Experts

Melody Barnes

Executive Director of the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy

Fast Facts

  • Director of White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama
  • Former executive vice president of the Center for American Progress
  • Chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy
  • Expertise on democracy, public policy, health policy, civil rights

Areas Of Expertise

  • Domestic Affairs
  • Health
  • Law and Justice
  • Social Issues
  • Economic Issues
  • Leadership
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Melody Barnes is executive director of the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy and a professor of practice at the Miller Center. She is also a distinguished fellow at the UVA School of Law. A co-founder of the domestic strategy firm MB2 Solutions LLC, Barnes has spent more than 25 years crafting public policy on a wide range of domestic issues. 

During the administration of President Barack Obama, Barnes was assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. She was also executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress and chief counsel to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her experience includes an appointment as director of legislative affairs for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and assistant counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. Barnes began her career as an attorney with Shearman & Sterling in New York City. 

Barnes earned her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated with honors in history, and her JD from the University of Michigan. She serves on the boards of directors of several corporate, non-profit, and philanthropic organizations.

 

Featured Publications

Community Wealth Building
Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy

Melody C. Barnes (co-editor)

Melody Barnes News Feed

Lady Bird Johnson
What Democrats can learn from LBJ's Great Society
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society offers a compelling case study of what the federal government can achieve and how grassroots activists can help move Washington toward a better place if animated by a clear purpose.
CNN
Lady Bird
How great was the Great Society? A view from 2020
This event celebrates the launch of a National Endowment for the Humanities–funded podcast series and national public radio documentary, in oral history form, on Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. The conversation will be recorded and edited to create the final episode in the podcast. The project will be distributed by PRX, a leading player in the rapidly expanding public media world. Through the recollections of those who were there when this history was made, the series will seek to shed light on how Lyndon Johnson was able to pass a legislative program of the magnitude of the Great Society. The venture is modeled on LBJ’s War, which told the story of Johnson's ruinous entanglement in Vietnam through the same archival materials, including the LBJ Library's oral history collection and the phone calls curated and annotated in the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program.
Melody Barnes Miller Center Presents
WUVA News
UVA’s Democracy Initiative Explained by Co-Director Melody Barnes
The University of Virginia’s Democracy Initiative was launched in 2018 to “study and advance the prospects of democracy around the world.” WUVA met with the Initiative’s co-director for policy and public affairs, Melody Barnes, to learn more about what has been accomplished in the project’s first year and what comes next for the Democracy Initiative.
Melody Barnes WUVA News
WVTF
UVA to Host Presidential Ideas Festival
Charlottesville is gearing up for the Presidential Ideas Festival – a gathering that will feature one former president and top officials from many administrations -- talking about how the chief executive makes decisions, how the office has changed and where it may be headed.
Melody Barnes WVTF Radio IQ
UVA Today
Democracy Initiative to launch two new labs
Melody Barnes, co-director of the Democracy Initiative, said the lab selection committee reviewed a number of outstanding proposals from interdisciplinary teams featuring faculty from numerous UVA schools and academic departments before selecting Sechser and Vaidhyanathan’s projects. “Ultimately, we selected two new labs well-aligned with the Democracy Initiative’s mission – rigorous scholarship and research, enhanced opportunities for students to explore the practice of democracy in and beyond the classroom, and a commitment to engage policymakers, practitioners and the public,” Barnes said.
Melody Barnes UVA Today
Panel discussion on race
Miller Center hosts ‘Race in the Decade since Obama’ event as part of MLK celebration
As part of the University’s 2019 Community MLK Celebration, the University’s Miller Center of Public Affairs hosted a panel Tuesday afternoon in Newcomb Theater entitled “Race in the Decade since Obama,” which focused on how race relations in United States have changed in the ten years since Obama took office. Melody Barnes—an assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council during the Obama administration—moderated the event. The New York Times’ Lauretta Charlton and Kevin Gaines, Julian Bond prof. of Civil Rights and Social Justice, served as panelists.
Melody Barnes Cavalier Daily