Zack Exley is an organizer and writer based in Kansas City, Missouri. As an Open Society Fellow he is writing a series of articles about the evolution of the organizing model used by the Obama campaign and about efforts by community and labor groups that used many of the same principles and practices. He is also exploring ways to enable local leaders, organizers, and social service providers in Missouri to mobilize diverse constituencies that do not normally work together.

Exley is a founder of the New Organizing Institute and worked with the Obama campaign as a consultant and researcher. He was online director for the British Labor Party's 2005 campaign, director of online organizing for Kerry-Edwards 2004,  and organizing director at MoveOn.org. He served as an adviser to the Dean campaign and spent much of the 1990s working as a union organizer.

Director
Open Society Fellowship

Leonard Benardo has been at the Open Society Institute since 1996. In that capacity he has overseen OSI’s activities in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, and Hungary. In addition to directing the Open Society Fellowship, he continues to work as regional director for OSI’s efforts in these countries, and oversees a large grantmaking portfolio for Russia.

Prior to his work at OSI in New York, Benardo worked in the Moscow office of the Soros Foundation. He has also taught history and Spanish in a NYC public high school. Benardo has written for the New York Times, New York Review of Books, and International Herald Tribune, and is the co-author of Brooklyn by Name: How the Neighborhoods, Streets, Parks, Bridges, and More Got Their Names (NYU Press, 2006) and Citizen-in-Chief: The Second Lives of the American Presidents (William Morrow, 2009).