Biography
Marjan H. Ehsassi is a strategic policy advisor, practitioner, movement builder, and a fierce believer in the need for meaningful, inclusive, and impactful government-led engagement that provides citizens with a consequential voice. She has traveled to and worked to enhance space for civil society in some of the most complex environments including Iran, Ukraine, and North Korea.
A lawyer and international governance expert, she recently received her Doctorate in International Affairs (DIA) from SAIS, Johns Hopkins University with a concentration on democratic innovations, design integrity, and government-initiated Deliberative Mini-Publics (DMPs). She has studied and produced case studies on the impact of citizens’ assemblies on participants in France, Belgium, Canada, and the United States. Marjan is on several boards including Healthy Democracy and has been invited to serve as Independent Guarantor in the Collège des Garants of the French Citizens’ Convention on the End of Life (Convention Citoyenne sur la Fin de Vie).
As a Berggruen Fellow, Marjan supports several initiatives to raise knowledge and test deliberative platforms in the United States, including the implementation of a Legislators’ Forum on Innovations in Democracy, the Working Group on Deliberative Democracy for the Second Summit on Democracy, the Future of Institutions Working Group on Deliberative Democracy, the Democracy Action Fund, and the design and implementation of the first State-wide Citizens’ Assembly in the United States.