ADVISORY BOARD
The Vote16USA Advisory Board consists of academics, policymakers, and other professionals who provide strategic advice that helps guide our work to lower the voting age on the local level.
Timothy Male
Timothy Male was elected to the City Council of Takoma Park, Maryland, three times and launched the successful effort to lower the voting age in this city in 2012. Timothy also served in the White House at the Council on Environmental Quality from 2014-2017. He currently leads the non-profit group, the Environmental Policy Innovation Center.
Abby Kiesa
Abby Kiesa is the Director of Impact at CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, a national research center which focuses on young people in the United States, especially those who are marginalized or disadvantaged in political life. CIRCLE’s scholarly research informs policy and practice for healthier youth development and a better democracy. CIRCLE is part of the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University.
Daniel Hart
Daniel Hart is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Faculty Director of the Institute for Effective Education at Rutgers University. His research focuses on the development of civic competence, identity, personality, and morality, particularly among youth in urban areas.
Joshua Douglas
Professor Joshua A. Douglas teaches and researches election law, civil procedure, constitutional law, and judicial decision making. His most recent scholarship focuses on the constitutional right to vote, with an emphasis on state constitutions, as well as the various laws, rules, and judicial decisions impacting election administration. He has also written extensively on election law procedure
Patrick Paschall
Patrick Paschall is a city council member in Hyattsville, MD. He led the effort to make Hyattsville the second jurisdiction in the United States to lower the voting age in municipal elections to 16, a measure which passed in 2015. In his professional career, Patrick is the Executive Director at FreeState Legal Project, Maryland’s legal advocacy organization for the low-income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community.
Allentza Michel
Allentza Michel is a public interest consultant who works in civic design, community and organizational development. She helped lead the push to lower the voting age in Cambridge, MA in the early 2000’s, in which the city council voted in favor of the policy numerous times but was rebuffed when the state legislature failed to grant the city’s home rule petition.
Connie Flanagan
Connie Flanagan is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her scholarship and teaching concerns the factors that motivate people of all ages, but especially youth, to engage in civic affairs and in the preservation of the commons that we share.
Daniela Mrabti
Daniela Mrabti is the Program Coordinator at the Alliance for Youth Action, a national network of youth-led, local organizations building young people’s political power. Daniela supports partner organizations on the Eastern side of the United States helping them build capacity and succeed in their civic engagement programs and issue campaigns. Daniela also manages digital communications and various national civic engagement programs.
Jacob Carrel
Jacob is a student at Harvard Law School. He formerly worked as the Projects Associate for the Foundation for Civic Leadership, helping advise and catalyze projects that focus on elevating the next generation of leaders. Jacob has experience in student organizing, and brings a passion for equity and engaging young people.
Andrew Brennen
Andrew Brennen is a Robertson Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University where he is majoring in Political Science with a minor in Policy Journalism and Media Studies. Andrew co-founded the Prichard Committee Student Voice Team in 2012 as a junior in high school. In this capacity, Andrew helped launch and lead a number of projects to amplify and elevate students as partners in improving Kentucky schools.
These include a successful statewide, student-led campaign to restore 15 million dollars for low income student scholarships; the drafting and promotion of HB 236 to add students to superintendent screening committees; an investigation into the tripwires that prevent high school students from making smooth transitions to college; and a “student voice audit” of a local junior high school to engage students in improving school climate.
In January 2016, Andrew took on a new role as the National Field Director for Student Voice, a national organization with the goal of bridging the gap between students and the education community. As part of his role in Student Voice, Andrew has led a nation-wide tour with the goal of engaging thousands of students across the country through a platform called the “Student Bill of Rights”.
Andrew has assisted a wide range of organizations in engaging students including The White House, The Hewlett Foundation, Google, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and South By South West Education. Andrew draws inspiration from the quote “When we tell our stories, we change the world.”
Jen Devor
Jen Devor struggled throughout her early education. Having almost failed out of high school, it wasn’t until her senior year that she took a class on civics and discovered her voice and passion for activism. Inspired, she applied herself and quickly became a better student gaining acceptance into the University of the Arts, moving to Philadelphia in 2002. She immediately fell in love with the city and became engaged in her community. Since then she has become a community leader, election poll worker, committeeperson, block captain, and a public school and voting rights advocate. Jen recognizes the direct correlation between education and voter turnout and is a published author on election integrity and civic engagement. In 2019, Jen ran for City Commissioner, the office that oversees elections in Philadelphia. She received over 23,000 votes from across the city and won the endorsements of many organizations and elected officials, most notably: the Philadelphia Inquirer, National Organization for Women, and Run For Something. Today, she serves as the president and co-founder of Better Civics, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to revolutionizing civic engagement and voter turnout through education. Jen continues to fight for better elections and strongly believes that engaging young people, especially by lowering the voting age to 16, is the key to election reform and a better path forward for the future of politics.