The Future of American Democracy: The 2024 Election and Beyond

Angela Glover Blackwell is Founder in Residence at PolicyLink, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity for all. Under Glover Blackwell’s leadership, PolicyLink gained national prominence in the movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of Color, particularly in the areas of health, housing, transportation, and infrastructure. Glover Blackwell is also the host of the Reimagining Democracy for a Good Life podcast and the Radical Imagination podcast, Professor of Practice at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and Chief Vision Officer for the Goldman School of Public Policy’s Democracy Policy Initiative.

Maria Echaveste is the president and CEO of the Opportunity Institute, a nonprofit organization that seeks to increase social and economic mobility and advance racial equity. Echaveste has been affiliated with UC Berkeley in various capacities since 2004 including: lecturing at the School of Law and in the undergraduate division on immigration and education; serving as program and policy director of the Law School’s Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy from 2008–2012; as a Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies since 2008; and with the Berkeley Food Institute, focused on transforming our nation’s food system. Prior to her time at UC Berkeley, Echaveste co-founded strategic and policy consulting group NVG, LLC, worked as a community leader and corporate attorney, and served as a senior White House and U.S. Department of Labor official. She is currently on the board of directors of UCSF-Benioff Oakland Children’s Hospital, Mi Familia Vota, and Level Playing Field Institute.

Janet Napolitano is a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy and Director of the Center for Security in Politics. Napolitano served as the president of the University of California from 2013–2020, as the US Secretary of Homeland Security from 2009–2013, as Governor of Arizona from 2003– 2009, as Attorney General of Arizona from 1998–2003, and as US Attorney for the District of Arizona from 1993–1997. She was the first woman and is, to date, the longest-serving Secretary of Homeland Security. Napolitano is the recipient of nine honorary degrees as well as the Jefferson Medal from the University of Virginia, the university’s highest honor. In 2015, Napolitano was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She serves on the Council of the American Law Institute and is a board member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In March of 2019, Napolitano published How Safe Are We: Homeland Security Since 9/11.

Robert B. Reich is the Emeritus Carmel P. Friesen Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He has served in three national administrations, including as Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written 18 books, including the bestsellers The System: Who Rigged It, and How We Fix It; The Common Good; Saving Capitalism; Aftershock; Supercapitalism; and The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages. He is co-creator of the 2017 Netflix original documentary Saving Capitalism and of the award-winning 2013 film Inequality for All. He is co-founder of Inequality Media, co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute, and co-founding editor of The American Prospect. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003, Reich was awarded the prestigious Vaclav Havel Vision Foundation Prize by the former Czech president for his pioneering work in economic and social thought. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the ten most successful cabinet secretaries of the century. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, his M.A. from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his J.D. from Yale Law School.