Four months ago, I shared the exciting news that the Democracy Fund had spun off from Omidyar Network to become an independent private foundation. Since that time, we have been hard at work building our new organization – setting up internal systems, approving new grants, refining our strategies, and so much more.
I’m incredibly proud of how much progress we have made in the short time since our launch and in particular would like to share that four incredible people have since joined our team. You can find their bios in the About Us section of our web site, but I wanted to share quick notes about each of them here.
- Tiffany Griffin has joined us as our Manager of Learning and Impact from the U.S. Agency on International Development, where she was a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for the Feed the Future initiative. Tiffany has a PhD in social psychology and spent time working for Senator Bingaman as a Congressional Fellow.
- Lauren Strayer has joined us as our Manager of Communications & Network. Lauren brings ten years of experience to the team in communications, media, and advocacy. Most recently, Lauren was an independent consultant specializing in communications and strategy for non-profit and philanthropic enterprises. Previously, she was Associate and Acting Director of Communications at Demos, a Democracy Fund grantee, and the executive director of the New Democracy Project.
- Stacey Van Zuiden has joined us as a Program Associate for Responsive Politics from the Federal Voting Assistance Program at the U.S. Department of Defense. While attending law school she interned with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Elections Division and the Iowa Secretary of State’s Elections Division, and previously worked for the Nebraska Republican Party in a variety of positions, eventually serving as the party’s Communications Director.
- Paul Waters has joined us as a Program Associate for Informed Participation from the Federal Communications Commission, where he served as a Legal Fellow in the Office of the Chairman and the Wireline Competition Bureau. Paul was a GW Presidential Merit Scholar and a Public Interest Scholar at the George Washington University Law School, where he earned his J.D. He also served as the president of the Gulf Recovery Network, a student group that provides pro bono legal work in New Orleans.
Stay tuned for more updates. We expect that several more inspiring leaders will be joining us over the course of the next six months.