Rewrite LA Team

THE DRIVERS

  • Nick Goddard

    Nick is a Los Angeles-based producer and creative strategist leading Rewrite LA's vision and execution. At the Berggruen Institute, he develops storytelling initiatives bridging culture, democracy, and systems change. Through Rewrite LA, he connects Hollywood's creative community with civic innovators to prototype new models of democratic participation.

  • Alex Levy

    Alex advances participatory democracy by bringing together diverse residents to shape solutions. She advances this work locally through Public Democracy LA and ReWrite LA, and nationally with Braver Angels and Better Together America, drawing on over a decade of international civic engagement experience.

  • Joe Mathews

    Joe is a fourth-generation Southern Californian journalist and Renovating Democracy fellow at the Berggruen Institute. He serves as California columnist at Zócalo Public Square and founder-publisher of Democracy Local. He has led the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy since 2008 and written four books on California governance.

Advisors

  • Oscar Winning Director of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

  • President, Berggruen Institute

    Since joining as the Institute’s first employee, Dawn has helped the Institute to grow into an organization of global reach and influence. Prior to the Institute, Dawn was Executive Vice President of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a global leadership network dedicated to enhancing awareness of and developing solutions to global challenges.

  • Executive Director, Metagov

    Liz Barry is the Executive Director of Metagov, a community dedicated to advancing self-governance in a digital age. Metagov works toward a governance layer for the internet that is empowering, creative, interconnected, and accountable. More at Metagov.org.

  • Marjan H. Ehsassi is a strategic policy advisor, practitioner,
    movement builder, and a fierce believer in citizen-centric, inclusive,
    responsive and impactful government-led engagements that provide
    citizens with consequential voice in policy reform.

    She has traveled to and worked to enhance space for civil society in
    some of the most complex environments including Iran, Ukraine, and
    North Korea. A lawyer and international governance expert, she
    received her Doctorate in International Affairs from SAIS, Johns
    Hopkins University, with a concentration on democratic innovations,
    deliberation and government-initiated citizens’ assemblies. She has
    studied the impact of citizens’ assemblies on participants in France,
    Belgium, Canada, and the United States.

    Marjan is Executive Director of FIDE - North America, Strategic Director of the Democratic Action Fund, and serves on several boards including Healthy Democracy, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Meridian Council.

  • Co-Founder, Public Democracy Los Angeles

    Michael Draskovic is a Co-founder and current Advisor of Public Democracy Los Angeles, a grassroots initiative to bring a civic assembly to LA. He also advises the Democracy Policy Network and Los Angeles for Democracy Vouchers.

  • Program Director, Healthy Democracy

    Since joining HD in 2016, he has co-designed and co-managed over 15 major lottery-selected deliberative processes, from city-level civic assemblies to statewide Citizens’ Initiative Reviews. He has advised dozens of local government staff and electeds across the United States, as well as several philanthropic and intergovernmental organizations, on democratic lotteries, deliberative public processes, and innovative democratic systems.

  • Executive Director, Democracy Without Elections

    Leonora is a nonprofit leader with extensive experience in movement-building and organizing. She currently serves as Executive Director of Democracy Without Elections, a sortition movement-building organization, and Director of Public Access Democracy, a democratic lottery advocacy organization based in Los Angeles. Previously, Leonora was the Executive Director of Abundant Housing LA, a pro-housing movement organization that grew from an all-volunteer group to a staffed organization of 10 under her leadership.

  • Content Advisor and Community Curator

Collaborators