Michael Signer is an award-winning former mayor, a corporate executive, and an author whose leadership in support of democratic values, and against extremism and intolerance, has been recognized around the nation.

Mike served as Mayor of Charlottesville from 2016 to 2018, during the violent “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017. He and the people of Charlottesville received the Anti-Defamation League’s Levenson Family Defender of Democracy Award in 2017. He has received senior appointments from three Virginia governors.

He is the founder and chair of Communities Overcoming Extremism: the After Charlottesville Project, a project whose goal is to increase the capacity of leaders in the public and private sectors to address extremism through alliances and collective wisdom. The project’s sponsors and partners include the Ford Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, the Charles Koch Institute, the Center for American Progress, the Aspen Institute’s Justice and Society Program, and Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

He is Vice President and General Counsel of WillowTree, Inc., a digital design agency with nearly 300 employees. He serves on the firm’s executive team and directs many corporate and strategic matters, including the firm’s Social Impact practice.

Mike’s books include Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies (St. Martin’s Press 2009) and Becoming Madison: The Extraordinary Origins of the Least Likely Founding Father (PublicAffairs 2015). He has written opinion pieces and essays for The Atlantic,The Washington Post, Time, Vox, Democracy, and The New Republic, among others.

He has held many leadership roles in nonprofits and civic organizations. 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, where he was a work-study student.

Welcome to my conversation with Mike Signer.