Board of Advisors

Frank Atkinson is a partner in the McGuireWoods law firm and senior advisor with the firm’s public affairs affiliate, McGuireWoods Consulting. He counsels business and governmental entities on a range of strategic issues, including higher education, public-private partnerships, and economic development. Mr. Atkinson first joined McGuireWoods in 1984, practicing in the area of commercial and constitutional litigation. He left the firm for several periods of public service, including in the Department of Justice under President Ronald Reagan and in the cabinet of Virginia Governor George Allen as policy director and counselor to the governor. He was principal founder (in 1998) and served for two decades as chairman of McGuireWoods Consulting, which provides public affairs services to clients in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Mr. Atkinson has participated in and written about politics and government for four decades. His most recent book, The Lion’s Den: A Story of American Renewal (2019), addresses timely issues of democratic renewal and ethical civic engagement in a fictional genre. His major nonfiction works—The Dynamic Dominion (1992) and Virginia in the Vanguard (2006)—chronicle Virginia’s competitive modern politics and are used as college-level texts.  A native of Northampton County, Virginia, Mr. Atkinson attended the University of Richmond, where he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Political Science. He took his law degree at the University of Virginia, where he was a member of the Virginia Law Review, Order of the Coif, and Raven Society. He resides in Henrico, Virginia, with his wife, the former Diane Trifari. They have two adult sons. The Atkinsons are covenant partners of Third (Presbyterian) Church in Richmond.

Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLS, “one of the nation’s leading litigation boutiques” (Above the Law 2017). He has argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court and scores of appeals before each of the 13 federal courts of appeals and several state supreme courts. After graduating from the University of Alabama Law School in 1977, where he ranked first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review, Mr. Cooper began his career as a law clerk to Judge Paul Roney of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1978-79. He then practiced law in Atlanta for two years before joining the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General. In 1985 President Reagan appointed him to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. In 1998 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cooper to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States. In 1988 he returned to private practice as litigation partner in the Washington D.C. Office of McGuire Woods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw Pittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group. He also served as a Public Member, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, of the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal. Mr. Cooper has published scores of articles and spoken extensively on constitutional and legal policy topics. He has appeared before congressional committees on 24 occasions, testifying as an expert on a wide variety of legal issues.

Ronald A. Crutcher, a national leader in higher education and a distinguished classical musician, was the President of the University of Richmond from 2015-2021. Dr. Crutcher is also President Emeritus of Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where he served for ten years. Prior to Wheaton, he was Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Miami University of Ohio. Since stepping down as President of the University of Richmond, Dr. Crutcher has begun a higher education consulting practice under the auspices of RAC Global Leitung, LLC. In August 2021, he was named a Senior Fellow in the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program. He is a former member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and several other symphonies. For almost forty years, he performed in the U.S. and Europe as a member of The Klemperer Trio. He has served on the boards of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony, and the Berklee College of Music. Earlier in his career he was President of Chamber Music America, director of the highly-ranked Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, and dean of the Conservatory at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Dr. Crutcher made his Carnegie Hall debut in March 1985 and was the first cellist to receive the doctor of musical arts degree from Yale University, where he also earned his master’s degree. During his graduate study, he received a Fulbright Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellowship, and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Iota of Ohio at Miami University, he has received honorary degrees from Wheaton College (MA), Colgate University, Muhlenberg College, Randolph-Macon College, University of Richmond, and the University of New England.

Curtis Gannon is a lawyer in Washington, D.C., who lives in Arlington, Virginia. He has spent most of the last 25 years working for the federal government. He has argued more than 30 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and advised many federal agencies about a range of legal issues. In the mid-1990s, he was a student of Gary McDowell’s at Harvard University and the University of London. He then received his law degree from the University of Chicago and served as a law clerk for Judge Edith Jones and Justice Antonin Scalia. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a contributing editor for The Green Bag, which describes itself as "an entertaining journal of law."

Alec Greven is a J.D. candidate at the University of Chicago Law School where he serves as the Executive Articles Editor for the University of Chicago Legal Forum. He previously worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Free Speech and his work specialized in First Amendment issues in the areas of political assembly, campus speech rights, and campaign finance regulation. Alec has a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford where he attended as a Jepson Scholar. Alec graduated from the University of Richmond with a double major in Leadership Studies and Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law. At Richmond, Alec was a Student Fellow at the Gary L. McDowell Institute and was awarded the Mace Award for being the University of Richmond Class of 2021's most outstanding student. He is a New York Times bestselling author published in over 20 languages. Alec's work has appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Arizona Republic, and has been featured on syndicated radio.

Françoise N. Hamlin worked with Dr. Gary McDowell at the Institute of United States Studies at London University following her undergraduate degree, while also studying for her Masters, and before attending Yale. She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University and is currently an Associate Professor in History and Africana Studies teaching undergraduate and graduate courses primarily in twentieth century U.S. history, African American history, southern history, cultural studies and Africana Studies at Brown University. Prior to joining the faculty at Brown, Dr. Hamlin was a DuBois-Mandela-Rodney fellow at the University of Michigan (2004-2005), and an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (2005-2007). She has also been a Charles Warren Center Fellow at Harvard University (2007-2008), a Woodrow Wilson-Mellon Fellow (2010-2011), the American Council of Learned Societies, Frederick Burkhardt Fellow (2017-2018) at the Radcliffe Institute, a fellow-in-residence at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, and a Howard Foundation Fellow. She was most recently an Andrew Carnegie Foundation Fellow (2021-2023). Dr. Hamlin has authored Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), winner of the 2012 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize and the 2013 Lillian Smith Book Award. These Truly Are The Brave: An Anthology of African American Writings on Citizenship and War, a co-edited anthology published by the University of Florida Press in 2015, was a finalist for the QBR 2016 Wheatley Book Award in Nonfiction. In 2023 with the University Press of Mississippi she republished the previously self-published 1975 autobiography Vera Pigee, The Struggle of Struggles, and added a full introduction, annotation, and a timeline. This book was named one of the top five books about women in the civil rights movement in the Wall Street Journal in January 2024. Most recently she co-edited From Rights To Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle, published by Vanderbilt University Press (March 2024).

Alison Mangiero is a recovering political scientist interested in the ways that blockchain technology will drive social, political, and economic innovation. She currently serves as the Head of Staking Policy and Industry Affairs at the Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI), a global alliance of industry leaders across the digital assets space.  Previously, she served as the Executive Director of the Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA), a trade organization that advocates for clear and forward-thinking public policies that foster innovation in the rapidly growing, multi-billion-dollar staking industry. Alison began working in the crypto space in 2018, when she founded the Tocqueville Group (“TQ”), an entity that created open-source software and other public goods for Tezos, one of the first proof-of-stake blockchains to launch. Before founding TQ, she spent a decade in public policy and academia, running the Manhattan Institute’s Adam Smith Society, a nationwide, chapter-based association of free-market MBA students and business leaders modeled on the Federalist Society, and teaching at the College of the Holy Cross. She has broad experience fundraising and growing membership associations. A passionate advocate of the liberal arts, for over a decade Alison taught courses on political science and leadership at the College of the Holy Cross and is on the Board of Advisors for the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies. She holds a B.A. in political science and leadership studies from the University of Richmond, and an M.A. (Ph.D. ABD) in political science from Boston College.

Brenda McDowell is a retired sales and marketing executive who spent much of her career with Marriott International in Washington, Boston, London, and other cities. Her duties included launching two award-winning five-star London hotels and directing special projects including Marriott’s participation as “Official Hotel Supplier” for the Athens Olympic torch relay. She also worked for the U.S. Travel Association, the national non-profit organization representing all components of the U.S. travel industry, on special projects including launching a new publication and in business development for “Project Time Off.” This initiative illuminated the enormity of America’s unused vacation days and the opportunities presented to improve productivity, creativity, health, and revenue. She is an active member of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and is on the Council of Advisors for Gateway Homes, a non-profit that helps those with severe mental illness achieve a better quality of life by providing expert services in residential settings.

Luis Parrales is assistant editor of The Atlantic. He was previously an associate editor at The Dispatch and a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Dispatch, Letras Libres, and Persuasion, among other outlets. He received his master's from the Graduate Institute at St. John's College and is a 2018 graduate of the University of Richmond, where he majored in political science and minored in English.

Kenneth P. Ruscio is President Emeritus of Washington and Lee University, where he served as President from 2006-2016. Prior to that he held faculty and administrative positions at W&L and was Dean of the Jepson School from 2002-2006. From 2017-2018, he was President of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges and Senior Distinguished Lecturer at the Jepson School from 2019-2023. He received his MPA and Ph.D. from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and is the recipient of honorary degrees from Roanoke and Hampden-Sydney Colleges. His writing and teaching have focused on democracy, leadership, and public policy. He has had extensive service on boards and currently serves on the Boards of Skidmore College and the Collegiate School in Richmond, and the Advisory Board for the Center of Politics at the University of Virginia.

Colleen A. Sheehan is the David and Patricia Caldwell Visiting Scholar on the American Founding at The Heritage Foundation and Professor of Politics in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. She has served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and on the Pennsylvania State Board of Education. She is the recipient of the Earhart Fellowship, Bradley Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Mary and Kennedy Smith Fellowship of the James Madison Program of Princeton University, the Garwood Fellowship of the James Madison Program of Princeton University, the Claremont Institute Henry Salvatori Prize, and the Martin Manley Teacher of the Year Award at Villanova University, where she taught for over thirty years before joining the faculty at ASU. Sheehan is author of James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), The Mind of James Madison: The Legacy of Classical Republicanism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), co-editor (with Gary L. McDowell) of Friends of The Constitution: Writings of the “Other” Federalists of 1787-88 (Liberty Fund Classics, 1998), (with Jack Rakove) The Cambridge Companion to The Federalist (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and editor of American Founders: Leaders at the Creation of the Republic (The Heritage Foundation, 2025). Her publications include articles in The American Political Science Review, William and Mary Quarterly, Review of Politics, Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, and the Wall Street Journal. Sheehan’s current projects include “The Madisonian Moment” and The Heartfield Footnote: An Interpretation of Jane Austen’s Emma.

Jeffrey L. Sedgwick (ret.) is the former Executive Director of the Justice Information Resource Network (JIRN), a position in which he served from January 1, 2015 until 2 May 2025. JIRN is a resource center for researchers, analysts, journalists and practitioners of justice research. Prior to that,  Mr. Sedgwick was nominated in January 2008 by President George W. Bush to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs; he was confirmed by the Senate of the United States in October 2008 and served until January 2009. Mr. Sedgwick also served until October 2008 as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the statistical agency of the Department of Justice, a position to which he was nominated by President George W. Bush in January 2006 and confirmed by the United States Senate in March 2006. Prior to his Washington service, Mr. Sedgwick taught for 30 years at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is currently Associate Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University. In his academic career, Mr. Sedgwick taught and wrote on a variety of aspects of American Government including public finance, policy analysis and evaluation, criminal justice policy, and executive leadership. Mr. Sedgwick also directed or participated in a wide variety of State Department-sponsored public diplomacy programs including lecturing or teaching in countries as diverse as Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Belgium, Germany and Trinidad/Tobago. Mr. Sedgwick earned his A.B. from Kenyon College (1973) and his M.A.P.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia (1975 and 1978 respectively).

Nicola Tynan is an Associate Professor of Economics at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. from George Mason University (2001). Her primary research field is the economic history of domestic water supply with an emphasis on public health and industrial organization in England during the long nineteenth century. Nicola’s research also explores related issues in the history of economic and political ideas and policy. Nicola’s publications include “What are the health benefits of a constant water supply? Evidence from London, 1860-1910,” with Werner Troesken and Artemis Yang, in Explorations in Economic History (July 2021) and “Mill and Senior on London’s Water Supply: Agency, Increasing Returns and Natural Monopoly” in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought (March 2007).