Aif23 Barnes Melody

Melody Barnes

Chair, Forum for Community Solutions and Opportunity Youth Forum, The Aspen Institute; Former Domestic Policy Advisor, Obama Administration

Melody Barnes is chair of the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Opportunity Youth Forum. She is executive director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy at University of Virginia, where she’s also the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the Miller Center of Public Affairs and a senior fellow at the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy. Barnes was assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council from 2009 until 2012. Before that, she was executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress and chief counsel for then-senator Edward Kennedy. Barnes narrates and hosts the podcast, “LBJ and the Great Society,” and co-edited Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy. Her board service includes Ventas, Booz Allen Hamilton, the Hewlett Foundation, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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