Shayna Strom

SNF Agora Visiting Fellow, AY 21-22

Shayna Strom is a social impact leader who has held senior leadership positions in governmentnonprofits, and philanthropic organizations. Recently, Strom was the chief deputy national political director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she helped to build a new 75person department within the ACLU that works on policy, issue campaigns, and grassroots organizing. Strom then served on the Biden-Harris transition team.    

During the Obama Administration, Strom spent four years in the White House, working as adviser to the head of the Office of Management and Budget and as the chief of staff and senior counselor at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), negotiating the policy and politics of many of President Obama’s most high-profile rulemakings. She also served as counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Al Franken. 

Strom directed the early U.S. policy work at the Open Philanthropy Project, on behalf of one of the Facebook foundersand served on the initial leadership team setting up the resistance group Indivisible as a national non-profit. Previously, Strom worked for a number of years as a community and political organizer.  

Strom has written about labor issues and organizing, and taught at Sarah Lawrence College and as part of Johns Hopkins University’s Aitchison program. 

Strom graduated from Yale College, summa cum laude. She received a law degree from Yale Law School and an MSc from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.