Anita Brady

Anita Brady is an award-winning talent and leadership development leader with over 30 years of experience driving transformational change, human-centered service delivery, and innovative partnerships. She is President of Communication Training Consultants, a Hispanic, female-led management consulting firm providing leadership, change management, and organizational development services to more than 200 organizations nationwide.

For 15 years, Ms. Brady served as Chief Learning Officer and Division Director for Montgomery County Maryland Government, delivering over 1,500 annual learning programs to more than 22,000 participants annually. She is a Senior Fellow with the University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, where she has led high-impact initiatives, including the April 2025 Career Development Fair, which drew over 1,500 job seekers and employers across Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. She recently contributed to a national report for the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission analyzing election workforce trends, challenges, and strategies to strengthen staffing nationwide.

Ms. Brady previously served on the American University Human Resources and Analytics Program Advisory Board, is a past President of the Metro Washington, D.C. chapter of the Association for Talent Development, and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. She holds a Master’s of Arts degree specializing in Organizational and Political Communication from the University of Maryland, is a Certified Public Manager, SHRM-SCP, and SPHR.

Hannah Bristol

Hannah Bristol is a former Senior Advisor in the White House Office of Public Engagement, where she worked with young people, the LGBTQ+ community, and on gun violence prevention. She grew up in Virginia where she started volunteering on political campaigns in high school and has been organizing young people ever since. She has worked on the presidential campaigns for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, as well as at NextGen America, where she led a program that registered more than 250,000 young people across 11 battleground states for the 2018 midterm elections. Prior to her role in the White House, she was the National Young Americans Engagement Director on the Biden-Harris campaign. She is a graduate of Middlebury College.
 

Stephen Cobb

Stephen Cobb is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Foley & Lardner LLP, where he advises clients on investigations, litigation, and regulatory matters, with deep experience in election law, voting rights, and political-party representation. Before reentering private practice, he served as Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia, leading the Government Operations & Transactions Division and advising more than 150 state agencies and departments. He also held a presidential appointment at the U.S. Department of Commerce, bringing significant public-sector leadership to his work. In addition to his counsel roles for political campaigns and parties—including service as special counsel to Rock the Vote, general counsel of the Democratic Party of Virginia, and counsel to the Harris-Walz campaign—Cobb has shared his expertise internationally, serving as a guest lecturer on voting rights for the Nigerian National Judicial Institute in 2022 and as a Fulbright Specialist for the Constitutional Court of Moldova in 2023.

Alysoun McLaughlin

Alysoun McLaughlin serves as a Senior Fellow for the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement’s Election Workforce Initiative. Alysoun brings to the Center more than two decades of experience in election administration and policy, from negotiating key provisions of the Help America Vote Act to leading one of the nation’s largest election jurisdictions.

Alysoun has served as Chair of the Board of Advisors to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Vice President of the Maryland Association of Election Officials, co-chair of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ Election Officials Technical Committee, and as Vice Chair of both the Member Programs and Services Committee and the Election Subcommittee of the National Association of Counties. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Election Administration Research and Practice and an honorary lifetime member of the National Association of County Collectors, Treasurers and Finance Officers.  

Alysoun holds a Master’s Degree in Political Management from George Washington University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the Johns Hopkins University.

Kassie Phebillo

Kassie Phebillo (she/her) is the Student Engagement Director at the Fair Elections Center's Campus Vote Project. In her role, she guides all student-related programs, including the 400+ student Democracy Fellowship, Student Advisory Board, and all additional fellowships. She also supervises the CVP Research Collective, which aims to provide students with an opportunity to learn how to conduct graduate-level research and diversify the higher ed & civic engagement research area. Prior to joining Campus Vote Project, Kassie served as the Graduate Program Coordinator for the University of Texas at Austin's TX Votes. Over five years with TX Votes, Kassie led the organization to register nearly 20,000 students and more than double student voter turnout. During that time, TX Votes and Kassie individually received multiple national awards and media recognition for these efforts. Kassie has a MA in Communication, Culture & Technology from Georgetown University, a BA in Communication from Indiana Tech, and studied the intersection of higher education and political engagement in UT Austin's Communication Studies PhD program before leaving the program at ABD to dedicate herself fully to civic engagement practitioner work. 

TJ Pyche

TJ Pyche is The Elections Group’s Director of Partnerships. He previously managed communications and voter outreach for a county election office in northern Florida. He has been quoted in The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as regional publications like The Tampa Bay Times. Nowadays, his favorite work activity is helping election officials when their names are in the news – preferring that his stay out of it. A native Floridian, he received his Master’s of Public Administration from Florida State University but retains allegiance to the undergraduate degree in journalism. Outside of work, he enjoys reading, spending time with his wife and son, and attending Gator football, basketball and baseball games.

Jahnavi Rao

Jahnavi Rao is the President and Founder of New Voters and a senior fellow at UMD's Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, where she studies high school political behavior as Director of the New Voters Research Network. In 2017, as a junior in high school, Jahnavi started New Voters as a school club at her PA high school to register her peers to vote. In the seven years since, Jahnavi has grown New Voters to a national 501(c)3 that has civically activated over 80,000 high school students in 39 states and 400+ high schools, and has mentored and managed over 300 high school and college students to participate in elections. Outside New Voters, Jahnavi has served as Deputy Campaign Manager on a PA State Legislative Race, the youth-head of Youth Engagement and Millennial Voter Participation at the DNC, and as an intern in the White House Office of Public Engagement. 

Jahnavi leads New Voters full-time after graduating from Harvard College in 2023, majoring in Government with a minor in Music.