Marshall Ganz

Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society, Harvard Kennedy School

As Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing and Civil Society at the Kennedy School of Government, Marshall Ganz teaches, researches, and writes on leadership, narrative, strategy and organization in social movements, civic associations, and politics. He grew up in Bakersfield, California where his father was a Rabbi and his mother, a teacher. He entered Harvard College in the fall of 1960. He left a year before graduating to volunteer with the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. He found a “calling” as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and, in the fall of 1965 joined Cesar Chavez in his effort to unionize California farm workers. During 16 years with the United Farm Workers he gained experience in union, political, and community organizing; became Director of Organizing; and was elected to the national executive board on which he served for 8 years. During the 1980s he worked with grassroots groups to develop new organizing programs and designed innovative voter mobilization strategies for local, state, and national electoral campaigns. In 1991, in order to deepen his intellectual understanding of his work, he returned to Harvard College and after a 28-year “leave of absence” completed his undergraduate degree in history and government. He was awarded an MPA by the Kennedy School in 1993 and completed his PhD in sociology in 2000. He has published in the American Journal of Sociology, American Political Science Review, American Prospect, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review and elsewhere. His newest book, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement was published in 2009, earning the Michael J. Harrington Book Award of the American Political Science Association. In 2007-8 he was instrumental in design of the grassroots organization for the 2008 Obama for President campaign. In 2010 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity by the Episcopal Divinity School. In association with the global Leading Change Network of organizers, researchers and educators he coaches, trains, and advises social, civic, educational, health care, and political groups on organizing, training, and leadership development around the world.

Erica Chenoweth

Academic Dean for Faculty Development, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, Harvard Kennedy School; Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor, Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute

Erica Chenoweth is the Academic Dean for Faculty Development and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School, Faculty Dean at Pforzheimer House at Harvard College, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute. Chenoweth studies political violence and its alternatives. They have authored or edited nine other books and dozens of articles on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression, including Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (2021) and On Revolutions (2022).

Chenoweth’s current book project, The End of People Power, investigates the puzzling decline in the success of civil resistance movements in the past decade, even as the technique has become more popular worldwide. Along with Zoe Marks, Chenoweth is also the author of the forthcoming book Bread and Roses: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution, which explores how women’s participation impacts mass movements.

At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that uses social science tools and evidence to support movement-led political transformation. There they maintain the NAVCO Data Project, one of the world’s leading datasets on historical and contemporary mass mobilizations around the globe; the Women in Resistance (WiRe) Dataset, which catalogues the gender composition of such movements (with Zoe Marks); and the Crowd Counting Consortium, a public interest and scholarly project that documents political mobilization in the US (with Jeremy Pressman).

Chenoweth is a Faculty Affiliate at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and Women in Public Policy Program. They are also a Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Before coming to Harvard, Chenoweth taught at the University of Denver and Wesleyan University. They hold a Ph.D. and an M.A. in political science from the University of Colorado and a B.A. in political science and German from the University of Dayton.

Jorrit de Jong (welcome)

Director, Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University; Faculty Co-Chair, Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative; Emma Bloomberg Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School

Jorrit de Jong is director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University and the Emma Bloomberg Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School. His research, teaching, and engagement with practice focus on the challenges of making the public sector more effective, efficient, equitable, and responsive to social needs.

His scholarly research has been published in academic journals such as Public Administration Review, Cities, Public Management Review, Administration & Society, Stanford Social Innovation Review, International Journal of Public Administration, and the Journal of Public Health Management and Policy. A specialist in experiential learning, Jorrit has taught strategic management and public problem-solving in degree courses and executive education programs at Harvard and around the world.

Since 2016, Jorrit has been director and faculty co-chair of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a joint program of Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, funded by and executed in collaboration with Bloomberg Philanthropies. Over 300 mayors and their senior teams have participated in this year-long program designed to help cities tackle pressing problems.

Jorrit has designed and led field labs on neighborhood development, organized crime, human trafficking and other social issues that require multiple agencies to innovate together. As director of the Center for Government Studies at Leiden University, Jorrit co-founded the Kafka Brigade, an action research team that helped governments in the Netherlands and the UK diagnose and remedy bureaucratic dysfunction. Before that, he was founding co-director of a start-up technology firm for public sector innovation in Amsterdam.

Jorrit holds a PhD in Public Policy and Management (VU Amsterdam), a Master in Philosophy (Leiden) and a Master in Public Administration (Leiden). He has written extensively, including the books The State of Access: Success and Failure of Democracies to Create Equal Opportunities (Brookings 2008, co-edited); Agents of Change: Strategy and Tactics for Social Innovation (Brookings 2012, co-authored); and Dealing with Dysfunction: Innovative Problem Solving in the Public Sector (Brookings, 2016). Jorrit co-developed more than 60 teaching cases, simulation exercises, toolkits and learning modules on governance and leadership.