Maia Comeau is a Senior Fellow with IDEA as well as the Founder of Comeau & Company a Government and Public Affairs Consulting firm in Washington DC. Previously, she was the Founder and Director of Legislative Affairs for the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Adam Duffy is the Program Manager of the Institute for Democratic Engagement and Accountability. He is particularly interested in civics education and citizen engagement. Previously, he was a Policy Assistant for the House Rules Committee and Representative Jim McGovern. He was a John Glenn Fellow and graduated from the Ohio State University with a degree in Public Affairs and Sociology in 2020.

Marjan Ehsassi is the Executive Director of the Federation for Innovation in Democracy - North America. She is also is a Future of Democracy Fellow at the Berggruen Institute with expertise in democratic innovations and deliberation, citizens’ assemblies, voice and process integrity. Marjan has researched six citizens’ assemblies across Europe and North America. She teaches a graduate seminar on Working With the Public and is currently a Guarantor of the French Citizens’ Assembly on the End of Life and on the Oversight Committee of the G1000 We Need to Talk Initiative.

Dr. Maya Kornberg is a research fellow on the Elections and Government Program at the NYU Brennan Center for Justice, where she leads work related to information and disinformation in politics, Congress, and money in politics. She has worked on democratic governance issues at nonprofits, international organizations, think tanks, and academic institutions. She previously held positions at the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), NYU Govlab, and Public Agenda. Most recently, she led research for a UNDP and IPU project examining civic engagement in the work of over 80 parliaments around the world. She is lead author of the resulting Global Parliamentary Report. Maya has taught undergraduate and graduate political science courses at NYU, Georgetown, and American University. She is also the author of the recent book Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in Lawmaking (Columbia University Press, 2023.)

Amy Lee is the Associate Director of the Institute for Democratic Engagement & Accountability. Her focus is developing and testing practical innovations to make democracy both more participatory and deliberative. Previously, she was a program officer for with the Kettering Foundation, where she led the development of the foundation’s platform for online deliberative forums, Common Ground for Action and a 2018 Marshall Memorial Fellow, participating in the German Marshall Fund’s immersive program for emerging leaders focused on transatlantic engagement and collaboration.

Matt Leighninger is the Director of the Center for Democracy Innovation at the National Civic League. The Center works to: sustain democracy by inviting people to help redesign the “civic infrastructure” of their communities; scale democracy through strategies for engaging people in state and federal decisions; and measure the quality of democracy and engagement. Matt’s first book, The Next Form of Democracy, is a firsthand account of that wave of democratic innovation that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s. His second, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy, co-authored with Tina Nabatchi, 5 is a guide and textbook that surveys the role and potential of engagement in K-12 education, health, land use planning, and the work of state and federal governments.

Michael Neblo is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Democratic Engagement & Accountability (IDEA) at the Ohio State University. He is one of the creators of Deliberative Town Halls, which have been done in collaboration with more than 30 Members of the U.S. Congress, as well as MPs in the Australian and the U.K. Parliaments. His most recent book is Politics with the People: Building a Directly Representative Democracy, publication of which led to the launching of IDEA’s Connecting to Congress initiative. Michael is also part of the EUComMeet Project consortium, and was a 2020-2022 Carnegie Fellow.

Nick Vlahos is the Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy Innovation at the National Civic League. Nick is the author of The Political Economy of Devolution in Britain from the Postwar Era to Brexit. Previously, Nick worked at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, and the Civic Innovation Office at the City of Toronto.