Leadership
Sam Wang
Sam Wang, Ph.D. 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.
We are pleased to announce that in December 2023, the Electoral Innovation Lab convened the first meeting of its inaugural board of directors and filed its incorporation documents to form a nonprofit organization. We anticipate obtaining our 501(c)(3) status from the IRS by the end of 2024. Inquiries about joining the board of directors can be sent to admin@electoral-lab.org.
Board President - Robert F. Johnston
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.
Board Secretary - Jane Manners
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.
Board Treasurer - Kyle Barnes
Kyle Barnes is a Product Manager at Schmidt Futures and served as the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Representable. He is based in Brooklyn, NY, and graduated from Princeton University where he studied Human-Computer Interaction.