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.

 

Melody Barnes News Feed

Incoming executive director Melody Barnes said she hopes the institute will become a center for complex political discussion and debate, as well as a place to brainstorm and work through solutions to major problems facing democracy, The Progress reports.
Melody Barnes The Daily Progress
Colleges and universities are uniquely positioned to nurture democracy, and to strengthen the norms and cultural beliefs that are necessary for it to function.
Jim Ryan and Melody Barnes
Melody C. Barnes, currently co-director of the Democracy Initiative, will serve as inaugural director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy. Barnes directed the White House Domestic Policy Council under former President Barack Obama, and is excited about bringing UVA’s best scholarship and research directly to the public and to policymakers.
Melody C. Barnes UVA Today
Melody Barnes, currently co-director of UVa’s Democracy Initiative, will serve as the institute’s inaugural executive director. Barnes was the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under then-President Barack Obama. “My role is to literally build the institute, working across Grounds with the seven centers and schools that already do great democracy work here so that we can better collaborate and bring a greater intensity to that work by identifying the places where together we can do more than we can do as individual institutions, and then to also think about the practical and unique programs and projects that the institute can do,” Barnes said.
Melody Barnes The Daily Progress
Melody Barnes, co-director for public policy and public affairs at the Democracy Initiative and professor at the Miller Center, will lead the Institute of Democracy. Barnes previously served as assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council during former president Barack Obama’s administration. “It is incumbent upon us to bring together, to weave together, the threads of these great centers and schools and institutions that already exist at U.Va.,” Barnes said. “[This will] make sure that the whole is greater than the sum — to do the things that individually, those institutions cannot do.”
Melody Barnes The Cavalier Daily
Melody C. Barnes, who is currently the co-director of the Democracy Initiative, will be the inaugural executive director of the new institute. "That we are going to focus on the challenges that face democracy in a forward-facing manner," she said. "What that is practical and pragmatic that engages the public and political leaders and business leaders and others to focus on those challenges."
Melody Barnes CBS19