Harvard’s Institute of Politics Announces Spring 2025 Fellows

Introduction
CAMBRIDGE, MA - The Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School today announced the appointment of seven Resident Fellows and two Visiting Fellows who will join the IOP for the Spring 2025 semester. The fellows bring diverse experiences in international and national journalism, labor, health and human services, campaigns, and elected office to address the challenges facing our country and world today.
"This spring's remarkable group of fellows will engage our students in important conversations and provide valuable insight into an array of critical issues," said IOP Director Setti Warren. "Their diverse experiences, along with their expertise and insight, will undoubtedly help to inspire our students to pursue careers in public service and prepare this next generation to provide impactful political leadership in the United States and around the world. We're incredibly grateful for their commitment to our students and are thrilled to welcome them to Cambridge."
"We are delighted to welcome this incredible cohort of fellows to Harvard's Institute of Politics this spring. They each bring varied and unique perspectives on how to best tackle some of our country's — and our world's — most demanding challenges, and we're honored they chose to spend the spring semester with our students at the IOP," said Michael Nutter, Chair of the Institute of Politics Senior Advisory Committee, and former Mayor of Philadelphia.
"Last November, the American people delivered a decisive verdict in the 2024 presidential election. But the race revealed more than just a winner — throughout the months leading up to the election and in the weeks that followed, our democracy at times seemed untethered from its founding principles. Exercising the democratic muscle requires recognizing that each of our stories is equally important to the broader American experiment and understanding that democracy is not a spectator sport but an ongoing act of engagement. It demands that we seek a shared truth not by retreating into ideological corners but by having conversations, even when it is difficult," said Will Smialek and Zoe Yu, Co-Chairs of the Fellows and Study Groups Program at the Institute of Politics. "This group of fellows brings together leaders from across the political spectrum — public servants, journalists, elected representatives, and policy experts — who have wrestled with the defining questions of our time and have seen them play out in newsrooms, state Congresses, and The White House. As Co-Chairs of the Fellows and Study Groups Program, we could not be more thrilled to lead a program that serves as a space for people to come together and to learn from one another. We are thrilled to welcome an incredible group of fellows who will not just share their experiences, but teach us crucial lessons about our politics, and begin those conversations, regardless of how hard they may seem."
IOP Resident Fellows are fully engaged with the Harvard community. They reside on campus, mentor a cohort of undergraduate students, hold weekly office hours, and lead an eight-week, not-for-credit study group based on their experience and expertise. Fellows will hold study groups on topics including diplomacy and statecraft, governing in a divided America, national political parties, judiciary affairs, and policy development. Visiting Fellows come to the IOP for a shorter stay and participate in a variety of comprehensive discussions, events, and programming.
Spring 2025 Resident Fellows:
- Ryan Dollar: National Republican Congressional Committee General Counsel
- Michael Donilon: Former Senior Advisor to President Biden and Chief Strategist for the Biden 2020/24 Presidential Campaigns
- Eric Hargan: Former Acting Secretary and Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Founder and CEO, The Hargan Group
- Joe Mitchell: Founder of Run GenZ, former Iowa State Representative (R)
- Brittany Shepherd: National Politics Reporter, ABC News
- Ann Simmons: Former Moscow Bureau Chief, The Wall Street Journal
- Julie Su: Former Acting Secretary and Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Labor
Spring 2025 Visiting Fellows:
- Sherrod Brown: Former United States Senator (D-OH), 2007-2025
- Connie Schultz: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author
More information about Senator Brown's and Ms. Schultz's visit to campus will be announced at a later date.
Brief bios and quotes can be found below. Headshots are available upon request.
Ryan Dollar
Ryan Dollar is the General Counsel of the National Republican Congressional Committee, leading the legal efforts for U.S. House Republican campaigns for the 2025-2026 election cycle.
Dollar is a seasoned political lawyer with extensive experience in election law, campaign finance, and political operations. Dollar previously served as the General Counsel for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. As General Counsel, Dollar advised U.S. Senators, candidates, and campaign teams on compliance with campaign finance laws, ethics rules, and state election laws. In this role, he was involved in helping maximize the reach of "hard dollars" for Republican Senate campaigns, namely through creative advertising strategies and fundraising initiatives.
Throughout his career, Dollar has played a pivotal role in overseeing complex legal disputes in federal and state courts. He was instrumental in representing Senate Republicans during the formation and implementation of the "Win Red" digital fundraising platform, a foundational program for Republican digital fundraising. His expertise extends to crafting legal strategies for independent expenditure programs, media/telecom disputes, and grassroots operations.
Prior to his role at the NRSC, Dollar served in the Office of the Texas Attorney General and on the legal team for a presidential campaign. A native Texan, Dollar received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law and a B.A. from Texas A&M University. Dollar currently lives in Washington, D.C.
"I look forward to joining the IOP community and engaging with students, faculty, and fellows to explore the legal and strategic fundamentals shaping our elections. It's an honor to contribute to discussions about public service and politics as part of a program with such a distinguished history, and I'm eager to have dynamic discussions with the excellent students at IOP."
Michael Donilon
Michael Donilon is the former Senior Advisor to President Biden. In the White House, Donilon was involved in a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues and served as one of President Biden's primary speechwriters.
Donilon has worked at the highest level of national politics for over 40 years. He has worked in seven Presidential campaigns. Donilon was Chief Strategist in the Biden for President campaigns in 2020 and 2024. In that role he was responsible for overseeing strategy, message development, television advertising, polling, and speechwriting.
Donilon has been part of some of the most important campaigns in the country over the past forty years, including Doug Wilder's historic win in Virginia, Harris Wofford's upset win in the 1991 U.S. Senate special election, President Bill Clinton's election in 1992, President Barack Obama's wins in 2008 and 2012, Conor Lamb's stunning victory in 2018, and Joe Biden's election in 2020.
Donilon was born in Providence, RI. He holds an A.B. from Georgetown University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.
"I am very excited to join the Spring Semester IOP Fellowship class. We are living through one of the most consequential periods of time in our history in America and I look forward to hearing how students see it and think about it."
Eric Hargan
Eric D. Hargan is the Founder and CEO of The Hargan Group, a healthcare consulting firm. He previously served as the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 2017 to 2021; he also served as Acting Secretary for several months in 2017-2018. HHS is the largest department in the federal government and has an annual budget more than $1.3 trillion and over 80,000 employees across 26 divisions. As Deputy Secretary, he oversaw the development and approval of all HHS, CMS, and FDA regulations and significant guidances; as well as the day-to-day operations and management of the department and led policy and strategy development.
From 2003 to 2007, Mr. Hargan also served at HHS in a variety of capacities, including holding the position of Acting Deputy Secretary. He served on the Board of Operation Warp Speed, starting in Spring of 2020, helping to develop the project and coordinate HHS agencies. Also, in response to the pandemic, in March 2020, he launched the $175 billion Provider Relief Fund, overseeing it until July 2020, sending over $100 billion in relief to U.S. healthcare providers in a little over 3 months.
In the area of regulatory reform, he coordinated the comprehensive HHS telehealth response in 2020, enabling telehealth to grow by a factor of over a thousand in a few months. From 2017 to 2021, he initiated, sponsored, and led four agencies in the Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care, a four-agency project to reform regulations to enable better coordinated care.
In the area of innovation, he coordinated and led the successful launch of the interoperability rule by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (establishing national standards and prohibiting information blocking, among other things). In 2018-2019, he initiated, sponsored and led the Innovation and Investment Summit, a first-of-its-kind summit dedicated to bringing together top investors and innovators in U.S. healthcare with Federal healthcare leadership.
In the area of public health, he convened and led the year-long Federal Quality Summit in 2019 which spelled out the pathway for further healthcare quality reform, announced in May 2020. He led the rural health initiative within HHS in 2019-2020, leading to reforms in telehealth expansion; rural broadband; a new reimbursement model for rural health; and many other initiatives across the Department. He served as Commissioner on the WHO’s High-Level Commission on Non-Communicable Diseases (2018-2019).
He received his B.A. cum laude from Harvard University, and his J.D. from Columbia University Law School, where he was Senior Editor of the Columbia Law Review. In between tours of duty at HHS, Mr. Hargan was a law partner in healthcare regulation, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, and government relations. He has taught at Loyola, Vanderbilt, Cornell and Minnesota Universities. His editorials have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Hill, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Austin American-Statesman, among others. He also writes a regular column for RealClearHealth.
He is currently the CEO of The Hargan Group, a strategic healthcare consulting group, and serves on the boards of University Hospitals; Alio Medical; Tomorrow Health; HealthTrackRx; VeriOnce; IVT; Capital Pulse; and Meomind. He is a Health Evolution Forum Fellow, an Industry Advisory Board at the UNC & NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering and a Senior Fellow of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Mr. Hargan was born and raised in Mounds, Illinois. He currently lives in Virginia with his wife and their two sons.
"I believe that people entering healthcare can participate in one of the best and most exciting missions that anyone could have: helping people live longer, healthier lives. It is important that students and members of the Harvard community understand how the public sector acts and reacts in the healthcare space, given the government’s central role. I look forward to drawing on my experience in and out of the public sector to help give back to Harvard some of what the University gave me as a young man, which was vital to my development as a person."
Joe Mitchell
Joe Mitchell is the Former President and Founder of Run GenZ, a national 501(c)4 non-profit organization dedicated to empowering, recruiting, and mentoring the next generation of young, conservative leaders as they step up to the plate and run for public office.
Mitchell's organization is a one-of-a-kind, peer-to-peer mentorship program for young conservatives who are paired up with sitting GenZ elected officials to serve as a guiding hand as they begin their campaigns.
Mitchell first ran for office at 20 years old and was later sworn in at the age of 21 — making him the youngest state legislator in Iowa. After he began serving in the house, he came to realize the critical need for more young voices in local and state government bodies across the country. These young people bring a fresh perspective and a new outlook on existing issues facing this great nation. Since the organization's creation, Mitchell has recruited and assisted in the hundreds of school board, city council, and state legislative elections from New Hampshire to California. Run GenZ now has over 130 of the youngest elected officials in the country in its coalition.
Mitchell served for two terms total in the Iowa House from 2019-2023. In the legislature he served as Vice-Chair of the Ways and Means Committee while also serving on State Government, Commerce, Judiciary, and the RIF Budget. He also served as an Assistant Majority Leader to Speaker Pat Grassley.
In addition to his work with Run GenZ, Mitchell owns and operates his own real estate development company while also serving as Chairman of the Iowa Real Estate Developers Association.
"Much of my young adult life has been dedicated to public service and mentorship. The fellowship program is a continuation of inspiring a new generation of leaders to make a massive impact in their communities back home. I'm ecstatic to learn and grow with the students and other fellows this semester."
Brittany Shepherd
Brittany Shepherd is a national political reporter at ABC News, where she covers campaigns, politics, and how the Internet age has changed it all. Her work focuses on profiling the characters that animate the newscycle and storylines that often fall under the radar. She has spent nearly a decade covering politics and embracing new media as a key part of storytelling along the way.
Before landing at ABC News, Shepherd was a White House and National Correspondent at Yahoo! News, where she hosted the young-voter centric web show, 'Hot Mic.' There, she co-moderated one of the few on-camera interviews of then-presumptive nominee Joe Biden alongside chef and philanthropist José Andres, all while traveling the country writing pieces documenting the unprecedented presidential campaign during the coronavirus pandemic.
Additionally, she co-hosted the MAKERS Primary Conference in Los Angeles alongside veteran journalists Katie Couric and HuffPost Editor-in-Chief Lydia Polgreen. In 2020, she was a member of the International Women's Media Foundation Election Cohort. She got her start in D.C. journalism covering the Trump administration as a White House reporter at start-up newsroom the Independent Journal Review and after that, as a staff writer at Washingtonian magazine.
Prior to joining ABC News, Shepherd was a regular political analyst on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and SiriusXM. Now, you can find her work across ABC News platforms, including streaming, radio, podcast, TikTok, digital, FiveThirtyEight, and more. She was born and raised in New York and got her journalism degree at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
"It's hard to contain my excitement about being a small part of the tremendous fellowship program at the IOP. Every student I've interacted with at Harvard has inspired me deeply and it's an honor to be able to further integrate in this community. I look forward to unpacking together what I can honestly say has been an election cycle impacted by the internet like no other and for us to discover the answer to questions like if "Brat"-ifying a presidential candidate was even helpful in the long run."
Ann Simmons
Ann M. Simmons is an award-winning journalist with over three decades of reporting experience across the globe and expertise in Russia and the former Soviet empire. Most recently as Moscow bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, Simmons covered the political, economic, and social intricacies of Vladimir Putin's Russia, life under his repressive regime, and the War in Ukraine. On the ground in Moscow, she managed a team reporting on Russia's military and defense sector, the volatile economy, tyranny in Belarus, political upheaval in Central Asia, and conflict in the South Caucasus.
Simmons first reported from Russia for TIME magazine in the 1990s. She helped cover the failed coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the collapse of the USSR and Russia's efforts to transform from a socialist to market-oriented economy. She returned to Russia in 2014 on a social justice reporting fellowship awarded by the International Center for Journalists.
Before joining the Journal, Simmons was a global development writer/editor at the Los Angeles Times, where she earlier served as bureau chief in Nairobi and Johannesburg, and later as a video and multimedia journalist. She has reported on many of the world's most important news stories, including the War in Iraq, the Syrian refugee crisis, and Hurricane Katrina. She was part of an LA Times reporting team whose coverage of wildfires in Southern California won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News in 2004.
Born in London, Simmons holds a double honors bachelor's in Russian and Norwegian from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and a master's from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she will be honored in May with an alumni award for her outstanding contributions to journalism. She was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard, Class of 2003.
"What an honor to be bestowed this opportunity to engage with students and the wider Harvard community, sharing my experience and perspective and mentoring, while broadening my own horizons. Russia remains one of the most challenging places to report accurate, objective and uncensored news. The IOP forum presents an opportunity to freely discuss and assess what comes next as Vladimir Putin seeks to repress dissent at home, challenge international norms, and shape a new world order."
Julie Su
Julie Su is a nationally recognized workers' rights and civil rights expert who served in President Biden's cabinet as the Acting Secretary of Labor where she successfully led efforts to build worker power and union strength, negotiate historic contracts, and expand good jobs for all. Prior to her nomination as U.S. Labor Secretary, she served as the Deputy Secretary and before that as the California Labor Secretary appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom.
Secretary Su brought a wealth of experience as a nonprofit attorney representing low wage, vulnerable workers for nearly two decades prior to being appointed to government positions, and as California Labor Commissioner from 2011-2018 where she was widely credited with a renaissance in enforcement and creative approaches to combating wage theft and protecting immigrant workers. Secretary Su graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Law School. She speaks Mandarin and Spanish.
"We live in a moment where honest conversation and critical engagement on the important issues of our time, especially on workers' rights and the well-being of working people, could not be more important. I am so excited to get to do that with the incredibly talented staff, students, and community at the Institute of Politics."
Visiting Fellows: Sherrod Brown and Connie Schultz
More information about Senator Brown's and Ms. Schultz's visit to campus will be announced at a later date.
Additional information can be found here.
About the Institute of Politics Fellows Program
The Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School was established in 1966 as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy. The Institute's mission is to unite and engage students, particularly undergraduates, with academics, politicians, activists, and policymakers on a non-partisan basis to inspire them to pursue pathways in politics and public service. The Institute blends the academic with practical politics and offers students the opportunity to engage in current events and to acquire skills and perspectives that will assist in their postgraduate pathways.
The Fellows Program has stood as the cornerstone of the IOP, encouraging student interest in public service and increasing the interaction between the academic and political communities. Through the Fellows Program, the Institute aims to provide students with the opportunity to learn from experienced public servants, the space to engage in civil discourse, and the chance to acquire a more holistic and pragmatic view of our political world.
For more information on the fellowship program, including a full list of former fellows, visit: iop.harvard.edu