State Democracy Defenders Action’s (SDDA) unique value-add is our people and our proven strategic approach to solving the threat of election sabotage and democratic backsliding. SDDA is led by:
Ambassador Norm Eisen (ret.)
Co-founder and Board Member
Co-founder of States United and CREW, Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.) also served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee majority during the impeachment proceedings and trial of President Donald J. Trump in 2019 and 2020. He is a cable news legal analyst and author or editor of five previous books, details of which can be found at normaneisen.com. Eisen was the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. From January 2009 to January 2011, Eisen worked in the White House as special counsel and special assistant to the president for ethics and government reform. Eisen received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991 and his B.A. from Brown University in 1985, both with honors.
Susan Corke
Managing Director
Susan is the Managing Director of SDDA and SDDF. For two decades she has served in senior pro-democracy leadership roles at the Southern Poverty Law Center, German Marshall Fund of the U.S., Freedom House, Human Rights First and the U.S. Department of State. She has testified and spoken at major international and political fora, including testifying on Capitol Hill several times on human rights and democracy issues, at the United Nations, European Union, and other official conferences. She has been a regular commentator in American and European broadcast, print, radio and digital media, a lecturer at leading universities, co-author of The Democracy Playbook, Webby-nominated podcaster, writer, and editor for numerous research and policy reports that drove democratic progress. She serves on boards for William & Mary and other nonprofits.
George Conway
Board Member
George Conway is currently board president of the Society for the Rule of Law and hosts a podcast, George Conway Explains it All. He was one of the founders of The Lincoln Project and is a contributing writer at The Atlantic.
Brian Frosh
Board Member
Brian Frosh served as Maryland’s 46th Attorney General from 2015 to 2023. During his two terms as Attorney General, Brian Frosh worked to ensure fairness, equality and justice for all Marylanders. Prior to that, he served in the Maryland General Assembly for 28 years, including 12 as chairman of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, where he led the effort to pass gun safety legislation that has been called some of the toughest and most effective in the nation.
Esosa Osa
Board Member
Esosa Osa is the Founder and CEO of Onyx Impact, an organization created to better understand and combat disinformation targeting Black communities and increase Black civic engagement.
Esosa was previously Deputy Executive Director of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams, where she led the organization’s pro-democracy reform efforts with a focus on combatting disinformation and voting policy reform while overseeing the organization’s research, communications, political, and organizing teams.
This follows her work as Senior Advisor to Stacey Abrams’ 2022 gubernatorial campaign and as the Campaign Manager and Chief of Staff for a top 2018 U.S. Congressional election. Prior to her time in politics, Esosa was a Portfolio Manager at BlackRock— where she managed a wide array of fixed income products, analyzed monetary and fiscal policy, and led firm-wide research on housing, healthcare, and inflation.
Esosa is a native Ohioan and a graduate of Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
Matt Traldi
Co-founder and Board Member
Matt Traldi is the founder and CEO of Greenlight America, which accelerates the clean energy transition across the U.S. through grassroots campaigns. In 2022, he led the Democracy Defense Coalition’s election crisis boiler room, a movement-wide coalition effort involving hundreds of organizations, subsequently founding the Election Sabotage Response Network. In 2016, he was one of the co-authors of the Indivisible Guide and a co-founder of the Indivisible organizations, for which he was named one of TIME Magazine’s “25 Most Influential People on the Internet”. Previously, he worked for more than a decade in the labor movement as an organizer, researcher, policy director, and Secretary-Treasurer of a local union.