2026 Andrew Goodman National Civic Leadership Training Summit

Claire was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and moved to the U.S. in 2007. She’s a tenured professor who has worked in refugee advocacy and outreach with a range of local and global organizations. Her refugee work led to her getting the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Volunteer Award and the American Society for Public Administration Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Contribution to Public Administration for research & advocacy in the area. In 2018 she worked on an emergency response team for Lighthouse Relief on the Greek island of Lesvos, servicing the Aegean Sea. She has a BA in Humanities from Ulster University, an MA from Queen’s University Belfast, an MSC in International Affairs and Global Enterprise from the University of Utah, and is a PhD candidate at Ulster University.

Michael O. Adams, Ph.D., is a Professor of Political Science at Texas Southern University, where he serves as Founding Director of the Barbara Jordan Policy Research and Survey Center, Founding Director of the Institute for Voter and Civic Engagement, and Director of the Executive Master of Public Administration Program. A specialist in electoral politics, redistricting, and civic engagement, Dr. Adams has built a body of work dedicated to producing original, policy-relevant data on Black and Brown communities and to elevating the voices of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in national policy conversations.

He founded the Barbara Jordan Policy Research and Survey Center to advance this mission, training graduate researchers and generating data that informs public debate. Under his leadership of the Institute for Voter and Civic Engagement, Texas Southern University earned both the Voter Friendly Campus designation and the Carnegie Classification for Civic Engagement—distinctions that reflect the institution’s broad
commitment to civic participation.

The Center’s polling has been cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Houston Chronicle, and its results are tracked on RealClearPolitics—a measure of the national reach of Dr. Adams’s research and its standing among leading observers of American politics.

Erika Alexander is an actress, co-founder of Color Farm Media, and Board Member of VoteRunLead. Erika is on a mission to bring greater equity, inclusion, and diverse representation to both media and electoral politics.

Mo is the Director of Communications at The Andrew Goodman Foundation. With a passion for youth empowerment, civic engagement, and social progress, Mo brings a wealth of experience and creativity to their role, driving the organization's mission and programming to new heights. Collaborating closely with AGF staff, students engaged in the programs, university staff, and fellow nonprofit leaders, Mo fosters a network of change-makers dedicated to promoting youth electoral and civic engagement on university campuses nationwide. Mo is also the host, editor, and producer of the "Live The Legacy Podcast." Through this platform, Mo engages in compelling conversations with influential activists, community leaders, and scholars who share their experiences, expertise, and ideas on various social and political issues.

With over eight years of dedicated service in the progressive movement space, Mo has been a steadfast advocate for positive change and believes a robust digital strategy is a key factor in leveraging progressive wins, increasing accessibility in our movement spaces, and transforming narratives in service of cultural shifts. They spend their free time listening to podcasts, watching basketball, and battling their wife and 4 kids in Mario Kart.

Dale Berger is a member of Women for Women International’s Global Board of Directors. She currently serves as a member of the Global Revenue & Advancement Committee and the Global Program Committee.

Ms. Berger has a long career as a businesswoman specializing in retail, owning several successful stores in New York City. She most recently worked as a commercial real estate broker, specializing in the leasing of office space and sales of commercial buildings.

Ms. Berger has held numerous leadership roles with various not-for-profit organizations including Her Justice, of which she is a former Board Member, where she founded and organized their successful annual photography auction. She is also a former Board Member of New Alternatives for Children and a Founding Member of the Young Leadership of Israel Bonds. Ms. Berger has counseled City Year New York in their early development.

Ms. Berger holds degrees from Skidmore College and Tufts University. She and her husband, Max W. Berger, have four children and ten grandchildren.

Ava Brunner is a third year UC Berkeley student majoring in Political Science and minoring in Data Science. She is from Hermosa Beach, CA. This is her second year on the Associated Students of the University of California’s Vote Coalition, for which she serves as the Civic Education Director and part of the university’s Civic Engagement Committee. Her specialization is American politics and she is particularly interested in exploring how data can empower communities to enact social and political change.

Joseph Carter is the Student Regent at Texas Southern University, a governor-appointed position representing over 8,000 students as the sole student member of the university's governing board. A Political Science major with a minor in Psychology in the Thomas F. Freeman Honors College, Carter's work centers on housing policy, environmental justice, and expanding opportunity for underserved communities.

He completed a placement in the office of U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth through the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Leadership Institute and currently serves as a 2026–2027 CBCF Leadership Institute Ambassador. At Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Scholars Program, his research examined the impacts of mold exposure in under-resourced housing communities.

Carter is the founder of Changed by Carter and The Carter Collective, two Houston-based organizations serving hundreds of individuals through resource distribution and civic engagement. His long-term vision centers on developing an upscale, low-income housing model with direct pipelines into HBCUs, Ivy League institutions, and major corporations.

Caroline Clark is a rising Junior at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She is studying Political Science and Legal Studies on a Pre-Law track. Caroline is very passionate about civic engagement, specifically voting. She is an Election Official for the City of Madison and a member of the Student Voter Union.

Stephanie Demmons is VoteRiders’ National Partnerships Manager, where she leads their engagement with national partner and state-based organizations to ensure that voter ID education, outreach, and assistance are offered widely during this critical period for voting rights and electoral equity. She comes to this work with over a decade of experience leading organizing teams within the reproductive freedom movement and before joining VoteRiders led strategic partnerships focused on building women’s political power during the 2024 election
cycle. She is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Ryan Drysdale is associate director of campus partnerships for the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge at Civic Nation and has over 10 years of experience in community and civic engagement.

Prior to joining the Challenge, Drysdale worked with community development organizations in Southeast Asia and has worked, volunteered, and studied on six continents. He has also served as a regional manager for Inspire U.S., a youth civic engagement program in 11 states.

Drysdale received his BA in international relations from the University of Iowa and his Master’s in international relations from Syracuse University, including coursework in Chile. He is a 2017 New Leaders Council Fellow, served on the advisory board for the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his partner and 35+ plants.

Fred Farkouh is a tax executive with over 40 years of experience in areas of business, financial, and tax consulting. Presently, Mr. Farkouh is a senior partner of Farkouh, Furman & Faccio LLP, a company founded in 1974 that provides tax advisory and compliance services to over 400 companies across multiple industry sectors both domestically and internationally ranging in size from start-up to multi-billion-dollar revenues and market cap.

Mr. Farkouh has also appeared as an expert witness in arbitration hearings as well as in Federal Courts, New York State Courts, Alaska State Court, and New Jersey Courts.

He holds a BBA degree in accounting from the City College of New York as well as a J.D. degree from Brooklyn Law School.

Richard C. Fording is the Marilyn Williams Elmore and John Durr Elmore Endowed Professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama. He earned his B.A. at the University of Florida (1986), and his Ph.D. from Florida State University (1998). His primary teaching and research interests include public policy, race and politics, state politics, social movements, and quantitative methodology. He is the author or coauthor of articles appearing in a variety of journals, including American Political Science Review, American Sociological Review, American Journal of Political Science and Journal of Politics. He is the coauthor of Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (University of Chicago Press).

Bob Frigo is the Assistant Dean and Director of the Kernodle Center for Civic Life at Elon University.

David Goodman is the brother of Andrew Goodman and the former Chairman of The Andrew Goodman Foundation's Board of Directors. Professionally, David is a civil engineer and holds an MBA from Stanford University. He was the founder and CEO of United American Energy Corp., an electric generation and power company operating in eight states throughout the U.S. David is a member of the Global Leadership Council of the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), member of U.S. Green Building Council, member of American Solar Energy Society, member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, on the Advisory Board of the Natural History Museum of The Adirondacks, on the Advisory Board of the Ruby Bridges Foundation, and a Trustee Emeritus of the Antioch College Board of Trustees. He brings extensive experience in developing, operating, and expanding organizations.

Rachel Gita Karp supports bold, strategic, and ambitious organizations, people, and projects that fight for progressive causes with creativity and innovation. She’s helped hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals all over the world with training, community-building, mentorship, and more. This work builds off of and feeds Rachel’s background in activist theater.

Rachel’s creative practice focuses on writing and directing performances to change U.S. politics and public policy. Rachel has created political performances in New York through Clubbed Thumb, Ars Nova, Mabou Mines, The Drama League, Irondale, Brooklyn Arts Council, New York Foundation for the Arts, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, The Wild Project, The Brick, The Flea, IRT, Dixon Place, Incubator Arts Project, Anonymous Ensemble, Women Center Stage, and Network of Ensemble Theatres. Regionally, her work has been produced through La Jolla Playhouse, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics, and Philly Fringe, and she has written and directed productions produced at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chatham University, Columbia University, and Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has been exhibited at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial and broadcast on North Carolina public television.

Rachel has held residencies across the US including at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Barn Arts, Monson Arts, Tofte Lake Center, Marble House Project, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Her associate and assistant directing credits include productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional.

Rachel Gita Karp received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. At Carnegie Mellon she was a John Wells Directing Fellow, which supported her academics, and a Milton and Cynthia Friedman Fellow, which supported her work in women’s policy research in Washington, D.C.

Professor Sonia R. Jarvis is an accomplished attorney and scholar whose research and teaching have focused on race, politics, and the media. Her legal practice focuses on civil rights, civil liberties, minority businesses and counseling nonprofit organizations. She served as a law clerk for renowned Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. when he was the US District Court Judge for the Middle District of Alabama and also when he was elevated to become a US Circuit Court Judge for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Professor Jarvis has written several book chapters and papers and is currently focused on voter suppression in a book she is co-authoring entitled "States of Confusion: How New Voter ID Requirements Fail Democracy and What to Do About It" (under contract with NYU Press). An active member of several professional associations and academic organizations, she has served in a variety of administrative positions, including most notably as the Executive Director of the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation, Inc., and Managing Director of the Center for National Policy Review Clinic formerly based at Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law.

A frequent commentator on public and political issues, Professor Jarvis has testified before Congress and has been interviewed by almost every major media outlet in the country, such as National Public Radio, the Washington Post, PBS News Hour, and CNN. Prior to joining Baruch College, CUNY, she served as a Senior Consultant for the President’s Initiative on Race in the Clinton White House tasked with drafting its final report and has been invited to teach at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, Georgetown University’s Law Center, and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey’s Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Professor Jarvis has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on race and politics, public policy, intergroup dialogue, communications and media analysis, law and public policy, and women's rights while bringing a wealth of practical and theoretical knowledge to the courses she teaches at Baruch. She first joined Baruch’s Marxe School of Public & International Affairs in 2004 as the Lillian & Nathan Ackerman Visiting Distinguished Associate Professor of Equality and Justice in America and was appointed a Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the Center for Equality, Pluralism and Policy in 2007. Professor Jarvis graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Political Science with Honors and Distinction, and a B.A. in Psychology, followed by a J.D. from Yale University Law School. She was recently acknowledged by Stanford University as its first African American Female Varsity Athlete in university history when she served as Captain of the Stanford Women’s Basketball Team.

Shaped by her hardworking family in and out of the San José community of her upbringing, Elena understands the value of showing up. Whether this act takes the form of collaborating to enhance the experiences of the Latine population on campus, or in ensuring her peers feel confident about all things voting, offering an informed and dependable presence is something Elena strives to uphold. Studying politics at the University of San Francisco (USF), she intends to go on to law school and build a career working in the immigration and labor realms of law. At USF, she is grateful for the opportunities to work with with USF Votes, serve on the executive board of the Latine Undergraduate Network of Activists (L.U.N.A), as well as stand as the current At-Large Latine Student Representative with the Associated Students of the University of San Francisco.

Ashley Kim is a sophomore majoring in Health & Societies with a concentration in Health Law and Policy on the Pre-Law track at the University of Pennsylvania. She is originally from Montana. At school she is involved with the Women's Center and participates in Mock Trial. She is passionate about the intersection between civic engagement, gender equity, healthcare, and voter education. In her free time she likes listening to music, reading, and playing tennis!

Evan Malbrough is a native of Smyrna, Georgia. He is a 2020 graduate of Georgia State University with a degree in Public Policy, a minor in Cello Performance, and an inductee to Georgia State University’s 2022 40 under 40 class. At GSU, Evan was a founding member of his Vote Everywhere, where he led civic engagement programming on campus. While pursuing his undergraduate studies, Evan served as a Summer Research Fellow at the United States Department of Defense, serving at the Pentagon. At the Pentagon, Evan worked in legislative affairs and worked to supported the DOD Office of General Counsel. Upon graduating, Evan became a 2020 Puffin Fellow with the Andrew Goodman Foundation. Evan founded the Georgia Youth Poll Worker Project, recruiting 1,000 poll workers for the 2020 general election and 2021 runoff. The ACLU of Georgia officially acquired the Georgia Youth Poll Worker Project in December 2021, naming him a Voter Access Project Fellow between December 2021 and September 2023. As a fellow, Evan worked to protect on-campus early voting centers in Atlanta and supported ACLU GA's legislative initiatives. Evan is a writer who has published in publications such as Forbes, Teen Vogue, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. After leaving the ACLU of Georgia, Evan served as the Managing Organizer of Georgia for Our Turn, where he worked with APS students to create a student mental health community board district-wide. During the 2024 election season, Evan worked as a VoteFlare Associate at the Shorenstein Center for Media and Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School and as the Religious Outreach advisor for Congresswoman Lucy McBath's Campaign. Evan served as the Senior Economic Policy Advisor at the Netherlands Consulate in Atlanta. Finally, Evan works as the Program Manager for Impact with the Andrew Goodman Foundation and the Atlanta
Liaison for StartAruba.

Robert Masters is a life-long New Yorker who attended Queens College during the same period as Andrew Goodman. Robert and Andrew drove together from NYC to Oxford, Ohio in June 1964 to participate in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Summer training to prepare for their volunteer work in Mississippi registering African Americans to vote.

Currently retired, Robert was the Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary of Acadia Realty Trust, a fully-integrated equity real estate investment trust focused on the acquisition, ownership, management and redevelopment of high-quality retail properties located in key street and urban retail corridors as well as suburban locations within high-barrier-to-entry, densely-populated metropolitan areas along the East Coast and in Chicago.

Previously Mr. Masters worked in the banking sector, a private law firm, and the Department of Justice. He also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo and Ghana, West Africa. Robert received his Bachelor of Arts from the City University of New York and his Juris Doctorate from New York University Law School. He currently lives with his wife Carla in White Plains, NY. They have three children and five grandchildren.

Roderick Morning-Trice is a class of 2027 Political Science Major at Dillard University. He hails from the great city and state of Birmingham, Alabama, and is anxious to solve some of the world’s problems, and excited to connect with you all! In his free time he enjoys socializing with friends, meeting new people, and diving deeper into his passions of music and social justice.

Erin Mysogland is the Assistant Director of the Center for Community Action and Research and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Peace and Justice Studies at Pace University. In both positions Erin works with Pace students to empower them to take action on justice issues they are passionate about. As Pace's Campus Champion, Erin and Pace's AGF Ambassadors work towards full-student voter participation through creative outreach strategies and institutionalization efforts like an on campus poll site. Erin has a Master's in International and World History from Columbia University and the London School of Economics where she studied strategies activists used in response to the policing of migrant children. Erin is passionate about youth voter engagement and movements for racial justice past and present, and is excited to participate in NCLTS to celebrate and learn from the transformative power of young people!

Renata has extensive trial and appellate experience in federal and state courts, handling cases from pleadings and discovery through trial and appeal. Prior to joining Campaign Legal Center, Renata litigated voting rights cases nationwide in trial and appellate courts as an associate at a D.C.-based law firm. Renata previously clerked for the Hon. Edward G. Smith of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Hon. Ronald Lee Gilman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Renata graduated magna cum laude from New York University School of Law (J.D. 2019), where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an Articles Editor of the NYU Law Review. Her note, “Challenging Racist Predictive Policing Algorithms Under the Equal Protection Clause,” was published in the Law Review and received the Leonard Henkin Prize for an outstanding note on the Equal Protection Clause. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Ann Petluck Poses Prize for outstanding clinical work. Renata also graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 2016), where she received the Althea K. Hottel Award for outstanding leadership.

Renata is admitted to practice law in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. She joined CLC in September 2025.

Samantha received her J.D. from Boston College Law School, where she was a Public Service Scholar. While in law school, Samantha represented clients in the Civil Rights Clinic and Public Defenders Clinic, taught environmental law to undergraduates, and worked as a Rapport Fellow for Mayor Michelle Wu. She interned with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Campaign Legal Center and Southern Poverty Law Center. She also holds a M.A. in urban and environmental policy and planning from Tufts University and graduated with her B.A. magna cum laude from Emory University.

Committed to the impact of local government, Samantha served two terms as a City Councilor At-Large in Marlborough, Massachusetts, becoming the youngest woman elected citywide. Before law school, she worked in both civic education and democracy nonprofits, where she helped secure passage of the landmark Massachusetts civic education law.

Prior to joining Campaign Legal Center, Samantha served as a presidential appointee in the Department of Transportation and completed a legal fellowship at Public Rights Project. Samantha is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Samantha was also a past member of the Students Learn Students Vote Advisory Board and launched the Faculty Network for Student Voting Rights during her time as Civic Engagement Manager at Scholars Strategy Network.

Emma Ramos is a Senior studying political science at the University of California Berkeley. She is involved with several centers on campus like the Public Service Center and her school's Student Government. She is the director of her campus's voting coalition as well as student director to a cohort of interns at the Public Service Center. Emma is committed to uplifting her on campus community and advocating for youth civic education. Through her leadership on campus, Emma hopes to make an impact on her campus community and community back home.

Joy Ann Reid is an American political commentator and television host. She was a national correspondent for MSNBC and is best known for hosting the political commentary program The ReidOut from 2020 to 2025.

Christina Sanders (she/her) is the Founder of the PoliChic Engagement Fund and a seasoned leader in voter engagement and policy advocacy. With a strong background in youth voting, she served as Senior Program Manager at The Andrew Goodman Foundation and State Director at the League of Young Voters Education Fund. Her leadership was crucial in the Texas v. Holder case, which secured voting rights for 700K Texans by challenging the Texas Voter ID Bill.

Christina has also been an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Texas Southern University for over a decade, winning multiple “Professor of the Year” awards. She served on the Texas Advisory Committee for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, co-authoring a notable manuscript on voting rights and disenfranchisement in Texas, published in the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy.

Her work has earned numerous accolades, including the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights “Young Champion of Justice” Award and recognition in Marie Claire as one of the women "changing the face of Texas politics." Christina was also a catalyst candidate for Houston City Council in 2013 and authored Get Your Weight Up: Things We Can All Do To Make America Better in 2015.

Christina holds degrees from Texas Southern University, Georgetown University, and Columbia University, with expertise in public administration, policy leadership, and climate studies. She is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

Bernice Sims is the author of Detour Before Midnight, a re-telling of Ms. Sim’s life growing up in the Jim Crow South and the events that beaconed to her to join the Freedom Summer movement. Bernice joined the NAACP as a youth and spent many hours in the home of Medgar Evers before his assassination. She has been a resident of Long Island, NY since 1972, and in 1989, became Long Island’s first African-American Female Trustee for the Village of Hempstead, NY. Bernice also served as an advisory board member for Mario Cuomo, the former Governor of New York, among other leadership honors. She earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work at Adelphi University in 1982 and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

Caroline Smith is the Director of Programs at The Andrew Goodman Foundation. Caroline is a proud Jersey girl living in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA in Sociology and a certificate in Community Action/Public Policy at Connecticut College in 2018. After graduation, she began her organizing career with the Student PIRGs at Rutgers University-Newark, where she trained and mobilized students to run campaigns around voter engagement, affordable textbooks, and environmental issues on campus. She then jumped into national electoral work on Senator Cory Booker's presidential campaign for the 2020 primary cycle. In her third year with AGF, Caroline is excited to continue working with young organizers across the country to institutionalize civic and voter engagement.

Andrew Tomback is a partner in the Global Commercial Litigation Group and is based in the New York office. He focuses his practice on litigations and investigations involving federal securities laws, complex litigation and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Andrew has over 25 years of experience drawn from business, private practice and government service. He handles a full range of civil and criminal litigation before the courts, US Securities and Exchange Commission and various other regulators.

Before entering private practice, Andrew was deputy general counsel of the Resolution Trust Corporation, where he managed several hundred attorneys handling federal savings and loan resolutions. He also served as senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement at the US Department of the Treasury. Earlier in his career, he served as an Assistant US Attorney in the criminal division of the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, where he conducted grand jury investigations and prosecuted criminal cases, concentrating on complex securities frauds, including stock manipulations, insider trading, international tax evasion enterprises and penny stock schemes. He tried 12 cases, all to conviction, and successfully argued over a dozen appeals. Andrew also clerked for the Honorable Stanley Sporkin of the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Prior to joining McLaughlin & Stern, Andrew was senior vice president and general counsel at Scientific Games Corporation. Andrew also practiced litigation at another global law firm.

Angeline is the Campus Champion at the University of San Francisco and oversees the University's undergraduate public service programs and supports community-engaged learning across the institution. She has a diverse background in the public sector, specializing in immigration, economic, and community development issues for government agencies and non-profit organizations. Most recently she worked with UNICEF to design mentorship and education programs in Vietnam and at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., managing social and economic policy analyses for communities of color. She holds a Master of Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and International Studies from Trinity University. Angie is a seasoned organizer and community development and policy strategist with over ten years of experience working on social justice, civic engagement, and equity issues. A native of Texas, she currently lives in San Francisco.