Truman Governance Fellows

Tico Almeida is counsel at WilmerHale LLP, where he focuses on anti-corruption law, cross-border internal investigations, and compliance counseling. He represented the South American soccer confederation in its internal investigation and successful petition for victim status and compensation stemming from the “FIFA-gate” corruption scandal. He has also advised American companies seeking to expand their presence in Cuba, and counseled European and Canadian companies regarding U.S. sanctions. Tico has extensive experience in government service and public interest law. He clerked on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and he served as counsel to a congressional committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.  He also worked as an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and he was awarded the Truman Foundation’s Stevens Award at the U.S. Supreme Court for his leadership in founding the LGBTQ nonprofit Freedom to Work. Tico graduated from Yale Law School and Duke University, and he was a Fulbright Scholar in the South American MERCOSUR nations.

Paul Angelo is a fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), focusing on U.S.-Latin American relations, transnational crime, violent actors, military and police reform, and immigration. Formerly an International Affairs Fellow at CFR, he represented the State Department as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. His previous service in the U.S. Navy included tours in a United Kingdom-based NATO position, on board a destroyer deployed to the Asia-Pacific region, and as an instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he taught Spanish and Latin American politics courses. Paul deployed to Colombia on three occasions over the course of more than a decade. During his longest mission in Colombia, he served as the U.S. Embassy’s principal liaison to the Colombian military and police in the highly conflictive Pacific coast. Angelo holds a BS in political science from the U.S. Naval Academy, an MPhil in Latin American studies from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a PhD in Politics from University College London. Angelo’s written commentary has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, The Hill, The Miami Herald, and The Global Americans.

Hira Baig (TX 14) is a litigation associate at Weil, Gotshal, & Manges in New York City. Her practice focuses on municipal and corporate bankruptcy, as well as large commercial litigation. She maintains a busy pro bono practice on matters of civil rights and indigent criminal defense. In law school, Hira worked as a student attorney at the Michigan Innocence Clinic, where she represented six clients in their fights for exoneration. One of her clients was recently exonerated. Outside of work, Hira mentors first-generation college students and volunteers on local campaigns. She is a graduate of Rice University, Harvard Divinity School, and The University of Michigan Law School.

Rachel Brulé is an assistant professor of global development policy at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies. Her expertise spans comparative politics, political economy, and gender. Dr. Brulé’s research combines careful causal identification with innovative theory building to understand the conditions under which state policies to reduce inequality succeed, why they fail, and how citizens can leverage the challenges inequality poses to create healthier political institutions, economic policies, and more inclusive societies. Her first book, Women, Power, and Property: The Paradox of Laws for Gender Equality in India, will be in print with Cambridge University Press in October 2020. Her work is published in journals including The Journal of Development Economics and The Journal of Politics. Rachel earned a BA in international relations and African studies summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, an MSc in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar, and a PhD in political science at Stanford University. Field research has taken her to 13 states in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Sénégal, and soon to Bangladesh. Rachel is an avid hiker and reader.

Ernest (Ernie) Calderón is Arizona’s first Harry S. Truman Scholar, receiving that honor in 1977. A native of Morenci, Arizona, and a sixth-generation native of what was New Mexico Territory, he is a first-generation college graduate. Ernie’s parents were a copper miner and a cook. He is a graduate of Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona College of Law, and earned his doctorate from the University of Southern California. He is AV Preeminent rated by Martindale-Hubbell, listed in Best Lawyers in America, and elected to the American Law Institute. Ernie clerked for U.S. District Judge Walter E. Craig and has practiced law 38 years. He served as the first Latinx person to be elected State Bar of Arizona president and served as president of the Arizona Board of Regents. He led the Grand Canyon Council of the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Community Foundation, and Valley Leadership.  Ernie was the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Lawyer of the Year and Phoenix’s Man of the Year. He is a Knight Grand Cross in the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem. Ernie has four adult children, who are his greatest accomplishment. He and his wife, Terri, live in Phoenix.  

Steve Chanenson is a professor of law and the faculty director of the Girard-diCarlo Center for Ethics, Integrity, and Compliance at the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Recently, he was the Crane Fellow at Princeton’s Law and Public Affairs Program. As the former chair of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing and the current chair of the Pennsylvania criminal jury instructions committee, he frequently presents to lawyers, judges, and academics. He is also serves as secretary of the Pennsylvania Prison Society and is a certified Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor. He is a managing editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter and an elected member of the American Law Institute. After earning his law degree from the University of Chicago, he clerked for Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch of the U.S. Court of Appeals. He later clerked for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the Supreme Court of the United States. While there, he also served in the chambers of Justice David H. Souter. Steve was a litigation associate at Jenner & Block and served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, both in Chicago, before joining the Villanova faculty.

Albert Cho is vice president and general manager at Xylem, a $5 billion global water technology provider dedicated to solving the world’s water challenges. Previously, he led Xylem’s corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions team. He also worked as senior advisor to the Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of State, where he was a White House Fellow and served on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff.  He was an executive at Cisco Systems, a consultant at McKinsey & Company, and served at the United Nations. Albert serves on the boards of directors of the U.S. Water Alliance and the Canadian Water Network, the program committee of Singapore International Water Week, and the editorial advisory board of World Water. He is a Millennium Fellow at the Atlantic Council and an honorary research fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Cindy Crain currently serves as a senior associate with OrgCode Consulting, Inc., working with communities across the U.S. and Canada on developing responsive, equitable, and accountable homeless response systems. Prior to consulting, Cindy served for over three years as the CEO of the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA), moving the agency forward with best practices for an emergency response system. Prior to MDHA, she was the first executive director of the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition, where she built the nonprofit from the ground up to become the central planning agency to address homelessness. Cindy has been a frequent contributor to the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram on issues of homelessness. She worked four years for Tarrant County, specializing in planning and implementation of federal U.S. Housing and Urban Development programs. She also served the City of Fort Worth as a budget analyst, the first web master, and a City Council aide. During the Clinton Administration, she served the U.S. Department of State on multiple temporary assignments in former Eastern Bloc countries, providing training on elections, democratic principles, media, and public engagement in the political process. She holds a BBA from Texas Christian University and an MPA in technology and information policy from Syracuse University.

Madeleine Daepp is a David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. She conducts research at the nexus of social epidemiology and urban planning, with a focus on how people move in response to changing health and climate exposures. Her work is characterized by multidisciplinary collaborations, including work with health economists and nutritional epidemiologists at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and studies in urban sociology as a research fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Madeleine holds a PhD in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she collaborated with local residents to create an interactive map of local moving patterns, and an MSc from the University of British Columbia. She earned her BA at Washington University in St. Louis.

Omar El-Halwagi is a writer, speaker, consultant, and co-founder of the inclusive, spiritual Muslim organization, Grassroot Islam. Previously, Omar served as Tom Steyer’s Texas director for his 2020 presidential campaign and was a labor and employment attorney at Norton Rose Fulbright in Houston. In 2018, Omar graduated from both The University of Michigan Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with a joint JD/MPA. At Michigan, Omar was a Darrow Scholar, and at Harvard, he was a 2016-2017 Zuckerman Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership. Before moving to climates that had temperatures in the negatives, Omar attended Texas A&M University. He then went on to work for the City of Houston as an internal consultant and developed the City’s Lean Six Sigma training program, which was heralded as part of Mayor Annise Parker’s legacy. While many years have passed since his time working for the City, his commitment to Houston is still evident through the roles he plays as a board member and the programming chair for the Rothko Chapel, and as a board member for the Houston Chapter of the New Leaders Council. 

Jared English graduated from Michigan State University in 2004 with degrees in international relations and finance. After graduating from MSU, he attended the London School of Economics on a Marshall Scholarship. While at the LSE, he completed his MS in international political economy and his PhD in international relations. Jared’s doctoral research was a comparative analysis of the politics of financial reform in Taiwan, Indonesia, and Thailand, exploring how political structures affected financial reform in those countries. Upon completing his PhD in 2009, he attended Harvard Law School, departing his second year to serve as an early employee the Obama-Biden administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he helped stand up the new agency and form its policymaking division. After completing his legal studies, Jared clerked for the Honorable Ann Claire Williams (Ret.) of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and worked in WilmerHale’s in Washington, D.C. office, where he focused on both domestic and international criminal investigations. After working nearly six years at at the firm, he moved to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, where he serves as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. 

Kurt Herzer is a physician-scientist with experience building and leading creative teams with broad project and research portfolios focused on improving the health outcomes of large populations. From 2017 to 2020, he served in leadership roles at Oscar Health, a national health plan, including as its head of population health. At Oscar, he built and led a team dedicated to working at the intersection of technology, data and analytics, and patient care, and whose portfolio spanned innovative approaches to acute care, chronic disease, medication management and adherence, social determinants of health, virtual care, and value-based insurance design. Kurt’s experience spans academia and the public and private sectors, including Johns Hopkins Medicine, the World Health Organization, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He has written widely on medicine, healthcare quality, and disability advocacy in leading medical journals. Kurt e his MD and PhD from Johns Hopkins, and also earned an MSc in social policy and intervention as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford. He graduated summa cum laude from Johns Hopkins, where he studied public health.

Abby McCartney is a legislative assistant working on education and health policy for U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, first joining Senator Warren’s office as a Teach for America Capitol Hill Fellow in 2019. Previously, Abby served as the executive director of Camden Enrollment, a nonprofit organization overseeing the universal school enrollment system in Camden, New Jersey. She worked for the Camden City School District after completing her MPA from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs in 2015. Abby started her career teaching mathematics at Grace King High School in Metairie, Louisiana, as a Teach for America corps member. She graduated from Yale University in 2010 with a degree in political science. Her pandemic hobbies include baking, crossword puzzles, and long walks with her beagle, Kermit. 

Emily McGlynn is a PhD Candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in agriculture and resource economics at the University of California Davis, where her research focuses on the economics of climate change. Previously, Emily served as deputy associate director for energy and climate change at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, serving as a lead author of the U.S. Mid-Century Strategy for Deep Decarbonization. As director for strategy and policy for The Earth Partners, she led regulatory affairs and business development to guide institutional capital towards revenue-generating land restoration projects. Emily has also worked as senior adviser to the Special Envoy for Climate Change at the U.S. Department of State, supporting negotiation of the UN Paris Agreement and U.S.-China bilateral cooperation.

Rebecca Peters, hailing from San Francisco, California, is passionate about international environmental justice, deep ecology, and community building. She is a Dphil candidate in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. With the UK-DFID funded REACH Water Security programme, she works closely with government, industry, and academics in Bangladesh on the political economy of water pollution. From 2016 to 2017, she served as a research associate and Luce Scholar at the Asian International Rivers Center in Yunnan, China. Previously as a Marshall Scholar, her MSc in development economics (University of Manchester) focused on water redistribution in South Africa, and her MSc in water science (Kings College London) examined state-led water management in China. Rebecca holds a BA in international development economics and BSc in environmental science, policy, and management with a minor in global poverty from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was the University Medalist and fellow of Berkeley Law Human Rights Center. She enjoys vegetarian cooking, backcountry hiking, learning languages, and live music performance of all genres.

Jennifer Phillips is an assistant (teaching) professor of education at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education and an officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. At USC Rossier, she teaches in the school’s doctor of education program in organizational change and leadership and serves as a member of the program’s governance committee. As an officer in the Air Force Reserve, she is assigned as an instructor in the Air Operations Center Initial Qualification Training’s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Course, the Air Force’s premier operational command and control training program. She has multiple operational and combat tours in Qatar, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, the Republic of Korea, and the Horn of Africa. Prior to joining USC, Dr. Phillips served as a humanitarian assistance advisor to the military for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance. In this capacity, she coordinated military support to humanitarian relief operations in several countries, including Syria, Iraq, the Philippines, Ecuador, and Liberia. Jenn earned her doctorate from Georgetown University, master of military studies from Marine Corps University, MBA from TUI, and BA from Mississippi State University.

Warwick Sabin is the executive director of the Society of Fellows at the Aspen Institute. Previously, he served three terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 2013 to 2019, and in 2014, he was among 24 national political leaders awarded the Rodel Fellowship by the Aspen Institute for his “outstanding ability to work responsibly across partisan divisions and bring greater civility to public discourse.”​ Previously, Warwick was senior director of U.S. Programs at Winrock International, founding director of the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, and publisher of the Oxford American magazine. His additional professional experience includes serving as director of development for the Clinton Foundation, as well as working on Capitol Hill, at the White House, the U.S. Embassy in London, and at Foreign Affairs magazine. He is a Marshall Scholar and holds an MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University, and a BA (summa cum laude) in political science from the University of Arkansas, where he graduated as valedictorian and served as student body president.

Rahaf Safi is Syrian American and has been working on human rights issues for over nine years. She spent four years based in the Middle East, largely focused on the Syria and Iraq humanitarian responses, and directly working with displaced persons, refugees, and other vulnerable populations impacted by armed conflict. She has worked with several international nongovernmental organizations, including the Danish Refugee Council and Oxfam America, on advocacy and monitoring and evaluation. Rahaf earned her MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with a concentration in international and global affairs and a certificate in child protection. While at HKS, she worked with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative on studying the impact of conflict on health higher education in northwestern Syria. She was also a 2019 Topol Fellow with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, researching the Algeria Hirak uprising and a summer research assistant with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Rahaf holds a BA in political science, a BA in philosophy, and a certificate in political and civic engagement from Indiana University.

Jonathan Sclarsic is passionate about good government. He has spent his career working to make government more accountable, transparent, and effective. Currently a fellow at the Leadership Center for Attorney General Studies, Jonathan is a former Assistant Attorney General and director of the Division of Open Government in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, where he enforced the Commonwealth’s public records and open meeting laws. Prior to joining the Attorney General’s Office, Jonathan was a litigation associate with Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston. He is a veteran of numerous political campaigns at the state and federal levels. He is a graduate of Brandeis University, Cornell Law School, and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Zuckerman Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership. He resides in Washington, D.C.

Sarah Sexton Martinez is an associate area counsel with the United States Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Office of Chief Counsel, SBSE in Chicago. She began her career with the IRS Office of Chief Counsel, SBSE San Francisco as an attorney in 2010. She has represented the IRS in numerous Tax Court trials and hearings. In 2015, Sarah relocated to the Chicago office. Prior to her work with Counsel, she was elected and served as a City Council Member-At Large in Athens, Ohio. She worked for state and federal government on Appalachian and rural development issues and advised nonprofits on tax exemption issues. Sarah graduated from University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2010 and earned masters degrees in political science and peace and development from Ohio University and the University of Limerick, respectively.

Sarah Sieloff is a Council on Foreign Relations-Hitachi Fellow based in Japan, where she is studying local governments’ responses to population aging and decline. From 2015 to 2020, she led the Center for Creative Land Recycling, the nation’s leading land reuse nonprofit. She served in the federal executive service from 2011 to 2015, starting as a Presidential Management Fellow and ending as a career civil servant. Sarah began her federal career at the U.S. Agency for International Development in its newly reestablished Office of Budget and Resource Management, and performed a six-month rotation at the internationally-focused U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Institute for Water Resources Management. In 2013, she joined the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she served for two years as the Memphis Team Lead for the White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities, working with 25 federal agencies to connect mayors’ offices with federal resources and technical assistance. Sarah earned her MPA from Princeton University and her BA from Eckerd College. She speaks Spanish, passable French, and bad Japanese, and maintains a blog about her CFR-Hitachi Fellowship at https://mostlycitystuff.wordpress.com/.  

Maggie Super Church is vice president for market innovation and impact at the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), where she leads an interdisciplinary team developing innovative solutions for healthy and resilient communities. Prior to joining CLF, she worked as a planning and community development consultant and served as executive director of Groundwork Lawrence, a nonprofit urban environmental organization. Maggie earned her master in city planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was the recipient of the Wallace Floyd Award for City Design and Development and the MIT/DUSP Excellence in Public Service Award. She holds a master’s in urban design from the Edinburgh College of Art and a BA in architecture from Yale University. She is a member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s county health rankings scientific advisory committee, and a corporator and CRA committee member at The Savings Bank. Maggie was honored to receive a Conservation Hero award from the National Park Service in 2015 for her service to Groundwork USA, where she served as board chair from 2010 to 2015.

Robert D. Thomas is an attorney, businessman, and entrepreneur. He has served Texas as an appointed statewide official, having been appointed by two different Texas governors to serve as a Commissioner of the Texas Workforce Commission, Chair of the Texas Facilities Commission, and a board member of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. Active in his local community, Robert has also been a board member of the African American Cultural Heritage District, chair of the board of SafePlace, and chair of various Austin ISD committees. Robert earned his BA in political science and German from Loyola University in New Orleans, JD from the University of Texas School of Law, and MBA from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. He is currently completing his PhD in healthcare management and policy at the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston and is a candidate for Austin City Council. Robert lives in Austin with his wife, Amy, and is the devoted father of two wonderful children, Robert II and Lauren.

Mary Tolar serves as director of the Staley School of Leadership Studies at Kansas State University, working with faculty and staff to provide learning experiences aligned with the mission of “developing knowledgeable, ethical, caring, inclusive leaders for a diverse and changing world.” The Staley School offers undergraduates an interdisciplinary minor in leadership studies, a secondary major in global food systems leadership, and a certificate in nonprofit leadership; and doctoral students an interdisciplinary PhD in leadership communication. Her research interests include the art and practice of civic leadership development, women’s pathways to leadership, and leadership development through service learning. Mary is a Rhodes Scholar, founding member of the National Association of Fellowships Advisors, and co-author/editor of The Lucky Few and the Worthy Many:  Scholarships and the World’s Future Leaders (2004). Tolar holds a bachelor’s degree in history and speech from Kansas State University, and a doctorate in educational leadership, also from K-State. In between, she read for her master of letters in modern history from the University of Oxford University.

Marisa Van Saanen currently resides in Maryland with her family. After graduating from Wellesley College, where she was president of College Government and later a member of the Wellesley College Board of Trustees, she was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, where she earned an MPhil in international relations. She then worked at the World Bank, working with religious leaders all over the world on development and poverty issues, and attended Yale Law School. After law school, she completed two federal clerkships and now works at a law firm in general litigation. She is also an active member of her communities. She has twice served on the grants advisory group of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Council, is a former board member of A Wider Circle, a local nonprofit, and is interested in Democratic politics.

Haley White is a vice president at Madison Industries, where she runs sales for a medical device plant. Before joining Madison, she was a businesswoman in Mexico, working in both management consulting and mobile technology. She began her career in international development, serving across Latin America. Haley earned her MBA from Stanford and BA from the the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where she won the Spirit of Princeton Award. Haley also earned a Fulbright Scholarship. 

Elizabeth Young McNally is a partner and the leader of McKinsey Academy, the firm’s entity focused on building client capabilities at scale globally, leveraging a wide range of in-person and digital programs. She has been with the firm for over 12 years, and prior to her role leading McKinsey Academy, she served financial institutions and public sector clients on strategy, change management, and organization topics. Prior to joining McKinsey, Liz was an officer in the U.S. Army for eight years, including two year-long tours to Iraq, where she served as the speechwriter to General David Petraeus. Also a Rhodes Scholar, Liz holds an MPhil in international relations from the University of Oxford and a BS from the U.S. Military Academy. Liz and her husband John are the proud parents of three young children and reside outside New York City.