Our Team

Samar Ali

Founding President & Chief Executive Officer

My name is Samar, which in Arabic means a nice conversation from dusk until dawn. So, pull up a chair and get comfortable and I’ll tell you how a personal attack became the catalyst for launching an organization focused on transcending divides and creating a sense of belonging in America. In 2012 after my tenure as White House Fellow in President Barack Obama’s administration, I felt pulled to help the economy grow in my native Tennessee. I accepted an appointment from Republican Gov. Bill Haslam as an assistant commissioner in the state’s economic development department overseeing international trade policy. My ofﬁce was just a few hours away from my rural hometown, where I played basketball and where my physician parents delivered babies and saved lives.

Shortly after starting at the White House, President Obama and I were publicly attacked by the Tea Party who falsely claimed that we were trying to bring down America. A few years later, when I moved back home and started working for the state of Tennessee, Gov Haslam and I were publicly attacked by people who falsely claimed that I was hired to bring Sharia Law to the state and take down America. These people claimed that I had already successfully inﬁltrated the federal government and the Democratic Party, and my next victims were the Republican Party and individual states, starting with Tennessee. Within weeks, billboards, newspaper ads, TV interviews, and protest marches, all demonizing me, were deployed. These people viewed being both Muslim and an American as an oxymoron. Their accusations were painful for me personally, and a wakeup call about the state of our union. More generally, polarization seemed like it was reaching a fever pitch. Entrepreneurial politicians, throngs of misinformation, and social media algorithms had rapidly accelerated the divisions between Americans. People close to me would later say that what happened to me was the “canary in a coalmine” moment. At the time, I felt alone and the words “misinformation” and “disinformation” weren’t even being used. I needed to be part of the solution. With that realization, the idea for Millions of Conversations was born. In 2017 Millions of Conversations was formed by a group of Americans with backgrounds in civic engagement, national security, grassroots organizing, and conﬂict mediation. Our work centers around bringing Americans together through common values to create a shared future. We work locally and nationally with partners, funders, and citizens. We conduct research, execute media and storytelling campaigns, develop programming, and organize grassroots as well as grass tops efforts. MoC exposes and counters disinformation and misinformation that can lead to hate, fear, and violence. We challenge narratives that stigmatize our fellow Americans, disrupt intolerance before it takes root, and help heal communities through listening and respectful engagement so all Americans can feel seen, heard, and included.

Millions of Conversations was founded because the struggle for belonging affected our communities long before the 2016 presidential election and will affect them long after unless we do something different. From ﬁrst generation immigrants living in New York City, to children of Appalachian coal miners, to the descendants of enslaved people, to me in Tennessee, we as Americans all share questions and hopes about belonging in America. At MoC, we envision an America where every American feels safe and free to be themselves. And with each conversation, we bring one another closer to creating a country where everyone can belong.

Samar S. Ali is a Research Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University, the founding President and CEO of Millions of Conversations, and co-chair of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy with Jon Meacham and Governor Haslam. Ali has over 15 years of experience in international relations and national security. Her work focuses on negotiating positive compromise through utilizing conﬂict-resolution best practices among people, communities and nations experiencing polarization. As a conﬂict resolution practitioner and mediator, she is a recipient of the White House Fellows IMPACT Award and Vanderbilt University’s Young Alumni Professional Achievement Award. Ali is a Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ali serves as Vice Chair of Generations for Peace with the Olympics Committee. She is a NewPluralist Fellow and an adviser to the Aspen Institute’s initiative, “Who Is Us: A Project on American Identity” where she also serves as an Aspen Ideas Fellow. Working at the intersection of national security, human rights, and economic development, Ali served as a White House Fellow in President Obama’s administration and as Assistant Commissioner of International Affairs in Tennessee Governor Haslam’s administration. While in the White House, she worked closely with U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on countering radicalization at home and abroad, gaining experience with bilateral negotiations on behalf of the U.S. government . She later joined former President Jimmy Carter as part of an international delegation observing Egypt’s 2012 presidential election. After her time in government, she continued to regularly brief Congressional committees, White House ofﬁcials, Ambassadors, and military ofﬁcials. Ali is the co-founder of Lodestone Advisory Group, a management consulting form, which was named by Forbes in 2022 as one of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The World Economic Forum, NPR, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, USA Today, BBC, MSNBC, Washington Post, The Hill, Foreign Affairs, ACC Docket, The Ryman Auditorium, The Tennessean, Brookings, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, National Security Action, Style Blueprint, Nashville Lifestyles, Nashville: The South’s New Metropolis, and other publications, podcasts and venues. Ali co-wrote the opening ceremony on "Unity & Open Dialogue" for the 2022 World Cup with Laeta Kalogridis and Gregg Hurwitz, and is co-producing the Heartland to Holy Land series in Bethlehem with music producer T Bone Burnett. In partnership with the Fisk University, the American Baptist College and Vanderbilt, Ali, along with T Bone Burnett and Callie Khouri produced the John Lewis Celebration of Life Ceremony in the Ryman Auditorium. Ali is a third-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Ali received her JD and BA in Political Science from Vanderbilt University, where she specialized in foreign policy. She began her legal career as a law clerk to Judge Gilbert S. Merritt Jr. ’60 of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and then clerked for Justice Edwin Cameron of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. In 2007, she joined Hogan Lovell US in Washington D.C.. She lives in Tennessee with her husband and daughter where she embraces being a small-town girl in a complex world.

Jason Dempsey

Chief Strategic Officer

As a child in a military family, I grew up seeing stark divides. And while I didn’t always understand why the walls and fences were there, they had an impact. Most of the time when we’d be on a train ride in Europe, it was a time to nap or read a book but seeing the barbed wire and armed guards on both sides of the tracks as we moved through East Germany on a trip to divided Berlin was enough to keep me awake. A few years later, I would see more of the same along the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea, with guards on both sides bristling with menace. As a child I couldn’t articulate all the reasons for the Cold War and the subsequent divisions between East and West, or the intricacies of the ongoing stand-off on the Korean peninsula, but I had an understanding that our side was good, and the other evil, or so I thought. It was at the site of a church in Berlin, split off from its parishioners, that made me fully understand the impact of division, and the beginning of an awareness that the people on the other side were not all the same, and could not all be dismissed as enemies. In Korea, it was seeing the pain of families split for generations by a seemingly never-ending conﬂict that helped me understand that it was a mistake to believe that those on the ‘other side’ were a monolithic entity, but rather were humans, with a mix of motivations and loyalties. And that the walls and barriers that the Soviets and North Koreans put up weren’t just physical barriers, but tools that helped despots dehumanize those on the other side and convince their populations that they were under siege. Thankfully there are no physical walls in America, but similar tools of division are being used against us. Media bubbles reinforce the separation between urban and rural, or red and blue, and lead us to think that those on the ‘other side’ are a monolith set against us. And as the politics of division remain proﬁtable, as more Americans pick up weapons to defend themselves against ‘the other,’ we come closer to physical walls and conﬂict. But I have more faith in America than that and know that once we can get around those walls we won’t ﬁnd ‘others,’ but fellow Americans we can work with on this great experiment of democracy.

Jason Dempsey is a retired Army ofﬁcer, author, and scholar of America’s relationship with its military. Dempsey deployed both to Iraq and Afghanistan and last served as special assistant to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dempsey served in the Ofﬁce of the First Lady as a White House Fellow, where he worked with First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden to launch the Joining Forces campaign – a bipartisan effort to connect Americans to those who serve. He is also co-founder of the E Pluribus Unum Foundation, which is working to reinvigorate a national, unifying commitment to the shared obligations of citizenship.

Elise Burns

Senior Operations Manager

I was born into a paternal family of eighth generation Scotch-Irish Appalachian Deep Southerners and a maternal blended family of ﬁrst generation Swiss Catholic immigrants and eighth generation Scottish Mid-Atlantic settlers. Both extended family systems had contrasting sets of ideologies but were alike in their strong aversion to difference– disliking anything that skewed from their established norms, traditions, and associated expectations. From an early age, I was faced with the conﬂict-heavy duality of maintaining familial relationships while charting my own path; one that allowed for divergence and self-worth beyond the narrow constraints set for me. This path led me toward a deep understanding of the need for healing and connection in the face of conﬂict and division. In my work today, I aim to carry out this vision by supporting non-proﬁts focused on social reconciliation, conﬂict mediation, and civic revitalization.

Elise is a distinguished alumnus of Virginia Commonwealth University where she earned a B.S. in Anthropology and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies under full academic scholarship. As an undergraduate research assistant, she co-authored a laboratory study on indigenous Rapa Nui (Easter Island) agricultural sustainability practices that is included as a chapter within Islands and the Cultures: How Pacific Islands Provide Paths toward Sustainability by Kamanamaikalani Beamer, Te Maire Tau, and Peter Vitousek, published by Yale University Press in 2022. In 2020, she was invited to present her research at the 43rd International Symposium on Archaeometry held in Lisbon, Portugal.

As the former Communications Manager at Millions of Conversations, Elise led social impact communications research, strategy, production, and management aimed to counter mis/disinformation and negative messaging through social psychologically informed content, targeted media placement, and event programming. In her current role as Senior Operations Manager, Elise leads operational functions ﬁnance, governance, development, HR, and administration, including operational timelines and systems management. She is currently pursuing an MBA concentrating in corporate finance to hone her skills in non-proﬁt governance and ﬁnance.

Delaney Fisher-Cassiol

Program Manager

Kenny Andejeski

3142 Program Lead

“West Virginia stood in solidarity with those in Flint and Standing Rock because [West Virginians] know what it was like to have their rights to clean water taken away from them.” I’ll never forget the man who casually, yet intently shared this with me a couple hours into our chance weeknight encounter at a downtown bar in Beckley, West Virginia. I was on a brief road trip through the state that week in March 2019; somewhere beyond number 40 on my way to visiting all 50 states between the 2016 Presidential Election and onset of the pandemic in 2020. During those years of immersion, I took Amtrak across the country for a month and drove some 50,000 miles in my grandma’s rusted-out old Corolla, engaging and supporting hundreds of local community leaders throughout the country. It was all in effort to navigate beyond polarizing partisan politics and our fraying social fabric. I was working to connect local community organizing to broader social change. My ambitions aside, that night in Beckley, I met an unassuming middle-aged, working class, lifelong West Virginian, who saddled up next to me at the bar. He asked, unsuspectingly, if I had ever been to one of those states that has legal weed. The answer was yes; in fact, one time my housemate in Spokane was gifted an eighth by a bartender as a welcome to Washington. During the time I shared with the guy at the bar, he offered his perspectives as a navy veteran, a former police ofﬁcer, and journeyman maintenance worker. He shared his experience of accepting and supporting his daughter when she came out as gay in college, his well-reasoned perspectives on the past and current president, and ultimately, his sentiment on clean water rights. Whether I agreed with him or not was beside the point. When I think back on our exchange, it reinforces my conviction to have conversations like these. The kind that connects people and bridges differences every day. Kenny is a community builder, focusing on social impact strategy, group facilitation, ecosystem development and narrative change.

Sabeen Malik

Board or Directors Chair

My parents always had people over at our house and our home was known as the Malik Hotel, because above all else, from their cultural and religious traditions, nothing was more sacrosanct than serving people with hospitality and taking time to listen to their stories. It was ingrained in me from an early age that one makes the time to listen. Sabeen Malik is the Head of Government Affairs at Thumbtack. She has spent her education and career pursuits on becoming a thought leader on digital economy and tech policy issues; law and economic development; innovation economies; and next-generation economic trends. Ms. Malik serves on several boards and is a Truman National Security Fellow, Aspen Ideas Fellow, and Atlantic Council Non-Resident Fellow. Ms. Malik has spoken at the World Bank, the UN, and the White House. She has worked in the private and public sector including at Google and the United States Department of State.

Jessica Johnson

Board of Directors Treasurer

Ken Robbins

Board of Directors Secretary

I grew up in a small town in rural Maine with a population of less than 2000 people and was introduced to democracy at an early age. Once a year, residents participated in the annual “Town Meeting” in which local ofﬁcials were formally elected, budget expenses were proposed and approved, and ordinances were discussed and implemented. As a ten-year old, I would tag along with my father and watch this process unfold. The discussions, while passionate, were respectful and orderly, and gave everyone an opportunity for their position to be heard. I would watch as many of the individuals on opposite sides would laugh and shake hands when exiting the building at the end of the day. Their relationships were built solidly around many other shared interests and not solely on political positions. Later during my military career, I had the opportunity to teach the American political system to future ofﬁcers at West Point. The most rewarding aspect of that assignment was having these young men and woman take positions in debates that were often counter to their actual beliefs. The goal was to not “change their opinions” but simply for them to have an understanding and ultimately an appreciation of not only the opposing viewpoints but the individuals who held those views. I knew they would be better ofﬁcers because of it.

I am excited and humbled to be a small part of Millions of Conversations. Ken Robbins is a father, husband, retired Army ofﬁcer, entrepreneur, and business executive with a really bad golf habit.

Lori Sostowski

Advisory Council Chair

People are people. My grandparents came to the U.S. from Poland and Lithuania in the early 20th Century. The communities in which they settled were divided by country of origin. My father recalled that “the English were on top, then the Irish, followed by the Italians, with the Poles on the bottom.” Bullying between groups was common.

In my grandparents’ and parents’ worlds, there were also divisions according to religion, they being devout Roman Catholics and, not surprisingly, attending the Polish Catholic Church. But things started to change. Uncle Louie married Aunt Lucy, who was Russian Orthodox. My grandfather refused to attend their wedding. By the time of her death in 1980, my grandmother had been living with my aunt and uncle for 20 years and she and Aunt Lucy were best friends. Aunt Terry married Uncle Al, an Irishman. Cousin Irene married Ed, a Jew. And horror upon horror, Uncle Eddie married Aunt Renée, a divorcée. Well, the world didn’t end; folks got to know Al, Ed, and Renée, and each found a place as a beloved member of our family.

And it continued. My family moved into the world of the middle class, where education was the common denominator. The neighborhoods in which we lived were a mixture of religious beliefs and ethnic backgrounds (though admittedly mostly Judeo-Christian and white). Neighbors, business colleagues and schoolmates became friends. Foreign exchange students were hosted, and folks’ cultural traditions were shared and celebrated. I’m not saying that I never saw or heard bigotry, sexism, stereotyping, or political differences. But the overriding lesson I learned is that when people take the time, and make the effort, to listen to and understand those who are different from them in many respects, they may ﬁnd that they have a lot in common-- or, at least, they may ﬁnd a way to forge a path to live peaceably. And this is why I support the mission of Millions of Conversations.

Lori is a retired attorney. In addition to her support of Millions of Conversations, she tutors reading in the DC public schools and is a member of the Board of a non-proﬁt that makes grants to organizations serving women and families in the DC metropolitan area in socioeconomic need. She also is a passionate gardener, cultivating plants of myriad colors, shapes and sizes.

Jonathan Metzl

Senior Policy Advisor

Jonathan Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his MD from the University of Missouri, MA in humanities/poetics and psychiatric internship/residency from Stanford University, and PhD in American culture from University of Michigan. Winner of the 2020 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, the 2020 APA Benjamin Rush Award for Scholarship, and a 2008 Guggenheim fellowship, Dr. Metzl has written extensively for medical, psychiatric, and popular publications about some of the most urgent hot-button issues facing America and the world. His books include The Protest Psychosis, Prozac on the Couch, Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, and Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland.