The Vote.org Team

CEO

Andrea Hailey

Andrea Hailey has always believed that democracy works best when everyone can participate - and she’s spent her entire career fighting to make that belief a reality.

As the CEO of Vote.org, Andrea leads one of the nation’s largest nonpartisan voter engagement platforms, using a blend of technology, legal strategy, and grassroots energy to defend and expand access to the ballot box. Her approach isn’t just about registering voters - it’s about removing the barriers that keep them from voting in the first place. Through her leadership, Vote.org has registered more voters than any nonprofit in U.S. history - and that number grows by the hundreds every day.

What sets Andrea apart is her holistic approach to strategy and outcomes. She has transformed Vote.org into more than a voter registration tool - it’s a full-spectrum civic engagement force. From legal action and data-backed outreach to cultural partnerships and on-the-ground support, Andrea blends policy change with momentum-building to meet people where they are and move them to the ballot box.

Her public wins are reshaping the voter engagement landscape. During the 2020 election, her team registered more than 2.2 million voters and helped 3.3 million request mail-in ballots. She launched field efforts to support voters stuck in hour-long lines, sending food trucks to polling places and turning moments of disenfranchisement into moments of care.

Behind her public wins is a deep personal commitment. Raised in a civic-minded family of lawyers in Indianapolis, Andrea witnessed early on how fragile access to voting can be - and how urgently it needs defending. Her work today is shaped by that legacy, and by a belief that democracy must be joyful, inclusive, and defended with everything we’ve got.That fight has often led her straight into the courtroom. Under Andrea’s leadership, Vote.org has filed and won key lawsuits challenging archaic, discriminatory laws that disproportionately affect young people, people of color, and low-income voters. In Texas, she led the change to overturn a requirement that voters hand-sign their registration forms - a rule rooted in voter suppression that ignored the realities of a digital world. Her team argued, and the court agreed, that such a requirement was unconstitutional, paving the way for millions more to register with greater ease.

Similar legal battles followed in Georgia and Florida, where Andrea’s team continues to push back against restrictive signature and absentee ballot rules. For Andrea, these cases are more than legal challenges - they’re statements of principle. Voter suppression, in any form, erodes the foundation of our democracy. And she’s determined to meet it with facts, force, and fierce clarity.

At the intersection of law, technology, and civic Action, Andrea Hailey stands as one of the most powerful voices for voter rights in the United States of America today - not just registering eligible voters, but reshaping the legal and cultural systems that determine who gets heard.

Board members

Kimberly Myers Hewlett, Chair

Kimberly Myers Hewlett is president of the Myers Family Foundation and a family council member of the Flora Family Foundation. Most recently, she was senior vice president of donor engagement at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Previously, she worked for Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and served as senior associate director for Corporate and Foundation Relations at the Stanford University Medical School.

In addition to Vote.org, Hewlett serves on the boards of the National Center for Family Philanthropy, Seacology, and the Intervalien Foundation. She is an alumna of The Philanthropy Workshop West, a “boot camp” for emerging philanthropists. Hewlett received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and an MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. She is a member of the inaugural cohort for the IU Professional Doctorate in Philanthropic Leadership (PhilD) at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Her research is focused on indigenous island communities and environmental justice.

She currently lives in Mountain View, CA with her husband Billy and three children.

Maisha Leek, Director

Maisha’s career spans leadership roles in fundraising, politics, science/tech policy, technology startups, and venture capital. At Human Ventures — an early-stage venture studio in NYC that backs and builds consumer technology companies – she is a Partner. In this role, she manages the success of 16 portfolio companies. Maisha also sources potential founders for companies built with Enterprise partners and HV’s “Entrepreneur In Residence” program. She is particularly interested in working with experienced founders with backgrounds that are frequently underestimated by the VC community (people of color, LGBTQIA, veterans, etc.) and collaborating with investors that understand the opportunity this network presents.

She is a former chief of staff of the U. S. Congress where she oversaw a $54b portfolio that included the federal government’s investments in science and technology. During both the Bush and Obama Administrations, she served as Special Assistant to the Vice Chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Prior to Human Ventures, Maisha was an operations executive at a high-growth startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Alphabet, Floodgate, and Main Street Advisors. She is a trustee of her alma mater, Trinity College (D.C.) and a board member of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and Service Year Alliance.

Rupa Balasubramanian, Treasurer

Rupa has over fifteen years of experience managing private family foundations in Los Angeles–facilitating the investment of millions of dollars to support organizations focused on education, women’s health, the environment, civic engagement, and civil rights at the local, state, and national levels. She began her philanthropic career at Margery Tabankin & Associates, a philanthropic and political consulting firm. There, Rupa worked with Barbra Streisand and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to create the Women’s Heart Alliance, a national non-profit organization with a bold campaign to increase awareness of women’s heart disease and advocate for more funding on gender-specific research. In the summer of 2013, Rupa helped launch Fundamental.

Rupa currently serves on the advisory board of the Women’s Heart Alliance in addition to serving on the board of directors for Vote.org, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles and Demos, a public policy organization working to achieve social, economic, and political equity.

Rupa previously worked in crisis management at Hill & Knowlton, Inc., a leading international communications consulting firm. During the Clinton Administration, Rupa worked in the Press Secretary’s office at the White House. She graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara and earned her Masters degree in Public Administration with summa cum laude honors at the University of Southern California’s School of Policy, Planning and Development.