Board of Directors
The members of the board bring experience in government, law, finance, elections, nonprofits, democracy, and civic engagement to guiding the mission of the Center for Civic Design.
Adam Ambrogi
Chair
Adam has worked in election law, voting rights, social impact and democracy strategy for most of his career. Adam currently serves as the Senior Director for Voting and Elections at the national League of Women Voters. At LWV, Adam works to connect all the strengths of the League in a way that improves the power and voice of voters.
Prior to his work with the League, he worked to create a new foundation, the Democracy Fund. There, he served for more than eight years as its’ Director of the Elections and Voting Program where he led grantmaking, strategy, education, and engagement. Adam previously served as Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration for the Majority staff of the Committee and prior to that as Special Assistant and Counsel for Commissioner Ray Martinez III of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
Adam received his law degree from the University of Texas-Austin and a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Sociology from the University of Virginia. Adam is happiest when he is meeting new people doing groundbreaking work, solving difficult problems, and leading teams looking for ways to make the world a better place, in measures big and small.
Kathy Boockvar
Vice Chair
Kathy is President of Athena Strategies LLC, working with a broad base of organizations, government officials, and academic institutions to fortify election security, strengthen democracy, and amplify understanding and civil discourse about elections in the U.S. Formerly Vice President of Election Operations for the Center for Internet Security (CIS), Kathy led its election security initiatives, working with federal, state, and local government to provide the highest standards of election security and cybersecurity practices.
Boockvar previously served as Pennsylvania Secretary of State, leading the statewide agency and serving as Chief Election Official from 2019-2021, working closely with local, state, and federal officials. Prior to being named Secretary, Boockvar was Senior Advisor to the Governor on Election Modernization, leading and managing initiatives to strengthen election security and technology. During her tenure, Boockvar co-chaired Pennsylvania’s Inter-Agency Election Security and Preparedness Workgroup, strengthened election security and voting rights measures across the state, and oversaw secure and accessible elections amidst a global pandemic, marked by unparalleled transparency and record voter participation.
Boockvar also served as co-chair of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) Elections Committee from 2019-2020, co-chair of the NASS Business Services Committee from 2020-2021, and NASS Representative on the Election Infrastructure Subsector Government Coordinating Council (EIS-GCC) from 2019-2021.
Previously, Boockvar was Executive Director of Lifecycle WomanCare, one of the oldest continually operating birth centers in the United States. She also previously served as Chief Counsel for the Pennsylvania Auditor General.
In prior years, Boockvar served as a poll worker and as a voting-rights attorney. She also worked for over a decade as a private practice attorney, and previously as a nonprofit Legal Services attorney, representing low-income, disabled, and senior clients, and victims of domestic violence.
Boockvar is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the American University, Washington College of Law. She also received a GIAC GISF Certification in Cybersecurity Fundamentals and a Performance Leadership Certificate from Cornell University.
Boockvar is a Senior Advisor to the Brennan Center for Justice and the Institute for Responsive Government, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security (Pitt Cyber).
Katy Peters
Treasurer
Kathryn is a civic technologist, nonprofit entrepreneur, and voting advocate. She co-founded Democracy Works, where she launched TurboVote, an election reminder and voter registration tool that now serves more than 7 million voters in partnership with 175 colleges, several national nonprofits, and corporations that include Snap and Google. She also led Democracy Works’s acquisition of the Voting Information Project, a national open data collaboration that publishes official state polling locations and ballot data.
Her belief in better democracy has taken her from campaign organizing in Southeast Missouri to a master’s in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government to political rights monitoring in Afghanistan. Katy has been honored as one of Forbes magazine’s ’30 Under 30′ in the field of law and policy and as a Champion of Democracy by the National Priorities Project.
Nick Chedli Carter
Nick is a civic engagement strategist with a particular focus on the dynamics between emerging technologies, voting policies, demographic shifts and cultural change. This is towards achieving consistent participation, more effective governance, and diversifying who drives and benefits from the increased technicalization of civil society.
Most recently, he was the Reimagining Democracy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. His work at Ash focused on the incubation, implementation, and analysis of transformative nonpartisan electoral reforms, with a particular focus at the state, local and tribal level.
Nick has held senior positions in a range of electoral and issue advocacy campaigns, is a former US State Department Exchange Program participant, and is a proud Americorps alumni, having trained rural nonprofits on digital media literacy.
Nick’s work has been covered by Mother Jones, The New York Times, PBS Newshour, VOX, Politico, and the Wall Street Journal.
Pari Sabety
Pari is a financial executive with experience in balancing budgets, credit markets, capital strategies and transformation of academic and government enterprises. Now a Senior Principal in Management Consulting, for Accenture, she served for over 25 years as CFO in government and higher education and has experience as a cabinet member and senior executive staff to two governors.
In her work, she provides thought leadership in using information to drive back-office transformation, operational excellence, and unbeatable citizen service. Her finance transformation and public administration work includes Emory University, the State of Illinois, San Francisco, Detroit, and the State of Washington. As the Director of the Office of Budget and Management of the State of Ohio, Pari led a statewide implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning system transforming finance and administrative functions. Ohio Shared Services, built to leverage the state’s ERP, remains the largest shared services initiative for back-office operations in US state government.
Other experience includes serving as Vice-Chancellor and CFO for Antioch University, Fellow and Founding Director of the Urban Markets Initiative of the Brookings Institution. She is a CPA and holds a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, an M.B.A. from Rutgers, and a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, specializing in Arab Studies. Pari served as our board chair from 2020-2023.
Tiana Epps-Johnson
Tiana is Founder and Executive Director with the Center for Tech and Civic Life. She is leading a team that is doing groundbreaking work to make US elections more inclusive and secure. Prior to CTCL, she was the New Organizing Institute’s Election Administration Director from 2012 to 2015. She previously worked on the Voting Rights Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.
Tiana is a recipient of the 2020 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and was selected to join the inaugural cohorts of Obama Foundation Fellows (2018) and Harvard Ash Center Technology and Democracy Fellows (2015). Tiana earned a MSc in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science from Stanford University.