Board of Directors

Lawrence Lessig, Founder and Chairman of the Board is currently the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to returning to Harvard, he was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school's Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. For much of his career, Professor Lessig focused his work on law and technology, especially as it affects copyright. His current academic work on "institutional corruption" (relationships that are legal, even currently ethical, but that weaken public trust in our institutions) led to his founding of Change Congress in April, 2008. He has won numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries. Lessig is the author of Remix (2008), Code v2 (2007), Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). Additionally, he has worked as a columnist for Wired, Red Herring, The Industry Standard and The Huffington Post. He also sits on the boards of the Creative Commons project, MAPLight, Free Press, Brave New Film Foundation, The American Academy, Berlin and iCommons.org. He is on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation and Live Journal. Past board service includes the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. Professor Lessig earned a B.A. in economics and a B.S. in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.

Joe Trippi, Founder and Secretary to the Board heralded on the cover of The New Republic as the man who "reinvented campaigning," was born in California and began his political career working on Edward M. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1980. His work in presidential politics continued with the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean. In 2004, he was National Campaign Manager for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, pioneering the use of online technology to organize what became the largest grassroots movement in presidential politics at that time. Through Trippi's innovative use of the Internet for small-donor fundraising, Dean for America ended up raising more money than any Democratic presidential campaign in history at that time, all with donations averaging less than $100 each. Trippi's innovations have brought fundamental change to the electoral system and have served as a model for how future political campaigns are run. In addition to his work in politics, Trippi currently works with a number of high-tech companies including Wave Systems, Progeny Linux Systems, and Smart Paper Networks. Trippi is the author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything, the story of how his revolutionary use of the Internet and an impassioned, contagious desire to overthrow politics as usual grew into a national grassroots movement and changed the face of politics forever. Trippi has been profiled in GQ, Wired, Fast Company, The New Republic and The New York Times Magazine. He is an MSNBC political analyst and former Harvard University fellow. He currently heads the Washington, D.C. political consultancy, Trippi & Associates.

Mark McKinnon, Board Member, Vice Chairman of Public Strategies Inc., joins the board of Change Congress as one of its newest members and a reflection of its commitment to fight corruption across the political spectrum. For over 25 years, McKinnon has been solving complex strategic challenges for causes, companies and candidates, including Governor Ann Richards, Congressman Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong and Bono. A weekly columnist for The Daily Beast, McKinnon is an award-winning media producer and communications strategist who has served as principal media advisor for hundreds of corporate and political campaigns around the world. He holds over 30 Pollie and Telly awards, which honor the nation's best political and public affairs advertising. Known as a mellow personality in the ever-fractious world of politics, he's drawn praise from former President Bush ("I was really impressed by Mark's creativity, and I was particularly impressed by his honesty") to President Obama, who calls McKinnon "a class act." McKinnon co-chairs Arts+Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities using today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative digital products to consumers. A Bush appointee to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent, autonomous entity responsible for all U.S. government sponsored, non-military, international broadcasting, McKinnon also serves on the board of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and lectures at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. McKinnon earned his degree from UT Austin.

Kate McGrath, newly incorporated to the Change Congress Board of Directors in the fall of 2009, is a founding partner of First Tuesday Media, a political media firm based in Los Angeles. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Katie served as Director of Communications at MTV Networks, a consultant to the public affairs department at MTV, a Vice President at the strategic communications consulting firm of Robinson Lerer Sawyer Miller and a Legislative Aide in the Washington, D.C. office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. In addition to serving as a trustee on the boards of The Children's Defense Fund and Wildwood School, Katie also sits on the advisory board of The Liberty Hill Foundation. Long passionate about the issue of money and politics, Katie is considered one of the most influential funders and fundraisers in the Los Angeles area, and has been focusing her efforts on persuading congressional candidates to sign on to the Fair Election bill as co-sponsors.

Thomas Layton, Treasurer and Board Member currently serves as the CEO of the web infrastructure company Metaweb Technologies. Prior to joining Metaweb in 2007, Layton was with Open Table, where he served as CEO from 2001 to 2007. Previously, he co-founded CitySearch, Inc, which later merged with Ticketmaster and is now a subsidiary of USA Networks. Prior to his experience at Ticketmaster-CitySearch, Thomas worked with Score Learning Corporation, a leading educational services company, where he served first as Chief Financial Officer and later as President and Chief Operating Officer. From 1986 to 1988, Thomas was an Associate Consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. Thomas holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Josh Silver, Board Member and co-founder of Free Press and the Free Press Action Fund with Robert McChesney and John Nichols. He is the executive director of Free Press and president of the board of directors of the Free Press Action Fund. He oversees all programs, campaigns, fundraising and special projects. Silver previously served as campaign manager for the successful statewide ballot initiative for public funding of elections in Arizona and as the director of development for the cultural arm of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. He has served as the director of an international youth exchange program and as a development and management consultant. Silver publishes frequently on media, campaign finance and other public policy issues. He attended the University of Grenoble, France, and Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

Aaron Swartz, Board Member and Chief Technology Officer (born 1986), is a writer, web developer and entrepreneur. At age 14, he co-authored the RSS 1.0 specification. Since then he has become a member of the W3C's RDF Core Working Group, co-designed the formatting language Markdown with John Gruber, and has been involved in many other projects including the building of Creative Commons' website. Swartz founded Infogami, a start-up that was part of Y Combinator's first Summer Founders Program. Previously, he attended Stanford University for a year, leaving to work on his company full time. Infogami merged with reddit to form not a bug but failed to take off. In late 2006, reddit was sold to Cond'eNet (the online arm of Cond'e Nast Publications and the owners of Wired) and Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco. Together with Simon Carstensen, Swartz launched Jottit from bitbots.net in September, 2007. Swartz is also the creator of the web.py web application framework, based on the Python programming language, used by Jottit. Swartz is an active blogger and has written a number of widely read essays on his blog. Swartz currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he works on Open Library and watchdog.net.

Richard (Dick) Senn, Change Congress' newest Board Member, is an entrepreneur and lifelong political activist who has played an important role in fundraising and campaigns for candidates at the state and federal level. For many years, Dick's primary focus has been on "changing the system" by bringing more truth to electioneering and greater trust of voters in their elected officials. In the late '80s, he established the blueprint for the Center for Integrity in Politics. In the early '90s, he was active in a movement to bring public financing for statewide candidates in Washington state. His advocacy over the past two years for publicly financed congressional elections has brought him in contact with numerous U. S. Senators and U. S. House Members. Dick graduated from Swarthmore College (cum laude in Economics), the University of Chicago Law School (admitted to the Illinois Bar) and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration's Program for Management Development.

Dan Nova, Board Member, serves as General Partner for Highland to establish and build the firm's Internet investment practice. He also co-founded the Highland Consumer Fund, where as Chair of the Investment Committee, he leads the firm's expansion efforts. He continues to be an active investor focusing on technology and consumer investments with specific experience and interest in Internet, digital marketing and media technologies. Recognized by the prestigious Forbes Midas List as one of the top venture capitalists in the industry, Nova has co-led and invested in early-stage activities for new Internet companies and played an integral role in the success of many start-ups. He brings that entrepreneurial expertise and business acumen to the Board as it grows Change Congress to the next level, and implements well-funded and impactful mechanisms to support its reform initiatives. Prior to joining CMG@Ventures, Nova was a Senior Associate at Summit Partners focused on later-stage technology and environmental investments. He also worked at Wang Laboratories from 1983 through 1989 in a variety of management and sales positions. Nova earned a B.S. in Computer Science and Marketing from Boston College, and an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.