Our People

team
executive committee
advisory board

clarissa unger

co-founder and executive director

Clarissa Unger has a background in advocacy, communications, fundraising, and political campaigns and has worked on strategic campaigns both nationally and internationally. Prior to founding the SLSV Coalition, she served as the Development Coordinator for the Robert. J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas where she helped to promote civic and democratic engagement on campus. Clarissa has a Masters in Public Administration and a BA in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Kansas and a Masters in Comparative European Politics from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

Eddy Zerbe

Deputy Director

Prior to joining the SLSV Coalition, Eddy Zerbe was active in non-partisan civic engagement organizations from the local to the national level. Most recently, Eddy was the Director of RISE to Vote, a program that partners with college and professional sports teams, leagues, and athletes to improve civic engagement in our country. Eddy has also worked for the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. In Texas, he was a co-founder of MOVE Texas and worked in the office of State Representative Ruth Jones McClendon. He graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Danny Fersh

communications director

Before joining the SLSV Coalition, Daniel worked for more than three years at Laurel Strategies, where he crafted and executed communications strategies for leaders in technology, finance and philanthropy. Prior to Laurel Strategies, Daniel spent three years teaching English as a second language to both children and adults while living in the cities of Madrid and Seville, Spain. A graduate of Syracuse University, Daniel has a BS in Broadcast Journalism with a minor in Spanish.

Bianca Rosales

Associate Director of Partnerships

Bianca is an activist and community organizer with experience at the local and national level. Prior to joining the team, Bianca was the Director of Community Engagement for a city council office in San Antonio, Texas. She also served as an elementary school educator where she organized her students and their families around immigration rights and helped lead efforts to bridge educational inequities in and out of the classroom. Before that, Bianca spent time in Washington, D.C. working for NARAL Pro-Choice America and fighting for reproductive freedom for all. Bianca Rosales was born and raised on the southside of San Antonio and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where she earned a B.S. in Communication Studies, Human Relations.

CARMEN LINERO-LOPEZ

Ask Every Student Program Manager

Prior to joining AES, Carmen was a National Campus Organizer with the Feminist Majority Foundation, where she worked to advance reproductive freedom and gender equity through collaboration with students across the western United States. Before that, she conducted academic research in Iowa; was a Legislative Assistant in the New York State legislature; and worked with various NGOs, political campaigns, and corporations in Pennsylvania, Afghanistan, Liberia, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Illinois, and South Africa. She is a graduate of Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

ZOë Williamson

Communications Manager

Prior to joining SLSV, Zoë served as the Deputy Press Secretary for a Louisiana gubernatorial campaign. Zoë graduated from Louisiana State University, where she majored in Political Communication. During her time at LSU, she served as the President of Geaux Vote LSU, as an Andrew Goodman Foundation Vote Everywhere Ambassador, as LSU Student Government’s Director of Communications, and as a Governor’s Fellow in Louisiana Government.

Maddie wolf

RESOURCES & CAMPUS SUPPORT MANAGER

In this role, she applies a human-centered design approach to creating tools, systems, and processes for increasing student voter participation. Her work focuses on several of the SLSV Coalition’s national partnerships with a main focus on Ask Every Student. Maddie’s past work includes developing Democracy Works’ Votes & Ballots and building a region-wide coalition of college student activists and organizers in Baltimore, Maryland. She was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Dr. beatrice wayne

ACLS Leading Edge Fellow

Before joining the SLSV Coalition, Beatrice served as a faculty member at Harvard University’s History and Literature Concentration for three years. Prior to that, Beatrice held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Sydney’s Laureate Research Program in International History. Beatrice earned a PhD in History from New York University, and holds a Master’s degree in History from the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked as an educational researcher for Scholastic Books, and has received grants to conduct research on student political and social engagement across the United States, Canada and Ethiopia. She received her B.A from McGill College in Montreal, Canada.

Jada McNeill

Program & Development Coordinator

Through her role as Program and Development Coordinator, Jada McNeill coordinates grant distribution, supports fundraising and development operations, and assists with the execution of SLSV programs. Before joining SLSV, Jad worked at New College of Florida and spent the last several years working as the inaugural Assistant Director of Civic Engagement at New College of Florida where she established and oversaw democratic engagement programs and initiatives under the NCF V.O.T.E.S framework. Jada also participated as an AmeriCorps VISTA at New College where she focused on addressing food insecurity on college campuses. Jada graduated with her MPH from Tennessee State University and her B.S. in Psychology from The University of Tennessee