THE BOARD

Elizabeth A. Cavanagh (Chair and CEO) is the Director of the Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) Program at American University Washington College of Law. She also serves on the boards of the Historical Society of the DC Circuit and the Legal Resource Center on Violence Against Women. Prior to joining the SJD Program in 2017, Elizabeth taught courses on legal rhetoric and appellate advocacy. She spent several years as an appellate and trial court litigator with Jenner & Block in Washington, DC.

Elizabeth served as a law clerk to Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, where she was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal, and Dartmouth College.

Eddie Lazarus (Treasurer & Director) serves as the Chief Legal Officer at Sonos. He leads the company’s legal, corporate governance, SEC reporting, government affairs, regulatory and compliance activities.

Prior to Sonos, Eddie had a distinguished career as an attorney, including most recently as General Counsel and Chief Strategy Officer for Tribune Media Company from 2013 to 2019. Lazarus served as the Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from June 2009 to Feb. 2012. At the FCC, he oversaw policy development and implementation, strategic planning, communications, legislative and intergovernmental affairs, and agency management. Before working at the FCC, Eddie was a partner and member of the Management Committee at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, where he chaired the firm’s national litigation steering committee. Prior to entering private practice, Eddie served as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.

In addition to his career as an attorney, Eddie is the author of two highly acclaimed books: “Black Hills/White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the United States, 1775 to the Present” and “Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court.”

Richard S. Tedlow (Director) is the Class of 1949 Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He is a specialist in the history of business.Professor Tedlow received his B.A. from Yale in 1969 and his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Columbia in 1971 and 1976 respectively. He came to the Harvard Business School on a fellowship in 1978 and joined the faculty in 1979. He is currently employed at Apple University.

Lisa Cylar Barrett (Director) has over 25 years of combined experience in the legal, philanthropic, and nonprofit sectors. As the Director of the Civil Society Program, at Wellspring Philanthropic Fund she leads the Foundation’s efforts to create a more equitable, representative, and fully engaged electorate and a more just, responsive, and resilient US democracy. Ms. Cylar Barrett has spent her career working to effectively execute multipronged strategies to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and achieve racial justice.

Prior to joining Wellspring, Lisa served as Director of Policy and Director of the Washington D.C. Office at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she led and managed the federal and state level policy work for the organization including the organization’s voting rights and political participation efforts. While in that position she served on various election reform and voting rights coalitions, including serving as Co-Chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Voting Rights Task Force. In conjunction with her core roles, she served as a member of LDF’s Senior Leadership Team, where she assisted with the development and execution of the strategic direction for the organization.

Prior to joining LDF, Ms. Cylar Barrett served as the Managing Director, Federal Policy at PolicyLink.   In that position she oversaw the development and execution of strategies to advance racial and economic equity on a wide range of issues. Ms. Cylar Barrett also served as a Senior Associate at the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) where she provided leadership for its efforts with federal agencies and other national organizations to advance and promote policies grounded in equity, which help to strengthen children and families and help them thrive.

Before joining the CSSP, Ms. Cylar Barrett spent several years in philanthropy working to improve outcomes for children, families, and communities in the city of Detroit and the surrounding areas in southeast Michigan. As a Senior Program Officer for the Skillman Foundation, Cylar Barrett developed and managed the Foundation’s efforts related to policy advancement, alignment of investments/leverage from other entities and increased awareness/influence regarding challenges faced by children and families in the city of Detroit.  As a Program Officer and Director of Development at the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, Ms. Cylar Barrett managed various grantmaking portfolios and oversaw numerous efforts focused on increasing funds available for investment.  Prior to her philanthropic career, Ms. Cylar Barrett practiced labor and employment law.

Ms. Cylar Barrett received her B.A. from Spelman College and her J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law where she served as an Associate Editor of the Health Matrix Law Journal.  Her legal studies also included a semester at Oxford University where she studied International Taxation and Comparative Legal Professions.

Robert E. Branson. Esq. (Director) is the President and CEO of the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), a non-partisan, national nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecom and broadband industries, and closing the digital divide. Prior to joining MMTC, Branson served as Of Counsel at Empire Consulting Group, a strategic business and public policy firm serving leading technology, wireless, broadcast and other industry clients. He brings his unique perspective as someone who has worked inside and outside government and who understands the challenges ahead in the diverse world we are creating in corporate America. In his corporate career, most recently, he was an Associate General Counsel with Verizon Communications.  In that position, he had various responsibilities, including the 5G rollout in the Washington, DC area, privacy regulations, and relationship building with leaders in the federal and state governments.  He also coordinated with trade associations and internally with other legal, public policy and business groups. He has been the General Counsel of the Association of Local Television Stations, Chief Legal Counsel of Post-Newsweek Stations and an Assistant General Counsel at the National Association of Broadcasters. He also has worked at the Federal Communications Commission as a Senior Legal Advisor to a Commissioner. Branson has served as President of the Federal Communications Bar Association where he has gotten to know many of the leaders at the FCC, NTIA, FTC and other federal agencies.  He is a two-time recipient of the FCBA Distinguished Service Award.  He has championed diversity and inclusion in the Bar and has lead several efforts to expand the pipeline my mentoring and working to assist the careers of numerous people in the industry and government.  In part based on these efforts, he has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from MMTC. He has served on the Board of Trustees at Simmons University in Boston and was named an Honorary Trustee after his service.  He was a member of the Boards of the Ridley Scholarship Fund at the University of Virginia and the Hayride to Help Others in Washington, DC. Branson received his law degree from Harvard University and his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia.

B. Andrew Brown (Director) has been an attorney with the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney for more than 30 years. He practices primarily in the areas of energy and environmental law. Andy is a graduate of the Duke University School of Law, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and Stanford University. Before attending law school, Andy was a legislative aid to U.S. Senator Gary Hart.

Abby Ludwig (Director) is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney with a background in voting rights, political campaigns, and impact investing. She currently serves as a Venture Partner at Rebalance Capital, which invests in early-stage financial and workplace technology companies designed to propel upward financial mobility. Following work on the last two presidential election campaigns, she clerked for Justice Paige Petersen at the Utah Supreme Court. She previously worked in private practice at Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP and as a consultant with the Hague Conference for Private International Law. Abby earned her J.D. from Berkeley Law, where she was awarded the Brian M. Sax Prize for Excellence in Clinical Advocacy for her work with the International Human Rights Clinic and the East Bay Community Law Center. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Oxford and a B.A. from Princeton University.