Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, is a leading scholar of constitutional and Internet law. After teaching at the University of Chicago and founding Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, he clerked for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia. Lessig founded the reform group Equal Citizens, helped launch Creative Commons, sits on AXA Research Fund’s Scientific Board, and belongs to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Calif. columnist/Democracy editor; Zócalo Public Square; Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy; prof of practice ASU School of Politics and Global Studies; author, People's Machine, The California Crackup

Sonja is an experienced and successful movement builder. In 2014, Sonja Trauss started organizing pro-housing renters in the Bay Area while working as a high school math teacher. She is a founder of the YIMBY movement in California. Sonja leads YIMBY Law, which is a project of Yes In My Back Yard.

democracy reformer and retired politician. From 1981 to 1991, he served on the City Council of Burlington, Vermont (with mayor Bernie Sanders). He then served a decade as a member of the Vermont House of Representatives. After leaving elective office, he worked on ranked choice voting; since 2004, he has focused on sortition reform internationally. Some of his publications on sortition include “Democracy through Multi-Body Sortition: Athenian Lessons for the Modern Day” (Journal of Public Deliberation, 2013) and a chapter on sortition in Methods for Sustainability Research (2017).

Leroy Allan Martin is a dual British-American legal writer and former practicing attorney whose interdisciplinary background spans theology, education, and law. Born on the tiny British Caribbean Island of Montserrat, Martin now focuses on legal scholarship and writing.

Liz Barry is the Executive Director of Metagov.
Before joining Metagov, she served as Head of Partnerships at The Computational Democracy Project, the 501(c)3 organization she established with the creators of the Polis technology to steward its open source code and methods. Liz works with facilitators, social movements, civil society organizations, journalists, indigenous nations, democratic governments both young and old, and peacebuilders to implement "listening at scale." The collaboration began when her presence at Taiwan's 2014 Sunflower Revolution and subsequent relationship with g0v led to her writing up the first coverage of vTaiwan in the west, in the 2016 piece for Civicist titled "vTaiwan: Public Participation Methods on the Cyberpunk Frontier of Democracy," now republished by Taiwan's government.

Dr. Marjan H. Ehsassi is a leading democracy advocate and sought-after expert on citizens assemblies and their transformative impact on civic engagement. As the Executive Director of FIDE – North America, Ehsassi combines her extensive academic background with practical experience to advance institutional reform. Holding a Doctorate from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a law degree from McGill University, Marjan is the author of Activated Citizenship, The Transformative Power of Citizens Assemblies, which explores how CAs can promote democratic renewal, social cohesion and build mutual trust between elected officials and their constituents. Her book introduces the term “voice insecurity”; to spotlight one of the drivers of political grievance. Prior to leading FIDE – North America, she held positions at the World Bank and the National Democratic Institute, where she led governance programs in Asia and the Middle East. She is a frequent speaker at forums like the Athens Democracy Forum, the American Democracy Summit and has been featured in prestigious publications, including the New York Times, Toronto Star, the Boston Globe. Based in Washington, DC, Dr. Ehsassi is fluent in English, French and Farsi.

Executive Director

Leonora is a nonprofit leader with extensive experience in movement-building and organizing. She currently serves as Executive Director of Democracy Without Elections, a sortition movement-building organization, and Director of Public Access Democracy, a democratic lottery advocacy organization based in Los Angeles. Previously, Leonora was the Executive Director of Abundant Housing LA, a pro-housing movement organization that grew from an all-volunteer group to a staffed organization of 10 under her leadership.