Keesha Gaskins

Keesha Gaskins is Senior Counsel in the Brennan Center's Democracy Program.  Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Ms. Gaskins was Executive Director for the League of Women Voters Minnesota where she worked on a wide range of voting rights and civil rights issues.  Ms. Gaskins’ portfolio is within Voting Rights and Elections with a particular focus on voter suppression issues including voter identification and proof of citizenship laws.  She is an expert on redistricting and redistricting reform.  Ms. Gaskins is a frequent lecturer and writer on issues related to women and politics, movement building and democratic reform.

Ms. Gaskins is a long-time organizer, lobbyist and an experienced trial attorney.  Ms. Gaskins graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 1999. Ms. Gaskins served as a judicial clerk for the Minnesota Supreme Court and as a judicial intern for Justice Ireland of the Supreme Judicial Court for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She worked as a practicing trial attorney in the areas of products liability and employment law until 2006, most notably with the trial firm of Bowman and Brooke LLP and volunteered for many years as a special appellate public defender. In 2008 Ms. Gaskins was a Feminist Leadership Fellow with the University of Minnesota, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs - Center on Women and Public Policy.

She served on the Board of Governors for the Minnesota State Bar Association, the Board of Directors for the Minnesota Black Lawyers Association and the NAACP Minnesota-Dakota State Conference Executive Board.

Sundeep Iyer

Sundeep Iyer is the Principal Quantitative Analyst at the Brennan Center. He provides statistical and geographic analysis across a range of the Center’s programmatic areas. Much of his work focuses on voting rights, money in politics, and redistricting. Mr. Iyer is the co-author of several nationally recognized publications, including The Challenge of Obtaining Voter Identification (July 2012), Donor Diversity Through Public Matching Funds (May 2012), and Design Deficiencies and Lost Votes (December 2011). His political commentary and statistical estimates are regularly cited by media outlets across the country, including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico.

From June 2011 to April 2012, Mr. Iyer was a Fellow with the Brennan Center, providing statistical analysis for the Center’s Democracy Program. He also founded and directed the non-partisan SRR Project, an information clearinghouse dedicated to explaining the statistical methods used in redistricting litigation and applying them to redistricting proposals. In June 2011, Mr. Iyer was invited to give testimony to the United Kingdom House of Lords on his research exploring the empirical effects of appointment commissions on judicial gender diversity.

Mr. Iyer received his A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard College. He was awarded the Gerda Richards Crosby Prize, given annually to the College’s most outstanding graduate in the Government department. For his research on voting, he also received Harvard University’s Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize.