Reuniting America Part 2:

Lawyers Building Bridges SPEAKERS

Edward Ayers | University of Richmond

Edward Ayers is university professor of the humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond as well as former Dean of Arts and Sciences at the . He has received the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes for his scholarship, been named National Professor of the Year, received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama at the White House, and is former president of the Organization of American Historians. Ayers is the founding board chair of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond and serves on the boards of Colonial Williamsburg, the Fort Monroe Foundation, the Valentine Museum, and Virginia Humanities. He is executive director of New American History, dedicated to making the nation’s history more visible and useful for a broad range of audiences.

John Bridgeland | Civic

John Bridgeland is Founder & CEO of Civic, a social enterprise firm in Washington, D.C. He is also Co-Founder and CEO of the COVID Collaborative, a national platform that marshals top leaders and institutions in health, education and the economy to work with state and local leaders to combat COVID. He is also the Co-Founder of ACT NOW, a ground-up effort to re- envision policing and public safety across 14 communities representing the diversity of the United States. He is also Vice Chairman of UNITE, a national platform that brings leaders across sectors and political parties together to tackle public challenges. Bridgeland is Vice Chair of Service Year Alliance at The to make a service year a common expectation and opportunity for all 18 to 28-year-olds, Co-Convener of GradNation to reach a 90 percent high school graduation rate by 2020, and Vice Chairman of Malaria No More, a nonprofit working to end malaria deaths in Africa.

Previously, Bridgeland was appointed by President Obama to serve on the White House Council for Community Solutions. He also served as Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Assistant to the President of the United States, and first Director of the USA Freedom Corps after 9/11 under President George W. Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Virginia School of Law and has given commencement addresses at the College of William & Mary, Johns Hopkins University, Saint Anselm College, Averett University, Hamline University, and Ripon College. In addition, he founded Tennis for America in 2020 with the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, which awarded him their “Lifetime Achievement Award,” presented by Wimbledon Champion Stan Smith.

The biographical information is provided by the speakers or collected from their websites.

Dr. Ronald A. Crutcher | President, University of Richmond

Dr. Ronald A. Crutcher is a national leader in higher education and a distinguished classical musician and Professor of Music. He became President and Professor of Music at the University of Richmond in 2015, having previously served as President of Wheaton College in Massachusetts for ten years. Dr. Crutcher was founding co-chair of Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP), the Association of American Colleges & Universities’ national campaign to demonstrate the value of liberal education. He writes and speaks widely on the value of liberal education, the democratic purposes of higher education, diversity and inclusion, and free expression on college campuses.

Dr. Crutcher recently published a thematic memoir, I Had No Idea You Were Black: Navigating Race on the Road to Leadership. During this time of intense polarization, his life as a Black leader successfully bridging America’s cultural divides offers a compelling story with important lessons for today’s thinkers. Born to two parents who never graduated high school, Dr. Crutcher grew up to become a leader at the highest levels of academia and the arts. As a child musician, he met with Coretta Scott King. As an adult educator, he sat at Maya Angelou’s holiday table.

But it is Dr. Crutcher’s success as a Black intellectual navigating highly charged social issues that makes his story both unforgettable and urgently important. Whether navigating cancel culture at the University of Richmond, where he serves as President in the heart of the former Confederacy, or teaching Northeast liberals the true meaning of functional diversity, Dr. Crutcher offers lessons on life and leadership that none of us can afford to ignore.

Dr. Crutcher is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Miami University in Ohio, and earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at Yale University. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at the American Council on Education.

Jeanne F. Franklin | FranklinSolutions

Jeanne F. Franklin is a past president of the Virginia Bar Association, a retired health lawyer, and a practicing certified mentor mediator in Virginia. As a member of the VBA Committee on Special Issues of National and State Importance, she focused on the Reuniting America challenge starting with the design of the 2019 RA panel through envisioning and ongoing management of the VBA at Karsh efforts. She obtained her education from Vassar College, University of Virginia School of Law, and Georgetown University Organization Development Certificate Program. Honors have included the VLW Legal Hall of Fame and receipt of the VBA’s William B. Spong Professionalism award. Ms. Franklin continues to serve on the VBA’s Health Law Section council and is past chair of the VBA-VSB Joint ADR Committee.

The biographical information is provided by the speakers or collected from their websites.

Larry Roberts | Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, University of Virginia

Larry Roberts is the Director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. In addition to working in government and politics, Roberts was a successful lawyer in private practice for more than 20 years, including partnerships with the Skadden Arps and Davis Wright Tremaine international law firms and, most recently, as a partner at Venable LLP. He was President of the Federal Communications Bar Association and was the founding chair of its charitable foundation that has distributed millions of dollars in college scholarships and contributions to organizations serving those in need. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the Georgetown University Law Center. Virginia Law Weekly named him as one of its 2017 Virginia Leaders in the Law, and he won three Federal Communications Bar Association Distinguished Service Awards as well as Venable's 2017 Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year award. Roberts’ government service includes positions as Counselor to Governor Tim Kaine and Chief of Staff to Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax. In each position, he earned praise for working across the partisan aisle. He is an alumnus of Sorensen’s Political Leaders Program.

Micah Schwartzman | Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, University of Virginia School of Law

Micah Schwartzman is the director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy and the Hardy Cross Dillard Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. A scholar who focuses on law and religion, jurisprudence, political philosophy and constitutional law, Schwartzman joined the UVA Law faculty in 2007.

Schwartzman received his B.A. from the University of Virginia and his doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. During law school, he served as articles development editor of the Virginia Law Review and received several awards, including the Margaret G. Hyde Award. After graduating, Schwartzman clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and was a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities.

The mission of the Karsh Center is focused on promoting civil discourse and democratic dialogue, civic engagement and citizenship, ethics and integrity in public office, and respect for the rule of law. Schwartzman’s research and writing is focused mainly on matters of religious freedom, where the bounds of civility are increasingly strained. Recent debates over social distancing and public health regulations as applied to churches and other houses of worship are only the latest examples of a broader and deeper set of cultural conflicts that have contributed to political polarization and the destabilization of constitutional norms.

He also researches and writes at the intersection of law and philosophy, focusing in part on the ethics of political and judicial decision making. Much of his work is about the idea of public reason, which holds that governments officials, and especially judges, have a “duty of civility” to give sincere public justifications for their political and legal decisions. In his view, civility is a matter of justifying to one another how we exercise social and political power. It is more than a

The biographical information is provided by the speakers or collected from their websites.

matter of public etiquette. Although civility and etiquette are often run together, in an essay called The Etiquette of Animus, he recently argued that two concepts are not the same and that it is important to distinguish them, as well as the values that each represents.

Ian H. Solomon | Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia

Ian H. Solomon is dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, where he leads a multidisciplinary faculty of scholars and practitioners who are committed to creating new knowledge, developing ethical and effective leaders, and advancing solutions to humanity’s greatest policy challenges.

Trained as a lawyer, Solomon is a devoted student and teacher of both negotiation and conflict resolution. Over the course of his career, he has dedicated himself to improving the lives of people across the globe by integrating insights from his experiences in higher education, government, the private sector, and international organizations.

For four years, Solomon served in the U.S. Senate as legislative counsel to then-Senator Barack Obama. Later, under the Obama administration, he was confirmed unanimously by Congress as the U.S. executive director for the World Bank Group, where he championed private-sector development in Africa and negotiated a range of multi-stakeholder agreements. Solomon has also been a consultant with Mckinsey & Company, an associate dean and visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, and a vice president and lecturer in law at the University of Chicago. Before joining the Batten School, he led his own international consulting practice focused on conflict and collaboration. Now, as Batten’s dean, he aims to cultivate the kind of effective leadership the world needs: curious, evidence-based, empathetic, and equipped to serve our diverse and rapidly changing world.

Originally from , Solomon earned his AB from and his JD from Yale Law School. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has traveled and worked extensively in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Today, he lives with his family on the Grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Dr. Andrew D. Stelljes | College of William & Mary

Dr. Andrew D. Stelljes serves as the Assistant Vice President for Student Engagement and Leadership at William & Mary. Stelljes provides leadership and vision for five departments that all support student involvement, engagement, learning, leadership, and personal development. Stelljes holds teaching appointments in the School of Education and the Department of Public Policy.

Stelljes is the author of Service-Learning and Community Engagement: Toward Long-term Developmental Social Concern and his engagement model has been widely published. He has authored an array of journal articles on placing students' intellectual and developmental needs at

The biographical information is provided by the speakers or collected from their websites.

the center of the learning endeavor, leadership, community-based learning, and education policy reform measures.

Stelljes is a graduate of William & Mary with an earned Ph.D. in Educational Policy. He has held an executive board seat on a variety of local non-profits and on the Governor’s Advisory for National and Community Service where he chaired the annual selection process for statewide Americorps funding. He currently serves as a board member for the Solutions Journalism Network, Dream Project, the School for Strategic Leadership Studies at JMU, and the W&M Washington Center.

Stelljes is the faculty member for the DC Office Summer Institute on Leadership and Community Engagement and he teaches the class Urban Education: Policy, Practice, and Leadership through the W&M Washington Center. Most recently Stelljes co-taught three semester-long classes with former FBI Director James Comey. The class challenged students to think about leadership that is centered on values, like truth, integrity, fairness, transparency, and decency. Stelljes is co- director of the Civic Agency Project, an undergraduate think tank that focuses on civic engagement and democratic engagement.

Stelljes consults on topics ranging from the culture in the workplace, developing new leaders coaching seasoned leaders, civic engagement on college campuses, and student development in the college years. He has guest lectured, presented, or consulted for 100 schools, non-profits, for-profits, and think tanks. He and his wife, Amy, have three children, Emma Grace, Braden Eberhardt, and Elizabeth Marie. They live in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The biographical information is provided by the speakers or collected from their websites.