Laura MacCleery has joined us as Director of Government Relations and Communications, a new position at the Center that will be based in Washington, D.C.
She is an advocate with nine years of experience in working on issue campaigns both on and off of Capitol Hill. Prior to coming to the Center, Ms. MacCleery was the Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where she oversaw its work on campaign finance reform and co-taught a seminar on public policy advocacy. Previously, she worked for more than eight years at Public Citizen, most recently as Director of Congress Watch. During her years at Public Citizen, she managed legislative and issues campaigns, lobbying, field and media outreach, website advocacy, and research on issues including government accountability, access to courts, campaign finance reform, lobbying and ethics reform, transportation safety, and vehicle fuel economy.
She has recently published op-eds in periodicals including Roll Call, The Boston Globe, and Politico; as well as in online venues such as The Hill’s Blog, Huffington Post, The Nation and TechPresident.com. She was a 2009 member of Eyebeam’s College of Tactical Culture, which addressed the use and effectiveness of new media in securing political change, and presented a workshop on the Web and non-profit management challenges at the 2008 Netroots Nation conference. Her forthcoming law review article on the 2008 election and the small donor revolution, “Goodbye Soft Money, Hello Grassroots,” will be published by Catholic University Law Review in the fall edition in 2009.
Laura graduated from Stanford Law School in 1999, where she was Features Editor for the Stanford Law & Policy Review. She is a 1994 summa cum laude graduate of the University of Virginia, where she was an Echols Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, and President of the NOW at UVA chapter. After graduating from law school, she clerked for Justice Gregory Hobbs of the Colorado Supreme Court.