Leadership
Meet the leaders working hard to ensure that voting rights for all Americans are protected.
ABOUT OUR FOUNDER: REYNA WALTERS-MORGAN
Reyna Walters-Morgan is an attorney, national political party officer, and one of the foremost experts on voting rights and voter protection.
Reyna has decades of experience as a voting rights advocate and has led voter protection efforts for both partisan and nonpartisan organizations. She has a keen understanding of how the ecosystem works and where there is room for improvement.
Reyna is credited with directly protecting hundreds of thousands of votes, protecting anywhere from tens of thousands to a single vote at a time.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Daria C. Dawson
Executive Director of America Votes
Daria C. Dawson is the Executive Director of America Votes, where she leads one of the country’s largest progressive coalitions, working with more than 400 state and national organizations to expand civic participation, strengthen democratic engagement, and build lasting political power.
Her work focuses on strengthening democratic participation and translating civic engagement into lasting political power — helping more people see themselves reflected in the democratic process and ensuring participation translates into influence and representation.
Known for her ability to connect political strategy to lived experience, Dawson brings a grounded and compelling voice to conversations about democracy, participation, representation, and power — particularly for communities historically excluded from political influence.
Before leading America Votes, Dawson served as Director of Strategic Engagement for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and as Deputy National Political Director at SEIU, where she helped lead national advocacy tied to the Fight for $15 campaign.
Dawson has been recognized nationally as one of Business Insider’s “20 strategists to watch,” and her insights have appeared in The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Politico, The Washington Post, USA Today, and leading political and culture podcasts.
Born and raised in Florida, Dawson is a graduate of Florida A&M University and the University of Florida Levin College of Law.
James Whalen
North Carolina attorney
James Whalen is a North Carolina attorney and former candidate for the North Carolina Court of Appeals. His law practice focuses on complex constitutional and business cases, including high-profile voting rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, North Carolina Supreme Court, and federal and state appellate and trial courts. Now in private practice, James previously worked in the North Carolina Department of Justice under then-Attorney General Josh Stein in the Office of the Solicitor General. James lives in Raleigh, NC, with his wife, two sons, dog Sherlock, and cat Clue.
Matthew Shaw
Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education
Assistant Professor of Law
Matthew Patrick Shaw is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education and Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. Immediately before his current appointment, Professor Shaw was an American Bar Foundation/Law and Society Association Doctoral Fellow in Law and Social Sciences. The Frances Lewis Scholar in Residence at Washington and Lee University School of Law for 2020-2021, Professor Shaw is also an Affiliated Scholar with the American Bar Foundation. He has also served as an associate editor of Law and Social Inquiry and on the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review. He has been a member of the Law and Society Association since graduate school, and was invited to serve on the Diversity Committee in 2015.
Professor Shaw’s research investigates educational equity at the intersection of law and society. His current projects bring together critical legal history, econometric policy analyses, and jurisprudential analyses to understand the constitutional rights of the vulnerable and marginalized, notably: undocumented migrants, LGBTQ school-aged youth, and historically Black K-12 and higher-educational spaces, both in their own right and as they inform debate on the fundamental nature of educational rights.
Professor Shaw has a doctorate in quantitative policy analysis in education and a master’s in education policy from Harvard University; a juris doctor from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree in Romance Languages and History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After law school, he clerked for then-Chief Judge W. Louis Sands of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.