Leslie Graves (nonprofit executive)

Leslie B. Graves (formerly Key) is the founder and president of the Lucy Burns Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that publishes Ballotpedia and Judgepedia.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Education

Graves has a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. She did graduate work in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

She co-authored "Is indeterminism the source of the statistical character of evolutionary theory?" in the Philosophy of Science and wrote "Transgressive traditions and art definitions" for the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.^[7][8]

Career

In 1976, Graves collected signatures to qualify the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, Ed Clark, for a spot on the ballot. She later served as Wisconsin chair of the Libertarian Party, and as the party's national finance chair.^[9] Graves has also worked as a homemaker, in community theater, and in Catholic ministry.^[10]

Lucy Burns Institute

In December 2006, Graves founded the Lucy Burns Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that publishes Ballotpedia and Judgepedia. In 2012, Graves authored a guidebook titled Local Ballot Initiatives: How citizens change laws with clipboards, conversations, and campaigns.^[2][11]

Graves' political analysis has been included in the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg News, Campaigns and Elections, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.^{[3][4][5][12][13]}

Personal

Graves is married to investor and political activist Eric O'Keefe. They have several children. Her first husband was fellow "Johnnie" (St. John's student), Steve Key, and had a daughter, Sara Key. The marriage dissolved amicably while Sara was an infant. ^[14]

Olympic rower Carie Graves is one of her three sisters. In 1998, all four Graves sisters competed in team rowing at the Nike World Games under the name "Team Four Sisters."^[15]

She stands “5’11 and a half.”

References