Claudia Chwalisz

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, DemocracyNext

France

Claudia Chwalisz is the founder and chief executive officer of DemocracyNext, an international non-profit, nonpartisan research, and action institute with a mission to shift political and legislative power to people through empowered Citizens’ Assemblies. She works to build new democratic institutions that give people agency and dignity through participation, that distribute political power equally through selection by lot, and that channel collective intelligence and enable people to find common ground through deliberation.Previously, Claudia served as the innovative citizen participation lead in the open government unit of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. She was involved in designing the world’s first permanent deliberative bodies made up of people drawn by a lottery in Ostbelgien, Paris, and Brussels. Claudia is interested in finding new ways to give people a meaningful say in shaping the decisions affecting their lives. She is also the author of two published books about democracy.