Alexander Ward
Alexander Ward is a national security reporter covering the White House and State Department for The Wall Street Journal in Washington.
Alex’s reporting focuses in particular on the inner workings of the National Security Council and how top players in an administration formulate and execute foreign policy.
Alex was previously the White House and national security reporter at Politico, where he was also the first author of its "National Security Daily" newsletter. Before that, he was Vox's White House reporter covering foreign policy and worked at the Atlantic Council think tank covering national security and military affairs.
Alex has won numerous awards for his reporting and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist along with Politico colleagues for Supreme Court coverage.
In February 2024, Alex published his first book, "The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy after Trump." He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Tim Ryan
Born on July 16, 1973, in Niles, Ohio, Tim Ryan is a member of the Democratic Party. He represented Ohio's 13th congressional district from 2013 to 2023, having previously represented Ohio's 17th congressional district from 2003 to 2013. Ryan's district included a large swath of northeastern Ohio, from Youngstown to Akron. Ryan became a prominent national figure known for his progressive stances on issues like renewable energy, education reform, and mental health care.
Outside of politics, Ryan is an accomplished author, having written books on mindfulness and meditation. His interest in holistic well-being and the power of mindfulness in promoting mental health has made him a sought-after speaker and advocate in this field.
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Jerry Austin
Jerry Austin has been one of the nation’s most experienced and successful political strategists. Austin has consulted on races throughout the US at every level from precinct committee person to President of the United States.
Raised in The Bronx, Austin learned his politics in Cleveland in the late 1960s. In 1980, he was the Ohio campaign manager for President Jimmy Carter. After helping elect Richard Celeste Governor of Ohio twice, he became the campaign manager and media consultant for Jess Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign. He was the senior political director for Paul Tsongas campaign for President and helped elect Paul Wellstone to the US Senate in Minnesota. In 1992, he was the consultant and media advisor for Carol Moseley Braun’s historic and successful campaign to become the first African American woman elected to the US Senate.
His work also includes witnessing the Marcos/Aquino election in the Philippines, the Pinochet plebiscite in Chile, many trips to Northern Ireland to consult for the SDLP party and the 2006 National Election in Hungary- the last time Orban was defeated.
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Jonathan L. Entin
Jonathan L. Entin is David L. Brennan Professor Emeritus of Law at Case Western Reserve University, where he also held an appointment in Political Science for many years. He has written extensively about the law of presidential power and the administrative state as well as on constitutional law more generally, the federal courts, and civil rights. He also served two terms as the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs and as the university’s faculty mediator.
Entin was the longtime faculty advisor to the Case Western Reserve Law Review. When he retired, many of his former Law Review students endowed a fund in his honor.
A graduate of Brown University (A.B.) and Northwestern University (J.D.), he was a law clerk to then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and did appellate litigation at Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C., where he helped to exonerate an innocent man who came within hours of execution.
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Anna Huntsman
Anna Huntsman covers Akron, Canton and surrounding communities for Ideastream Public Media, Northeast Ohio's NPR and PBS member station. She is also a fill-in host for the station's newscasts and morning call-in show, The Sound of Ideas. In 2019, Anna was a Carnegie-Knight News21 Fellow at Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, where she traveled the country reporting on natural disaster recovery. She has taught audio storytelling and podcasting classes at Kent State University. She lives in Akron with her two mischievous black cats, Harry and Marvin.
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Amanda Weinstein
Amanda Weinstein leads the Research, Knowledge, and Evaluation team in providing a better understanding of the economic dynamics of rural America and evaluating our programs guiding communities towards tech-driven prosperity using rigorous analysis and real-world insight.
Formerly an associate professor of economics at The University of Akron, Amanda Weinstein advised various groups including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. Her work has been featured in various media outlets including MarketWatch, Forbes, Reuters, Business Insider, The Hill, TIME, NBC News, and Fox News. Before starting her Ph.D., she was a senior business analyst at BearingPoint and a commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force.
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Dr. Lauren Copeland
Dr. Lauren Copeland is a self-described "politics and data science nerd," with research activities that lie at the intersection of political communication, political behavior and public opinion, and a current focus on the relationship between digital media use and political participation. She earned both a doctorate and Master of Arts in political science from University of California, Santa Barbara and a Bachelor of Arts from DePaul University in Chicago.
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Dr. Phil Marcin
Dr. Phil Marcin specializes in law and courts. He teaches courses that focus on the intersection between law and politics. His courses include The Judicial Process, Constitutional Law, and The Supreme Court and Civil Liberties. Recently, Dr. Marcin has been quoted in news articles covering the judicial elections in OH along with the decisions of the United States Supreme Court and he has published articles on media coverage of the Supreme Court. Forthcoming is a book chapter on Internet coverage of the Supreme Court.
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Lauren Gailey
Lauren Gailey is a visiting assistant professor of law at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University, where she teaches courses in federal and state constitutional law and appellate practice and procedure. She has also taught civil procedure at Duquesne Kline and undergraduate constitutional law at Chatham University. Before her academic career, Gailey practiced as an appellate lawyer in the Washington, DC office of an AmLaw50 firm. She clerked for Judge Thomas Hardiman (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit), Judge Jeffrey Sutton (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit), Judge David Campbell (U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona), and the federal Judicial Conference’s Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure. She holds a J.D. from Duquesne Kline, where she graduated summa cum laude, was Executive Articles Editor of the Duquesne Law Review, and excelled on the Appellate Moot Court Board.
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