Thomas B. Griffith served on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit — often referred to as “the second most important court in the land” — for fifteen years. Before that he was the nonpartisan chief lawyer for the U. S. Senate and the General Counsel at Brigham Young University. President Biden appointed Judge Griffith to his Commission on the Supreme Court. Currently, Judge Griffith is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, works closely with Utah Governor Spencer Cox on his Disagree Better initiative, and is a member of the Board of Directors of iCivics.
Category: Bio
Matthew Botvinick
Matthew Botvinick is Senior Director of Research and Senior Technology and Policy Advisor at Google DeepMind. He joined DeepMind in 2016 after twenty years in academia, starting with a Ph.D. in the Neural Basis of Cognition from Carnegie Mellon University, followed by faculty positions at University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University. Botvinick has authored more than 150 peer reviewed articles, spanning AI, deep learning, reinforcement learning, cognitive science and computational neuroscience. Botvinick holds an M.D. degree from Cornell University with board certification in Psychiatry. Alongside his work at Google DeepMind, he is currently a Resident Fellow at Yale Law School.
Barbara Jenkins
Barbara Jenkins, Ed.D., has been dedicated to serving the needs of students for more than 30 years. In 2012 she was named superintendent for Orange County Public Schools (OCPS), the eighth largest district in the nation, proudly serving 206,000 students. She retired from OCPS in December 2022.
Under Jenkins’ leadership, the district won the prestigious Broad Prize for Urban Education. The district also received the Governor’s Sterling Award and attained District Accreditation from AdvancED for its best practices in the education field. The Sustained Excellence Award was attained for exemplary performance using research-based best practices in business. The district passed a second half-penny sales tax referendum for capital projects totaling $2.4 billion and two property tax referenda for operations projected at $1.2 billion to support a $5.5 billion annual budget. Most importantly, the district reached an unprecedented graduation rate of 97% for traditional high schools during her tenure.
A highly recognized education leader, Jenkins received a presidential appointment to the National Board of Education Sciences in 2017 and received the Baldridge Foundation Award for Leadership Excellence in 2022. She has served as Chairman of the Board for the Council of Great City Schools, representing the nation’s large urban districts. Jenkins is a Chief in Residence and leader of the Women in Leadership initiative of Chiefs for Change, a national bipartisan group of district and state education leaders dedicated to the success of our nation’s youth. Jenkins also serves on the board of trustees and chairs the audit committee for ETS, the world’s largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization.
Deeply engaged in the community, Jenkins has served on the boards of Advent Health, Orlando Economic Partnership, United Arts of Central Florida, Central Florida Regional Commission on Homelessness and the Orange County Youth Mental Health Commission. Jenkins is a graduate of the University of Central Florida.
Sam Hiersteiner
Sam Hiersteiner brings more than 15 years of cross-sector leadership experience spanning public affairs and social impact. Prior to joining iCivics, he was the Chief Marketing Officer and Managing Partner at New Profit, the leading venture philanthropy funder, where he built and led the communications function, provided support to dozens of social entrepreneurs in the New Profit community, and managed the organization’s long-term, catalytic collaboration with Deloitte. In his previous role as Vice President at the Glover Park Group (now FGS Global), he co-led a consulting portfolio focused on nonprofits and foundations. He started his career at Burson-Marsteller, serving a pioneering ESG consulting group.
He is a published food and cookbook writer whose work has appeared in the Boston Globe, the Art of Eating, and many other publications. He also serves on the board of Gaining Ground, a nonprofit farm that works to alleviate food insecurity in eastern Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and three children.
Jennifer Jewell
Jennifer joined iCivics as Chief Financial Officer in June 2025, bringing more than 20 years of nonprofit financial leadership to the organization. In this role, she is responsible for providing strategic oversight of iCivics’ finance and operations functions. Jennifer collaborates closely with the CEO, Executive Leadership Team, Board of Directors, and senior staff to drive the organization’s financial growth and operational excellence.
Prior to joining iCivics, Jennifer served as Chief Financial Officer at JVS Boston, a prominent workforce development organization. During her nine-year tenure, she played a pivotal role in driving the organization’s financial growth and diversifying its funding model, which contributed to a doubling of its annual budget to $30 million.
Jennifer’s experience spans several national nonprofit organizations. As Managing Director of Finance and Operations at the National Center on Time and Learning, she led financial and operational functions across four related education reform organizations. Additionally, Jennifer served as Senior Director of Finance and Regional Operations at KIPP Massachusetts, where she supported the growth of the network from one to five schools. Earlier in her career, Jennifer held the position of Director of Accounting Operations at City Year, Inc., where she designed scalable systems to support the expansion of multiple sites nationwide.
Jennifer holds a B.A. in Business Administration – Management from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Master of Public Administration, with a concentration in Nonprofit Administration, from San Francisco State University. She is also an alumna of the 2010 Lead Boston cohort.
Outside of her professional work, Jennifer is deeply committed to community service. She resides north of Boston with her husband and son and actively volunteers with several organizations.
Tyce Henry
Tyce Henry is a leader in Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) Education & Employment practice and in BCGU, a BCG business unit that develops and delivers high-impact learning and development experiences for clients.
During his 20-year career with BCG, Henry has driven transformative change with clients including education technology firms, curriculum and assessment providers, universities, K-12 school systems, and private equity investors.
Henry specializes in growth strategy; turnaround and restructuring efforts; investment due diligence and portfolio strategy; and scale up of change efforts through client enablement and training.
David Ritter
In his 45-year career as an engineer, executive, consultant, coach and investor, David Ritter has consistently helped to build successful teams, products and companies. He enables organizations to adopt collaborative, outcome-driven ways of working that create differentiated results – and allow all stakeholders to have good days at work.
David is currently a Senior Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group. He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Judge Ann Claire Williams (Ret.)
Judge Ann Claire Williams (Ret.), a trailblazer and leader, heads Jones Day’s efforts in advancing the rule of law in Africa. Devoted to promoting the effective delivery of justice worldwide, particularly in Africa, she has partnered with judiciaries, attorneys, NGOs, and the U.S. Departments of Justice and State to lead training programs in Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. She also has taught at the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
President Ronald Reagan nominated her in 1985 to the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, making her the first woman of color to serve on a district court in the three-state Seventh Circuit. In 1999, President William Clinton’s nomination made her the first judge of color to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the third woman of color to serve on any federal circuit court. She brings her vast experience on the bench to serve as a resource for the Firms leading trial and appellate practices.
Judge Williams has served on many judicial committees and, as treasurer and president of the Federal Judges Association, was the first person of color to become an officer. Committed to public interest work, she helped found Just The Beginning — A Pipeline Organization, the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Chicago, Minority Legal Education Resources, and the Public Interest Fellowship Program for Equal Justice Works. She serves on the boards of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, iCivics, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Weinstein International Foundation, Museum of Science & Industry Chicago, University of Notre Dame (emeritus), and National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) (emeritus), the Board of Counselors for Equal Justice Works, and chairs the Advisory Board of the International Law Institute-South African Centre for Excellence. She is also chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary for 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024.
Pritesh Shah
Pri provides advice and strategic counseling on the intellectual property, data privacy and technology aspects of transactions including commercial and licensing agreements, mergers, acquisitions, JVs, financings, restructurings and collaboration arrangements. He advises companies in numerous industries, as well as private equity and other investors.
He negotiates and advises on bespoke agreements in commercial matters, including software, algorithm and mobile apps; data monetization; artificial intelligence and machine learning; brand and franchise licensing; programming rights; manufacturing, supply and distribution; payment services, e-commerce and IT outsourcing; and mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) and IoT connectivity. Pri also advises clients on IP and commercial issues related to generative AI, the metaverse, NFTs and blockchain-related platforms.
Pri is one of Davis Polk’s two hiring partners and serves on the boards of iCivics and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.
Lindsay Reimers
Lindsay is a strategic philanthropist and impact investor. She has served on iCivics’ Governing Board since 2017. She has served on several committees and now chairs the Program Committee.
Prior to joining iCivics, she served with several organizations, including Horizons National Board of Directors, Teach for America-Connecticut’s Advisory Board, and Social Venture Partners-Connecticut. She also served on the Fairfield County Community Foundation’s (FCCF) Board of Directors. At that time, she was co-Chair of the Fund for Women and Girls, the largest women’s fund in Connecticut, where she co-authored a study of women and girls in the county and helped found a public–private community college partnership.
Lindsay holds a BA from American University and a Masters of International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In 2014, Lindsay attended Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI), a year-long executive level program designed to help leaders address significant social problems.