Our Team
Board of Trustees
Sam Wang, Founding President
Sam Wang serves as the founding director of the Electoral Innovation Lab. Professor Wang has over two decades of experience translating data and science into practical action in American politics. With degrees in physics and neuroscience, he has taught and led research and policy work at Princeton University since 2000. Professor Wang’s past projects have included the Princeton Election Consortium, the Gerrymandering Project, and Representable. During his tenure, he oversaw partnerships with the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Justice, the Attorney General of Maine, Secretary of State of Michigan, and nonpartisan citizen organizations including RepresentUS, Fair Districts GA, OneVirginia2021, and Open Primaries. Professor Wang served as the technical consultant on both of New Jersey’s redistricting commissions, for U.S. House districts (Congressional Commission, December 2021) and for legislative districts (Apportionment Commission, February 2022). The legislative map was approved by a bipartisan vote - the only time this has occurred in the history of the Commission. With the help of EIL staff, he contributed to this historic accomplishment by providing technical assistance to the tiebreaking commissioner at every step of the process. Professor Wang has also worked as an expert and assisted the special master in key redistricting cases in North Carolina.
Kyle Barnes, Executive Director
Kyle Barnes serves as Executive Director of the Electoral Innovation Lab. Prior to joining EIL, he was a fellow at Schmidt Futures and executive director of Representable, a communities of interest platform to fight gerrymandering. He has a degree in computer science from Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Robert F. Johnston, Board President
Robert F. Johnston founded Johnston Associates, a venture capital firm, in 1968 to provide seed capital for start-ups emerging in the biotechnology and healthcare fields. During his career, he founded numerous public companies including Sepracor (acquired by Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma Co), Cytogen (acquired by EUSA Pharma), and I-STAT (acquired by Abbott). Johnston is founder and president of Educational Ventures, a private foundation. He received his B.A. from Princeton University and his M.B.A. from New York University. Johnston was a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University for 20 years.
Keena Lipsitz, Ph.D., Board Treasurer
Keena is a professor of political science at Queens College and The Graduate Center. She conducts research on elections and polarization in the US. Her research has been published in numerous journals including PNAS, Political Behavior, and Journal of Political Philosophy, and she has authored or co-authored several books, including Competitive Elections and the American Voter and Campaigns and Elections.
Collaborators
Mentors
Jane Manners, Ph.D., J.D., Board Secretary
Jane Manners is a legal historian and an assistant professor of law at Temple Law School. She has a BA and a JD from Harvard and a PhD from Princeton, and she served as a clerk for Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Professor Manners has also worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a grantmaker for the Open Society Institute, where she focused on democracy reform efforts in the United States. Her writing has appeared in the Fordham Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation, among other publications.
Josh Goldfein, J.D.
Josh Goldfein is a staff attorney with the Homeless Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society of New York City, where he has spent decades advocating for the rights of homeless individuals, migrants, and other vulnerable populations. Josh has served as lead counsel in landmark right-to-shelter litigation, class actions challenging discriminatory housing practices, and cases securing essential services for his clients. His work includes representing individuals and families in federal and state courts and engaging in public policy discussions to shape legal protections for people lacking stable housing. He is also recognized as an expert on the city’s management of shelters and related services, frequently providing commentary and analysis to the media.
Jonathan Cervas, Ph.D.
Jonathan serves as research associate and collaborator with the Electoral Innovation Lab. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and a masters and PhD from the University of California Irvine. He specializes in American politics and has published in numerous scholarly journals on the Electoral College and Redistricting in outlets including PNAS, Election Law Journal, Social Science Quarter, PS: Political Science and Politics, Public Choice, and several law reviews.
Keena Lipsitz, Ph.D.
Keena is a professor of political science at Queens College and The Graduate Center. She conducts research on elections and polarization in the US. Her research has been published in numerous journals including PNAS, Political Behavior, and Journal of Political Philosophy, and she has authored or co-authored several books, including Competitive Elections and the American Voter and Campaigns and Elections.
Bernard Grofman, Ph.D.
Bernard is the Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is a leading expert on redistricting from theory to practice. In 2021 and 2022 he served as a special master on district map redrawings in Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina, and was a consultant to the New York state court that handled New York's congressional redistricting.