michael-signer-headshot

MICHAEL SIGNER

Mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia

Michael Signer is a lecturer at the University of Virginia; the general counsel of a major Charlottesville-based technology firm; and the mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia.

He previously served as counsel to Governor Mark Warner of Virginia, as national security director of the 2008 John Edwards for President Campaign, and as senior policy advisor at the Center for American Progress.  He was a 2009 candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia.  He served on the Board of Directors of the Center for National Policy and as a principal of the Truman National Security Project.  He was appointed by Governor Tim Kaine to Virginia’s Board of Medicine and by Governor Terry McAuliffe to the Council on Virginia’s Future.  He is a member of the Virginia and Washington, D.C. Bars.

He is the author of Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies (2009) and Becoming Madison: The Extraordinary Origins of the Least Likely Founding Father (2015).  His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Time, The Washington PostVox, The New RepublicDemocracy, and USA Today, and he has been interviewed on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, The Situation Room, CBS Nightly News, and NPR’s Morning Edition.  He has been profiled by CNN, The Washington PostThe New York Times, and the Guardian. He was recently named an Aspen Institute Rodel Fellow.

He holds a Ph.D. in political science from U.C., Berkeley, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow; a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law; and a B.A. in politics, magna cum laude, from Princeton University.  He lives with his wife and twin three year-old boys in Charlottesville, Virginia.