Elaine Kamarck directs the Center for Effective Public Management and is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution, as well as a public policy lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is an expert on American electoral politics and government innovation and reform in the United States, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, nations, and developing countries, with a strong focus on the presidential nomination system and American politics. Karmack—who has participated in numerous presidential campaigns and nominating conventions—co-founded the New Democrat movement that helped elect President Bill Clinton, as well as created and managed the Clinton administration's National Performance Review. She has also served as senior policy advisor to the Al Gore presidential campaign, director of Visions of Governance for the Twenty-First Century, and faculty advisor to the Innovations in American Government Awards program. She received her doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley.