Tom Perriello is a Visiting Scholar with Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with a focus on identifying structural reforms that shift the odds of artificial intelligence and related technologies having a positive, transformative impact on democracy, justice, and human flourishing. 

Tom is a justice entrepreneur who has also served as a diplomat, member of Congress, and transitional justice practitioner. He led the State Department’s second Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and served as President Obama’s Special Envoy to the African Great Lakes. In Congress, Tom represented Virginia’s Fifth District and cast key votes to support affordable healthcare, green industrial policy, immigration reform, civil rights, and more. Most recently, Tom helmed a $2 billion philanthropic strategy to protect and advance open, multi-racial democracy in the United States and around the world, with a focus on strategies to grow the power and civic engagement of marginalized communities.   

Tom has taught at the University of Sierra Leone College and the University of Virginia School of Law, and served as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Politics. His publications have appeared in the New York Times, Democracy Journal, The Atlantic, The Hill, Newsweek, HuffPo, DailyBeast, Forbes, Washington Post, LA Times, Slate, Politico, Chronicle of Philanthropy, and CNN.

Featured Publications 

• The Global Democracy Agenda: America Should Partner, Not Lecture | Democracy Journal (Fall, 2022)

• The New American Dream for All | Democracy Journal (Spring, 2021)

• Bold vs. Old: How the New Political Challenges Transcend the Old Right-Left Paradigm, with co-author Felicia Wong | Democracy Journal (May 2018)

News & Appearances

• Movement Learned to Win in Washington | Eli Stokols, Politico Magazine (April 2, 2023).

• What Really Drives Change |  Jim Papa, The Staffer Podcast (Sept 7, 2022).