About Us

Our team

Staff

Lisa D. T. Rice

Chief Executive Officer

Lisa D. T. Rice is a co-founder and chief executive officer of Grow Democracy DC. She was the proposer of Initiative 83 – a landmark election reform measure approved in 2024 by 73% of DC voters, with super-majority support in every ward of the District. A political strategist and longtime advocate for political innovation, Lisa works to strengthen American democracy by expanding voter access and loosening the grip of the two-party duopoly. She is a native Washingtonian, a political independent, and Ward 7 resident.

Lisa is a member of the Unite America board of directors, a Veterans for All Voters DC state leader, and an Open Primaries national spokesperson. A federal campaign finance expert, she brings deep experience in political management and policy advocacy. A dynamic keynote speaker, Lisa is widely recognized as a transformative leader and mentor. She is an influential voice in cancer policy and currently serves as Vice Chair of the Cancer Nation board of directors.

She holds a master’s degree in management from the MIT Sloan School and a B.A. in American Studies from the Newcomb College of Tulane University. Lisa lives in the District with her husband, Tom. Her son, a fellow Tulane graduate, teaches in the DC public school system. She is also a nationally recognized quilter, known for work that blends storytelling, heritage, and artistry.

Board

Brianna McGowan

BOARD MEMBER

Brianna is a developer, poet, data scientist, advocate, and dancer passionate about intersecting worlds, developing community-owned AI, and building a new politics rooted in curiosity and joy, which may or may not be called Equitism. She is a core advocate for equitable transformations to DC's power systems, starting with passing ranked choice voting and laying the ground for Black independent political power.

She is a Co-Director for Delicious Democracy, DC's Creative Advocacy Lab, and their core project ReDelicious DC - a food lab cooperative turning food waste into delicious community. She inspires her community to boldly envision what they want and need in a livable future - a future that defies the status quo and the rigid categories, binaries, and divisions that our society has given us.

Erin Palmer

BOARD MEMBER

Erin is a lawyer, advocate, and community builder committed to strengthening democracy and ensuring government serves people well and meets their basic needs as rights. She works at a national nonprofit focused on expanding access to justice, where she supports pro bono legal efforts that build a more equitable legal system. Erin is driven by a deeply held belief that democracy requires constant care, integrity, and collective effort to make government work better for everyone.

Erin is also deeply engaged in local civic life. She served six years as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, including as Vice Chair and Secretary of the Commission. During her tenure, she founded the first Housing Justice Committee and launched the first Youth Advisory Committee composed entirely of youth members, creating new pathways for neighbors, including young people, to shape local policy and community priorities. She currently serves on the board of her local Main Street and as Chair of the Fair Budget Coalition’s executive committee.

Before her nonprofit work, Erin ran a people-powered campaign for DC Council Chair that earned recognition for her detailed DC Council Accountability Plan and her commitment to transparent and accountable governance. Her career has included ethics work for the federal Judiciary, pro bono litigation spanning asylum, education access, and youth justice, supervising a law school human rights clinic, and clerking at the DC Court of Appeals.

Brian Strege

BOARD MEMBER

Brian Strege is a co-founder of Grow Democracy DC, and currently serves as the Chairman of its Board of Directors. A software engineer by training, Brian has worked for 15 years in the tech space, most recently for Microsoft in Reston, VA. He was also a Steering Committee member and the Data Operations Lead for Make All Votes Count DC, the organization which aimed to bring Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and semi-open primaries to the District via Initiative 83.

At his core, Brian believes that many structural features of our democratic system – both here in Washington, DC and throughout the country more broadly – are not serving the people well and are in desperate need of repair. He is passionate about many structural electoral reforms including RCV, primary reform, and redistricting reform; Brian is also interested in how technology might be able to assist with these reforms.

Brian has been serving his community as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner since 2023; he is currently the Chairman of ANC 6/8F which covers the Navy Yard neighborhood where he has lived since 2021. In his spare time, he can occasionally be found somewhere along the East Coast attending a cycling event at a brewery.