a key player during bipartisan infrastructure negotiations, when he both privately and publicly chastised progressives for stone-walling a vote.

Kathryn D. Karol
Caterpillar
Vice President, Global Government and Corporate Affairs

With prior stints at Amgen and Eli Lilly, Karol is now wielding more than two decades of public-affairs experience at the world’s largest construction-equipment manufacturer.

Laura Lane
UPS
Chief Corporate Affairs Officer

In an effort to bolster the company’s external image, Lane has worked to highlight UPS’s disaster-recovery efforts and its work on sustainability.

Timothy P. Lynch
Morgan Lewis
Senior Director

Lynch keeps tabs on myriad legislative developments on Capitol Hill, with a focus on transportation and retirement security.

Ziad Ojakli
Boeing
Executive Vice President, Government Operations

“Z” Ojakli stepped into this position last fall after years of experience in the automotive and finance industries as well as serving in the George W. Bush White House.

David Shepardson
Thomson Reuters
Correspondent

Clinging to the mantra of covering “anything that moves,” Shepardson’s reporting is instrumental to those trying to understand how companies navigate transportation policies.

Chris Spear
American Trucking Associations
President and CEO

Spear received a five-year contract extension at ATA, the largest national trade association for the trucking industry.

Jim Tymon
American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials
Executive Director

During bipartisan infrastructure negotiations, Tymon lobbied for climate-change provisions to improve road-system reliability plus the creation of a formula-based bridge and electric-vehicle program.

Omar Vargas
General Motors
Vice President, Global Public Policy

Vargas joined GM last summer and is dedicated to helping the automaker realize its long-term goal of “zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion” with a hand in Washington.

Cherie Wilson
Delta
Managing Director, Government Affairs

Wilson engaged with key congressional leaders on the importance of adopting an equity-based approach to funding for electric- and autonomous-vehicle development.

Heather Wingate
Delta
Senior Vice President, Government Affairs

With borders reopening and travelers returning to flight, Wingate spent much of the past year making sure entities such as Customs and Border Protection and TSA were ready for the influx of travelers juggling new requirements.

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Donald Ayer
Campaign Legal Center
Senior Adviser

The onetime US Attorney and Reagan appointee argued that the Justice Department should pursue a federal investigation of former President Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.

Andrew P. Bakaj
Compass Rose Legal Group
Founding and Managing Partner

Bakaj represented Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and appeared on CNN to frame her case against the trillion-dollar company.

Charles J. Cooper
Cooper & Kirk
Founding Member and Chairman

Cooper successfully represented John Bolton in the Trump Justice Department’s lawsuit over the contents of Bolton’s book.

Fatima Goss Graves
National Women’s Law Center
President and CEO

Graves successfully advocated for the confirmation of women of color to key administration roles, including Vanita Gupta as associate attorney general and Kristen Clarke as assistant AG.

C. Boyden Gray
Boyden Gray & Associates
Founding Partner

A Washington fixture for decades, Gray still regularly counsels the upper tier of the city’s power stratum while also teaching law at George Mason University.

Neal Katyal
Hogan Lovells
Partner

The former acting solicitor general served as a pro bono special prosecutor in the George Floyd case, which consumed more than 1,000 hours of his time.

Joshua Matz
Kaplan Hecker & Fink
Partner

Matz was counsel to House Democrats for the second impeachment of former President Trump, making him one of only two outside lawyers hired for those historic proceedings.

Don McGhan
Jones Day
Practice Leader, Government Regulation

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell described McGhan’s service as White House counsel to former President Trump as “one of the most consequential to any President in recent memory.”

Benjamin Wittes
Lawfare
Editor in Chief

Wittes, a major chronicler of Trump-era threats to democracy, now writes on a diverse range of subjects, from the gains made in Afghanistan after withdrawal to how ransomware amounts to a tax by foreign entities.

Mark S. Zaid
Mark S. Zaid, P.C.
Founding Partner

A veteran lawyer for whistleblowers, Zaid is counsel for former Homeland Security intel chief Brian Murphy, who spoke out about malfeasance in the department during the Trump administration.

Sergio Aguirre
WestExec Advisors
Cofounder and Managing Partner

Having founded the geopolitical policy firm WestExec Advisors with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Aguirre now holds connections at the highest levels of government.

Dmitri Alperovitch
Silverado Policy Accelerator
Executive Chairman

Since leaving CrowdStrike in 2020, Alperovitch has sought to disrupt the think-tank industry by establishing Silverado, which aims to bring together the sharpest minds regardless of ideology.

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Ginny Badanes
Microsoft
Senior Director, Democracy Forward

Badanes got one of the nation’s top election vendors to place Microsoft’s free and open-source coding—ElectionGuard—into its systems so voters can track their ballot all the way through to the final tally.

Jenna Ben-Yehuda
Truman National Security Project
President and CEO

Having spent a dozen years at the State Department, Ben-Yehuda has built a powerful network of contacts representing a pipeline of progressive national-security talent.

John Bolton
Foundation for American Security & Freedom
Founder

Liberals and Trumpies can’t stand him, but since writing a tell-all, Trump’s short-lived national-security adviser has regained his spot among conservative foreign-­policy hawks—who may be out of favor in both parties but can still shape the media narrative.

Thomas P. Bossert
Trinity Cyber
President

The former homeland-security adviser to two Presidents, Bossert is building a stack of top defense and security clients while sounding the alarm about America’s vulnerability to being hacked at perilous moments.

Nitin Chadda
WestExec Advisors
Cofounder and Managing Partner

Chadda has a unique combination of knowledge in finance and national security, which equips him with a case for how to rewire the Pentagon with cutting-edge technology.

Carrie Cordero
Center for a New American Security
Senior Fellow and General Counsel

In testimony before Congress in July, Cordero criticized the Department of Homeland Security for playing “no meaningful role in warning the country and mobilizing its response to the pandemic” during the earliest months. She urged institutional reforms to adapt to future threats.

Raj De
Mayer Brown
Partner

A member of the Biden-Harris transition team for the Justice Department, De is respected for his knowledge nexus on cybersecurity and law enforcement.

Stephen J. Hadley
Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel
Principal

The former deputy national-security adviser under George W. Bush, now a foreign-policy graybeard, served on the Afghanistan Study Group, which advised President Biden to extend his deadline for withdrawal from that country.

Fiona Hill
Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow

A veteran conservative foreign-policy hand—who had a cameo in Trump’s first impeachment—she recently published There Is Nothing for You Here, a harrowing warning that the US is on the brink of socioeconomic collapse that could rival Russia’s.

Bruce Hoffman
Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
Professor

In the aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal, Hoffman contested the argument that a strategy of patience could yet be vindicated.

John Hudson
Washington Post
National Security Reporter

Hudson broke the news about tensions within the Biden administration regarding its posture toward China as the US juggles several different priorities with the East Asian superpower.

Seth G. Jones
Center for Strategic & International Studies
Senior Vice President, International Security Program

Jones erected a pathbreaking, apolitical database of domestic-terrorism history, finding that in 2020 the number of attacks and plots rose to the highest rate since 1994.

Christopher Krebs
Krebs Stamos Group
Founding Partner

Since being dismissed by President Trump for declaring the 2020 elections to be the “most secure in history,” Krebs has pushed back on the need for a national cyberdirector, arguing that the government should instead be strengthening current agencies to combat information disorder.

Jane Lee
Rebellion Defense
Head of Policy and Government Relations

A former Mitch McConnell staffer, Lee is a key player for this two-year-old unicorn defense startup, making the case that lawmakers should right-size investments for artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies needed on the new battlefield.

James Andrew Lewis
Center for Strategic & International Studies
Senior Vice President

Lewis delivered the first-ever speech on cyber­security to the UN Security Council, where he spoke virtually to an audience of some 4,000 from 80 countries.

Michael Morell
Beacon Global Strategies
Senior Counselor

The former deputy director of the CIA is part of a powerhouse bipartisan strategic-advisory team and also hosts a national-security podcast for CBS News.

Michael O’Hanlon
Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow

O’Hanlon, a ubiquitous media presence, published a book on grand military strategy, The Art of War in an Age of Peace, and is writing his next, Military History for the Modern Strategist.

Lindsay Rodman
Wilson Center
Global Fellow

In her last job, heading the Leadership Council for Women in National Security, she consistently nudged the administration to consider gender parity in national-security appointments and built a database of qualified women plus a tracker to chart their results.

Paul Scharre
Center for a New American Security
Vice President and Director of Studies

Author of the book Army of None, Scharre is at the forefront of arguing how artificial intelligence will change both the US military and the world’s national-security calculations.

Matthew Steckman
Anduril Industries
Chief Revenue Officer

Steckman is working to prod the stubborn Defense Department toward incorporating technology such as artificial intelligence and automation into its long-term procurement planning.

Caitlin Talmadge
Georgetown University
Associate Professor of Security Studies

Talmadge was called to testify on Capitol Hill on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission as well as on the United States’ nuclear relationship with China.

Olivia Troye
Troye Group
Founder

A former counterterrorism aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Troye is an outspoken critic about Trump-administration decisions, including the visa system set up for Afghans.

Josh Ackil
Franklin Square Group
Cofounder

Ackil represents a coalition of smaller companies that pitch lawmakers on why Section 230—the internet immunity clause—is essential to their business models.

Craig Albright
BSA | The Software Alliance
Vice President, Legislative Strategy

Before lobbying for the world’s largest software companies, Albright was a special representative for the World Bank Group.

Meredith Attwell Baker
CTIA
President and CEO

A former Comcast NBC Universal executive, Baker now represents the wireless-communications industry, which includes AT&T and Intel.

Michael Beckerman
TikTok
Vice President and Head of Public Policy, Americas

That short-form video app on which your kids are spending all their time making skits? Beckerman is trying to explain its ins and outs to Capitol Hill septuagenarians.

Shirley Bloomfield
NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association
CEO

Bloomfield was focused on securing $65 billion for rural broadband in the infrastructure package.

Catherine Bohigian
Charter Communications
Executive Vice President, Government Affairs

Bohigian helped facilitate Charter’s participation in an emergency broadband relief program that sent a $50 discount to internet customers.

Rachel Bovard
Conservative Partnership Institute
Senior Director, Policy

Bovard is working closely with conservative lawmakers to shape the right’s response to Big Tech, which she views as a law-enforcement issue necessary to protect the free market.

John Branscome
Meta
Director, Public Policy

Facebook—whose parent company is now Meta—recruited Branscome, who was the top Democratic tech staffer on the Senate Commerce Committee, in the midst of its withering public-­relations storm last fall.

Kara Calvert
Coinbase
Head of US Policy

Calvert, a former Republican Hill staffer who pushed back on a congressional effort to raise infrastructure funds through cryptocurrency-tax reporting, left Franklin Square Group for Coinbase last fall.

Mac Campbell
Capitol Counsel
Partner

A former Democratic Senate Finance Committee staffer, Campbell was tapped to lobby for Blue Origin—Jeff Bezos’s space company—on tax provisions that were considered in the reconciliation package.

Jay Carney
Amazon
Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs

The former White House press secretary and Amazon’s highest-profile Beltway figure, Carney noted early on that the company was onboard with a corporate income-tax hike to pay for infrastructure.

Maura Colleton Corbett
Glen Echo Group
Founder and CEO

Corbett assists tech companies in explaining their new innovations to policymakers. She also wields experience in coalition-building on issues like net neutrality and music licensing.

Lauren Culbertson
Twitter
Head of US Public Policy

Culbertson has been part of discussions about a White House draft plan to rally a coalition of democracies around a free World Wide Web but has warned that accountability is an integral part of any deal.

Antigone Davis
Meta
Global Head of Safety

Davis testified before Congress to push back against explosive Wall Street Journal reporting about the mental-health harm that Facebook and Instagram may cause young girls.

Sara Fischer
Axios
Media Reporter

As author of the Media Trends newsletter, Fischer regularly serves up newsy snippets about transformations and breaking changes inside the most important tech companies.

Ed Gillespie
AT&T
Senior Executive Vice President, External and Legislative Affairs

The former RNC chairman has his hands on issues such as modernizing FCC programs and helping fix the funding mechanism that allows schools to provide broadband.

Fred Humphries
Microsoft
Corporate Vice President, US Government Affairs

Now with the company for two decades, Humphries has long-held relationships throughout Washington that give him muscle on digital infrastructure issues and how they’ll affect the future job market.

Brian Huseman
Amazon
Vice President, Public Policy

The antitrust bills that could potentially break up the online behemoth have been a top priority for Huseman, who warned policymakers of the effect on those who use Amazon to sell products.

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Bruce Johnson
Brex
Director, Federal Affairs, and Assistant General Counsel

After four years as a senior staffer for the House Financial Services Committee, Johnson last spring joined this emerging company, which offers business credit cards and cash-management services. He came aboard to help expand Brex’s brand and create the Financial Technology Association, which educates policymakers and consumers about fintech.

Jeff Joseph
Software & Information Industry Association
President

Joseph helps promote the interests of content and technology industries as well as companies seeking to enhance data privacy and protections, and he has also pushed for expanded broadband access.

Joel Kaplan
Meta
Vice President, Global Public Policy

A close confidant of Mark Zuckerberg, Kaplan has become a Washington lightning rod who, according to BuzzFeed News, exerts “outsize influence” on content-moderation decisions within the social-media giant.

Karen Kornbluh
German Marshall Fund
Director, Digital Innovation & Democracy Initiative

Kornbluh was summoned to testify before the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Communications & Technology Subcommittee to weigh in on a proposal that would protect tech companies from liability for third-party content posting.

Christopher Lewis
Public Knowledge
President and CEO

Lewis was one of the consumer advocates for strong broadband and digital-equity provisions in the infrastructure package and Covid-relief bill.

Luther Lowe
Yelp
Senior Vice President, Public Policy

Overseeing a smaller team than most other Silicon Valley giants, Lowe made allies with both progressives and conservatives on Big Tech issues and has established himself as a premier antagonist of Yelp’s rival, Google.

Tom Manatos
Block
Head of Federal Affairs

The former Nancy Pelosi aide left Spotify last fall for Block—formerly the payment company Square—as it looks to focus more on fast-growing digital assets, which Congress is just beginning to scrutinize.

Kevin Martin
Meta
Head of US Public Policy

Martin, a onetime FCC chairman who once led Facebook’s public-policy shop, is now concentrating on areas of competitive investment in commerce and financial services.

Tara McGowan
Good Information
CEO and Founder

McGowan has launched a new civic incubator backed by George Soros and Reid Hoffman, designed to develop new strategies that break down echo chambers and information silos.

Bruce Mehlman
Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas
Founder

A top lobbyist on tech issues, Mehlman creates periodic PowerPoint charts that are widely followed and serve as conversation starters on the political dynamics of issues.

Lulu Cheng Meservey
Substack
Vice President, Communications

The burgeoning online subscription platform for newsletters and podcasts scooped up Meservey last June to help scrape away readers from social-media platforms, such as Twitter and Instagram, as well as take advantage of her considerable DC connections.

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Jason Oxman
Information Technology Industry Council
President and CEO

Oxman led advocacy for funding to boost American chip manufacturing and development as well as policies to enhance cyberprotections for individuals and businesses.

Christopher Padilla
IBM
Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs

Through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022, Padilla helped secure more congressional funding for 5G telecommunications networks, a significant customer base for IBM.

Michael Petricone
Consumer Technology Association
Senior Vice President, Government Affairs

Petricone is popular and respected on the Hill and among peers for his strategies to fight patent trolls and online piracy.

Chip Pickering
INCOMPAS–The Internet and Competitive Networks Association
CEO

A former congressman with strong policy chops, Pickering is highly influential on both sides of the aisle on telecom and tech issues, representing big names such as Amazon and Netflix.

Stanley Pierre-Louis
Entertainment Software Association
President and CEO

Pierre-Louis has his mind trained on the future of gaming, as well as potential difficulties in need of policy solutions, including intellectual-property rights and consumer-protection concerns.

Michael Powell
NCTA–The Internet and Television Association
President and CEO

Powell, former chairman of the FCC, blasted President Biden’s plan to expand broadband, asserting that private-sector technologists are better suited to fill in internet gaps.

Brian Quintenz
Andreessen Horowitz
Advisory Partner

A former member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Quintenz now uses that knowledge to advise clients on emerging regulations around cryptocurrency.

Lisa Roman
Bumble
Vice President, Global Public Policy

Roman came aboard from Twitter last year as the dating app has looked at strengthening laws to combat intimate-image abuse online.

Gary Shapiro
Consumer Technology Association
President and CEO

Observing that the pandemic boosted consumers’ relationships with technology, Shapiro released a white paper on how tech can better be used to mitigate health inequities.

Edward “Smitty” Smith
DLA Piper
Managing Partner

Having served on President Biden’s transition team for tech and telecom, Smith went on to draft the National Urban League’s plan for digital equity and inclusion, which ended up being folded into the administration’s infrastructure plan.

K. Dane Snowden
Internet Association
President and CEO

Snowden has advocated for lawmakers to begin cobbling together a national privacy framework so tech companies can avoid a hodgepodge of different state laws.

Cindy Southworth
Meta
Women’s Safety Policy Manager and Head of Women’s Safety

When Facebook parent company Meta was graded a C-minus by Ultraviolet for combating misogyny, Southworth was deployed to defend its technology to detect hate speech and remove harmful comments.

Gerry Stegmaier
Reed Smith
Partner

A pre-litigation strategist, Stegmaier has increasingly been spending his time advising companies hit with ransomware attacks on how to figure out their options.

Jennifer Stout
Snap
Vice President, Global Public Policy

Appearing before Congress alongside other social-media giants last fall, Stout attempted to separate Snapchat from the pack by contending that very little of its content is sorted by algorithms.

Kara Swisher
New York Times
Podcast Host

Swisher’s roots and heart lie in tech, but since moving to the Times, she’s expanded her portfolio by landing A-list politicos and power players on her enjoyable and probing Sway podcast.

C. Stewart Verdery Jr.
Monument Advocacy
CEO and Founder

Verdery represents many large Fortune 500 firms, but for his smaller clients, his skill set is convincing policymakers to resist “tech-lash.”

Kyle Williams
Coinbase
Senior Public Policy Manager

The popular platform used to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrency hired Williams last summer. He’s just one of the growing swarm of lobbyists trying to navigate potential regulation of the Wild West of finance.

Usman Ahmed
Paypal
Head of Global Public Policy and Research

Ahmed authored a paper as part of the Global Future Council on Trade and Investment at the World Economic Forum, advocating for equitable access to trade benefits.

Elissa Alben
Pfizer
Head of Global Trade Policy

Alben’s job of coordinating with governments around the world became even more challenging during the pandemic as Pfizer distributed its vaccine. She advocated against export restrictions that could clog the supply chain of lifesaving doses.

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Bill Behrens
Kraft Heinz
Vice President and Global Head of Government Affairs

Behrens took over Abigail Blunt’s position at the food giant last fall after spending the last decade at General Electric, where he built its grassroots outreach program.

Myron Brilliant
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Executive Vice President

Brilliant, who leads the largest international-affairs team of any business association in the country, is an advocate for an open-market trade agenda as the key to job growth.

Nasim Fussell
Holland & Knight
Partner

After serving as lead Senate aide for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiations, Fussell took her international-trade expertise to the private sector as companies learned the new rules.

Austen Jensen
Retail Industry Leaders Association
Senior Vice President, Government Affairs

Jensen has pressured the Biden administration to drop tariffs on China that he says have cost consumers more than $350 billion since 2018.

John Murphy
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Senior Vice President, International Policy

Murphy has worked to reel in tariffs put in place by the previous administration, and he successfully lobbied against the extension of tariffs on Vietnamese goods.

Alex Perkins
Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas
Principal

Perkins joined the firm in June after almost a decade at Stellantis, where he played an outsize role in the auto industry’s efforts to resolve a USMCA interpretation-related disagreement with the Biden administration.

Michael Pillsbury
Hudson Institute
Senior Fellow and Director, Chinese Strategy

Pillsbury traveled to China seven times during the Trump administration to meet with US trade officials, and he’s now a key outside voice on the complex relationship between the two superpowers.

Kelly Ann Shaw
Hogan Lovells
Partner

An expert in the intersection of trade policy and politics, Shaw negotiated a settlement for LG Energy Solution in a massive trade-secret dispute with a competitor.

Darci Vetter
Sower Strategies
Principal
Edelman Global Advisory
Senior Adviser

The country’s former chief agricultural trade negotiator, Vetter understands better than most the impact of tariffs and how competitors have maneuvered ahead of the United States.

Lori Wallach
American Economic Liberties Project
Director, ReThink Trade Program

Wallach is known for constantly working the phones with senior House Democrats and is usually trading information about the latest changes coming on patent issues.

Michael Wessel
Wessel Group
Owner

As lobbyist for the United Steelworkers, Wessel is one of the most influential labor voices shaping trade policy during a Democratic administration.

Jessica Anderson
Heritage Action
Executive Director

Anderson, who commands a $24-million budget through 2022, is developing a nationwide strategy for how to tighten election laws.

Ian Bassin
Protect Democracy
Cofounder and Executive Director

A former associate White House counsel under President Obama, Bassin is tangling with conservative groups seeking to implement voting restrictions.

Sarah Brannon
American Civil Liberties Union
Managing Attorney, Voting Rights Project

Brannon worked with the Biden administration on its order for federal agencies to design plans to increase voter registration and participation.

Damon Effingham
RepresentUs
Director, Federal Reform

A onetime legislative counsel in the House, Effingham is now working from the outside to build support for the Freedom to Vote Act.

Marc Elias
Democracy Docket
Founder
Elias Law Group
Partner

After representing the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee in post-2020-election litigation, Elias launched his own firm devoted to combating a cascade of GOP state legislatures that are tightening voting laws.

Maria Teresa Kumar
Voto Latino
President

With a robust television presence, Kumar is helping educate Hispanic voters through digital campaigns and information programs increasingly focused on fighting disenfranchisement and disinformation.

Leonard Leo
CRC Advisors
Chairman

After working most of his career to fill US courts with conservative judges, Leo—former co-chairman of the Federalist Society—is at the forefront of advocating for more restrictive voting laws.

Cleta Mitchell
Conservative Partnership Institute
Senior Legal Fellow

A longtime Republican lawyer and conservative activist, the 71-year-old Mitchell remains involved in work to combat Democratic efforts to expand ballot access.

Jonathan Rauch
Brookings Institution
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies

A prolific author and piercing analyst, Rauch has described the campaign to restrict voting “epistemic warfare by some Americans on other Americans.”

Aaron Scherb
Common Cause
Director, Legislative Affairs

Scherb co-led an umbrella advocacy group made up of 240 organizations to push for passage of the For the People Act, a comprehensive voting-rights package that Republicans opposed.

Jason Snead
Honest Elections Project
Executive Director

A former Heritage Foundation official, Snead heads one of the conservative groups opposed to mail-in ballots.

Virginia Kase Solomón
League of Women Voters
CEO

Solomón exerted a fierce outside pressure on President Biden to prioritize expanded voting rights the same way he pushed through infrastructure improvements.

Hans von Spakovsky
Heritage Foundation
Manager, Election Law Reform Initiative

An appointee to former President Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity, von Spakovsky oversees a national tracking system that monitors election-fraud cases, a hugely controversial tactic.

Abramowitz, Michael
Acer, Eleanor
Ackerman, James
Ackil, Josh
Adams, Gina
Adams, Jane
Aguirre, Sergio
Ahmed, Usman
Akinnusotu, Bunmi
Alben, Elissa
Albertson, Andrew
Albright, Craig
Alexander, Cory
Alperovitch, Dmitri
Alterman, Stephen
Anderson, Bryan
Anderson, Jessica
Andrés, José
Andrews, Bruce
Appelbaum, Binyamin
Ash, Nazanin
Asirwatham, Ronnate
Austin, Roy
Awad, Nihad
Ayer, Donald
Ayres, Alyssa
Badanes, Ginny
Baer, Greg
Bahn, Kate
Bailey, John
Bakaj, Andrew
Baker, Dean
Baker, Meredith Attwell
Ballentine, James
Bandla, Sirisha
Banks, George David
Bassin, Ian
Beck, Roy
Becker, David
Beckerman, Michael
Begich, Mark
Behrens, Bill
Belcher, Emma
Bell, Randolph
Ben-Ami, Jeremy
Ben-Yehuda, Jenna
Bentsen Jr., Kenneth
Beovides, Mario
Berrent, Diana
Berry, Tim
Bishop, Bill
Blase, Brian
Bledsoe, Paul
Bloomfield, Shirley
Blunt, Abigail
Bohigian, Catherine
Bolten, Joshua
Bolton, John
Bookbinder, Noah
Booren, Betsy
Bossert, Thomas
Bovard, Rachel
Bradley, Katherine
Bradley, Neil
Brannon, Sarah
Branscome, John
Breen, Michael
Brian, Danielle
Brilliant, Myron
Brock, Heidi
Broeksmit, Robert
Brooks, Rosa
Brown, David
Brown, Kris
Brown, Roxanne
Browner, Carol
Bruen, Brett
Bryant, Dan
Burgeson, Christine
Burke, Sheila
Burton, Kelly
Busby, Ron
Buth, Dawn
Butler, Paul
Butler, Stuart
Calio, Nicholas
Calvert, Kara
Cameron, Art
Campbell, Mac
Campbell, Melanie
Camper, Naomi
Cannon, Michael
Canter, Virginia
Cappello, Olivia
Capretta, James
Carney, Jay
Carroll, Mèlika
Cashin, Sheryll
Cass, Oren
Catanzaro, Michael
Chadda, Nitin
Chaney, Joi
Chatterjee, Neil
Chavern, David
Chervinsky, Jake
Childress, Kate
Ciccone, Stephen
Clark, Suzanne
Cleetus, Rachel
Clemente, Frank
Cohen, Eliot
Colby, Elbridge
Cole, David
Colman, Zack
Conklin, Brian
Conti, Judy
Cooper, Charles
Corbett, Maura Colleton
Cordero, Carrie
Cowen, Tyler
Culbertson, Lauren
Damond, Joseph
Dannenfelser, Marjorie
Davis, Antigone
Davis, Ashley
Davis, Chip
De, Raj
deLaski, Kathleen
DeShong, Debra
Diamond, Dan
Dodge, Brian
Doniger, David
Dorsonville, Mario
Dow, Roger
Downey, Teddy
Drutman, Lee
Durbin, Marty
Duvall, Zippy
Eden, Max
Effingham, Damon
Eibner, Christine
Eisen, Norman
Elam, Nicole
Elias, Marc
Evers, Austin
Ewer, Brett
Eyles, Matt
Fallon, Katie Beirne
Fariello, Theresa
Fay, Scott
Feingold, Cathy
Fields, Leslie
Figures, Derrick
Fischer, Sara
Flint, Alex
Flores, Claudia
Flournoy, Michèle
Forte, Denise
Foscato, Tara
Fox, Susan
Frederick, Wayne A.I.
Freed, Josh
Freeman, Geoff
Fromer, Kevin
Fussell, Nasim
Gannon, Tom
García, Mildred

Gatten, Nathan
Gilbert, Lisa
Gillespie, Ed
Giorgio, Tina
Glaser, Bonnie
Gold, Jon
Gold, Rich
Goldstein, Alexis
Goodwin, Amber
Gore, Elizabeth
Gostin, Lawrence
Gottlieb, Scott
Graves, Fatima Goss
Gray, C. Boyden
Griffin, Aron
Grooms, Susanne Sachsmann
Grumet, Jason
Gutierrez, Carlos
Haas, Tiffany
Hadley, Stephen
Hagan, Bridget
Hamilton, Katherine
Hanke, Steve
Hansen, Mark
Haq, Aliya
Harbert, Karen
Harris, Caroline
Harris, Holly
Harrison, Todd
Hauser, Jeff
Helms, Lila
Henderson, Wade
Henry, Mary Kay
Henry, Sudafi
Hersh, Adam
Hess, Rick
Hill, Fiona
Hillman, Jennifer
Hoagland, G. William
Hoffman, Bruce
Hoffman, Desiree
Holder Jr., Eric H.
Holleyman, Robert
Holman, Craig
Holtz-Eakin, Douglas
Hopper, Abigail Ross
Hudson, John
Hughes, Stacey
Humphries, Fred
Hunt, Richard
Hurlburt, Heather
Huseman, Brian
Ignatius, David
Ip, Greg
Isakowitz, Mark
Jackson, Selina
Jahn, Chris
Jefferies, Ian
Jennings, Chris
Jensen, Austen
Johnson, Alex
Johnson, Bruce
Johnson, Michael
Jones, Seth
Joseph, Jeff
Kagan, Fred
Kahlenberg, Richard
Kahn, Chip
Kaplan, Joel
Karol, Kathryn
Karpinski, Gene
Katulis, Brian
Katyal, Neal
Kelleher, Dennis
Kelley, Everett
Kelly, Edward
Kennedy, Sean
Kenney, Genevieve
Khosla, Jay
Klatt, Vic
Klein, Aaron
Knutson, Karen
Kohr, Howard
Kornbluh, Karen
Kotek, John
Kovacic, William
Krebs, Christopher
Krumholz, Sheila
Kuhn, Tom
Kumar, Maria Teresa
Lallinger, Stefan
Lamar, Stephen
Landrieu, Mary
Lane, Laura
Larimer, Jane
Laurens, Dana
Lawrence, Courtney
Lawrence, Patrice
Layman, Mike
LeaMond, Nancy
Lee, Jane
LeGrand, Ron
Lehrer, Eli
Leo, Leonard
Leonard, Dan
Leonhardt, David
Lepore, John
Lewis, Christopher
Lewis, James Andrew
Liles, Walton
Longwell, Sarah
Loper, Brett
Lowe, Luther
Lugar, Katherine
Lynch, Timothy
Lynn, Barry
Macchiarola, Frank
MacGuineas, Maya
MacKie, Robb
Mackler, Sasha
Magaña-Salgado, Jose
Maloney, Drew
Manatos, Tom
Mancini, Jeanne
Margheri, Marco
Marshall, Beverly
Martin, Kevin
Mason, C. Nicole
Massimino, Elisa
Matheson, Jim
Matz, Joshua
McGarvey, Sean
McGhan, Don
McGowan, Tara
McGreevy, Jim
McMurry-Heath, Michelle
McNally, Bob
Medeiros, Evan
Mehlman, Bruce
Meissner, Doris
Meservey, Lulu Cheng
Meyer, Joyce
Miller, Bill
Miller, Sarah
Mitchell, Cleta
Mitchell, Doyle
Morell, Michael
Moss, Diana
Mostashari, Farzad
Muller, Tiffany
Murphy, John
Murray, Lodriguez
Musser, Phil
Nabavi, Jonathan
Nash, Elizabeth
Neely, Susan
Nelson, Bill
Newhouse, Aric
Nichols, Rob
O’Brien, Robert
O’Hanlon, Michael
O’Sullivan, Terry
Ojakli, Ziad
Olmem, Andrew
Ornstein, Norman
Oxman, Jason
Padilla, Christopher

Paese, Michael
Parkinson, Mark
Parrott, Sharon
Parsi, Trita
Pasco, Jim
Perkins, Alex
Peterson, Eli
Petricone, Michael
Pickering, Chip
Pierre-Louis, Stanley
Pillsbury, Michael
Pollack, Richard
Posen, Adam
Potter, Trevor
Powell, Michael
Powell, Rich
Pringle, Becky
Purdy, Chris
Quintenz, Brian
Rauch, Jonathan
Reams, Heather
Rees, Nina
Reilly, Brendan
Reilly, Lori
Reynolds, Molly
Rhodes, Ben
Richie, Rob
Richman, Paul
Rickard, Jenny
Riedl, Brian
Rios, Elena
Rivkin, Charles
Rodman, Lindsay
Rogers, Chip
Rogin, Josh
Roman, Lisa
Romero Rainey, Rebeca
Rosenbaum, Sara
Rosenberg, Jason
Rosenthal, Elisabeth
Ross, Dennis
Rossman, Manny
Rotherham, Andrew
Rothschild, Daniel
Roza, Marguerite
Rubin, Richard
Russell, Randy
Rutzen, Douglas
Salo, Matt
Samuel, William
Sarukhan, Arturo
Satloff, Robert
Saunders, Lee
Schake, Kori
Scharfen, Jock
Scharre, Paul
Scherb, Aaron
Schmidtlein, John
Schulman, Loren DeJonge
Schulman, Melissa
Schulte, Todd
Schuman, Dan
Schwartz, Eric
Schweppe, Jon
Scott, JC
Seaton, Liz
Shapiro, Gary
Sharry, Frank
Shaw, Kelly
Shay, Matthew
Shelton, Hilary
Shepardson, David
Shierholz, Heidi
Shuler, Liz
Siegel, Joshua
Silverman, Stephanie
Simon, Jacqueline
Singh, Vikram
Slover, Laura
Smith, Dan
Smith, Edward
Smith, Kristin
Snead, Jason
Snitchler, Todd
Snowden, K. Dane
Solomón, Virginia Kase
Sommers, Mike
Southworth, Cindy
Spear, Chris
Spriggs, William
Stanton, John
Steckman, Matthew
Stegmaier, Gerry
Stein, Jeff
Stephenson, Lonnie
Stewart, Camille
Stier, Max
Stoller, Matt
Stout, Jennifer
Streett, Mary
Stryk, Robert
Sweeney, Bill
Swisher, Kara
Swonger, Chris
Tabarrok, Alex
Taeb, Yasmine
Tallamy, Brad
Talmadge, Caitlin
Talucci, Vincent
Telhami, Shibley
Thernstrom, Sam
Thompson, Michael
Timmons, Jay
Tippens, Julie
Troye, Olivia
Turner, Grace-Marie
Tye, John
Tymon, Jim
Ubl, Stephen
Vargas, Danny
Vargas, Omar
Verdery Jr., C. Stewart
Vetter, Darci
Vieira, Don
Vinyard, Shelley
von Spakovsky, Hans
Wall, Jamie
Wallach, Lori
Wallerstein, Ben
Wallis, Jim
Walsh, Jason
Walton, Jennifer
Wayland, Karen
Wechsler, William
Weingarten, Randi
Weiss, Alison
Weiss, Joanne
Wessel, David
Wessel, Michael
Westine, Lezlee
Wexler, Chuck
Whitaker, Alex
Whitaker, Scott
Whitehouse-Levine, Miller
Wiggins, Dena
Williams, Kyle
Wilson, Cherie
Wilson, Mark
Wingate, Heather
Wittes, Benjamin
Wolff, Brian
Wolff, Candida
Wright, Thomas
Yarowsky, Jonathan
Yeakel, Robert
Yglesias, Matthew
Zaelke, Durwood
Zaid, Mark
Zaneski, Cyril
Zapien, Ivan
Zichal, Heather