Board of Directors

John Craig, MSW, is an entrepreneurial innovator in the digital corridor of northern Virginia with projects in the grassroots sector of political campaigning, the surging “coliving” movement of the innovation/startup sector, and the group communication sector of the voice technology arena.

Craig’s counseling and tech-innovation projects have been covered by major media, including CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Redbook, Time, Sirius Radio, CBS, and Oprah Winfrey.

Craig was educated at Yale, the University of California-Santa Cruz, Georgia State University, and New York University’s graduate school of social work. He also briefly attended Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, and Reed College (around the same time Steve Jobs was there).

James Kidd has worked in the publishing industry for nearly 20 years. He has edited books, magazines, newspapers, policy papers, newsletters, op-eds, and various other writings. He was assistant editor of This Rock magazine, managing editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, and assistant director of research editing at the Heritage Foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Dallas.

Lawrence J. Korb, PhD, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is also a senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He was formerly a senior fellow and director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. From July 1998 to October 2002 he was council vice president, director of studies, and holder of the Maurice Greenberg Chair.

Prior to joining the council, Dr. Korb served as director of the Center for Public Policy Education and senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, vice president of corporate operations at the Raytheon Company, and director of defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Dr. Korb served as assistant secretary of defense (manpower, reserve affairs, installations, and logistics) from 1981 through 1985. In that position, he administered about 70 percent of the defense budget. For his service in that position, he was awarded the Department of Defense’s medal for Distinguished Public Service. Dr. Korb served on active duty for four years as naval flight officer and retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of captain. He received his PhD in political science from the State University of New York at Albany and has held full-time teaching positions at the University of Dayton, the Coast Guard Academy, and the Naval War College.

Dr. Korb has authored, co-authored, edited, or contributed to more than 20 books and written more than 100 articles on national security issues. His books include The Joint Chiefs of Staff: The First Twenty-Five Years; The Fall and Rise of the Pentagon; American National Security: Policy and Process, Future Visions for U.S. Defense Policy; Reshaping America’s Military; A New National Security Strategy in an Age of Terrorists, Tyrants, and Weapons of Mass Destruction; Serving America’s Veterans; and Military Reform.

His articles have appeared in such journals as Foreign Affairs, Public Administration Review, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Naval Institute Proceedings, and International Security. Over the past decade Mr. Korb has made over 2,000 appearances as a commentator on such shows as The Today Show, The Early Show, Good Morning America, Face the Nation, This Week, The News Hour, Nightline, 60 Minutes, Larry King Live, The O’Reilly Factor, and Hannity and Colmes. His more than 100 op-ed pieces have appeared in such major newspapers as the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Leif Larson serves as CRAFT DC’s Political and Advocacy Manager. In this role, Leif develops strategy and advertising for advocacy and issue campaigns inside the Beltway and across the country. Employing all mediums – television, radio, print and digital – Leif’s work helps inform opinion leaders, persuade voters and influence decisionmakers.

An award-winning writer and producer with over a decade of experience, Leif has worked to elect candidates to office at all levels of government, overseeing the totality of the creative process from concept to filming and editing to placement. He has also designed messaging and communications’ strategies for a number of high-profile issue campaigns, ranging from tax reduction to medical reform. During his career, Leif has produced and helped place hundreds of print, television, and radio production ads for successful campaigns.

Before joining CRAFT, Leif gained valuable experience working for members of Congress, advocacy campaigns, top trade associations, and political organizations, including Representative Patrick McHenry, College Republicans, NRCC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, and All Children Matter. His experience includes serving as an assistant press secretary for Governor Pete Wilson of California and in the Santa Barbara district office for Congressman Largomarsino and on the Hill for Congresswoman Seastrand and Congressman Elton Gallegly.

Leif’s work has been commended by his industry peers, earning several national Pollie awards from the American Association of Political Consultants.

Jill Robinson, PhD, is an early career academician whose research on “opportunity structures” is inspired by her own experience as an at-risk youth trying to identify the set of rules that one is supposed to follow to achieve success. Growing up in the economically and ethnically diverse inner city of Oakland and the Silicon Valley of California, Dr. Robinson learned at a very early age that there were many pathways to success.

Dr. Robinson’s early impressions of success were refined through her undergraduate coursework at the University of California at Berkeley. As an undergraduate in David Kirp’s public policy course at the Goldman School of Public Policy, she observed that there were some pathways to success that were deemed legitimate and some illegitimate. She explored how to design incentives and policies to remedy differences in opportunity structures that were due to societal ills such as structural racism and classism.

At the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she led educational activities on perspective taking to at-risk youth in the Judge Baker’s Children Center in Boston, Massachusetts. There, she met Dr. Alvin Poussaint and Dr. Camille Cosby, whose work in the media on race relations and prejudice prompted an interest in advocating for perspective taking and responsible educational programming.

At the University of Maryland, College Park, she built on her knowledge of opportunity structures by studying participation in professional development activities at the U.S. Department of Education. Using data from a sub-agency of the department, she developed a statistical model to identify the predictive power of relationships on individual participation, which led to her earning a PhD in education policy.