- Civil Rights
- Criminal Justice
- Police Accountability
Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way.
Jealous has decades of experience as a leader, coalition builder, campaigner for social justice and seasoned nonprofit executive. In 2008, he was chosen as the youngest-ever president and CEO of the NAACP. During his tenure, he doubled the organization’s budget, grew its online activist base by hundreds of thousands and increased its number of donors eightfold, from 16,000 to 132,000. He also positioned the organization at the forefront of critical social justice issues such as the Trayvon Martin case, the fight against voter ID laws and major protests over the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policies. He pushed for the organization to fight more aggressively for marriage equality, led efforts to register 374, 000 voters and mobilize 1.2 million new voters to the polls, and worked to pass key legislative accomplishments during President Obama’s first term, most notably the Affordable Care Act.
In 2013, the Baltimore Sun named Jealous Marylander of the Year for his work on marriage equality, abolishing the death penalty and passing the DREAM Act. Jealous was the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor of Maryland, and most recently served as a partner at Kapor Capital. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and he has taught at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
Ben Jealous's Areas of Expertise
All Posts
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Blog Post | September 23, 2021
Biden’s Promise for Diverse Judges and Federal Court Diversity
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Blog Post | September 20, 2021
Pass the Freedom to Vote Act
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Blog Post | September 10, 2021
Virginia Voters’ Choice: Forward with Voting Rights Champ for Governor or Backward With Team Trump
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Blog Post | September 2, 2021
A Red Flag on the West Coast
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Blog Post | August 27, 2021
Ben Jealous Rallies Crowd Protesting U.S. Chamber’s Voter Suppression Support
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Blog Post | August 26, 2021
THE NATION: It’s Time for Biden to Lead on Voting Rights
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Blog Post | August 26, 2021
President Biden: You Must Do More to Protect Voting Rights
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Blog Post | August 24, 2021
DEMOCRACY NOW: Voting Rights Groups Launch Civil Disobedience Campaign at the White House Urging End to Filibuster
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Blog Post | August 16, 2021
Making Good Trouble
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Blog Post | July 29, 2021
To Protect Democracy, We Have to Fix the Supreme Court