Melody Barnes is the founding executive director of the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, where she leads the Institute on an action-oriented path to realizing the promise of democracy in both principle and practice.

A committed public servant, Barnes brings more than 25 years of experience shaping public policy at the highest levels of government and the non-profit sector. She served as assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama. Previously, she was executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress and chief counsel to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. She began her career in law as an associate at Shearman & Sterling in New York.

Barnes holds a BA with honors in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a JD from the University of Michigan. In addition to her leadership at the Karsh Institute, she is the W.L. Lyons Brown Family Director for Policy and Public Engagement in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences’ Democracy Initiative, a professor of practice at UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, and a distinguished fellow at UVA’s School of Law. She is also co-founder of the domestic policy strategy firm MB2 Solutions.

Barnes is an inaugural recipient of the 2024–25 Chautauqua Perry Fellowship in Democracy, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the boards of several corporate, nonprofit, and philanthropic organizations.