Women's Week 2021 - Politics in America in 2021

Mosheh Oinounou

CEO and Founder

Mo Digital, @Mosheh

Mosheh Oinounou is an award-winning showrunner and digital media consultant who brings a veteran perspective to messaging, TV and digital production.

Throughout his career, he has led teams dedicated to developing new approaches to storytelling and content creation for all platforms. He is the founder and president of Mo Digital, a consulting firm that offers solutions to companies and brands on all aspects of video production, content strategy, earned media and brand messaging. In 2020, he launched the @Mosheh Instagram page devoted to curating verified and balanced news. 

Prior to that, Mosheh was the youngest-ever executive producer of the “CBS Evening News,” where he led a team of 150+ on daily global news coverage for a national audience. In 2014, he helped make digital history as the launch executive producer of CBSN, the first-of-its-kind 24/7 streaming news network where he later oversaw programming and development.  He originally joined CBS in 2011 as part of the leadership team that launched "CBS This Morning," where he won an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. 

Earlier in his career, he served as the international editor at Bloomberg Television where he led on-the-ground coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He started his career covering Washington for Fox News Channel and served as the network's embedded reporter covering the McCain presidential campaign.

Mosheh has produced interviews with five American presidents and more than two dozen world leaders. He is a native of the Chicago area and a graduate of George Washington University.

Hillary Lehr

Principal

Higher Ground Labs

Hillary Lehr is a political technology expert focused on scaling startups that improve electoral outcomes.



She is currently a Principal at Higher Ground Labs, a VC firm and accelerator investing in progressive political technology. She previously served as Vice President of Client Success & Support at Hustle, a political tech messaging startup where she helped scale the team from 8 to 175 staff. Prior, she managed partnerships at Brigade and Causes.com, and spent five years innovating digital resources to scale nonprofit grassroots organizing campaigns. Hillary earned B.A. and B.S. degrees from UC Berkeley where she serves as Board Vice President of the college alumni association.

Grace Meng

Representative

United States Congress

U.S. Congresswoman Grace Meng is serving her third term in the United States House of Representatives. Grace represents the Sixth Congressional District of New York encompassing the New York City borough of Queens, including west, central and northeast Queens.Grace is the first Asian American Member of Congress from New York State, and the only Congressmember of Asian descent in the entire Northeast. She is also the first female Member of Congress from Queens since former Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro.Grace is a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and its Subcommittees on State and Foreign Operations, and Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies. The Appropriations Committee is responsible for funding every federal agency, program, and project within the United States government. Previously, Grace served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Small Business Committee.

Grace is also a Senior Whip and Regional Whip for New York, and a founder and Co-Chair of the Kids’ Safety Caucus, the first bipartisan coalition in the House that promotes child-safety issues. She helped create and serves as a founding member and former Co-Chair of the Quiet Skies Caucus which works to mitigate excessive aircraft noise that adversely affects communities.Grace has passed several pieces of legislation in law. These include laws about religious freedom, making Queens historic sites part of the National Parks Service, striking “Oriental” from federal law and protecting public housing residents from insufficient heat. Also signed into law were her measures that assist veterans and members of the military, as well as legislation to combat flood damage, strengthen anti-terror initiatives and improve the safety of school buses and child car seats. In addition, Grace helped obtain increased funding for Israel’s defense systems, acquired additional resources for small businesses, improved access to feminine hygiene products and worked to create New York City school holidays for Lunar New Year and Eid. Further, she helped improve mail delivery, secured resources to combat airplane noise, advocated for the new ban on African Elephant Ivory and the slaughter of “downer” calves, and obtained a probe that outlined needed improvements to local railroad safety.

Born in Elmhurst, Queens, and raised in the Bayside and Flushing sections of the borough, Grace attended local schools, and graduated from Stuyvesant High School and the University of Michigan. She then earned a law degree from Yeshiva University’s Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.

Prior to serving in Congress, Grace was a member of the New York State Assembly. Before entering public service, she worked as a public-interest lawyer.

Grace resides in Queens with her husband Wayne, and two sons Tyler and Brandon.

Abigail Dillen

President

Earthjustice

Abigail Dillen (@AbbieDillen) is the President of Earthjustice, leading the organization's staff, board and supporters to advance our mission of using the courts to protect our environment and people’s health. She is based at headquarters in San Francisco, California. Before stepping into her current role, Abigail served as the Vice President of Litigation for Climate & Energy, heading the organization's litigation and legal advocacy to achieve the essential shift from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy. Prior to that, Abbie was managing attorney of Earthjustice’s Coal Program, which has played a central role in forcing the overdue retirement of coal-fired power plants around the country. Abbie has litigated many precedent-setting cases that have held polluters accountable and cleared the way for clean energy nationally. These wins include: requiring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to promulgate first-ever standards to govern disposal of coal ash and limit the wastewater discharge of toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants; blocking a $2 billion transmission project to transport dirty coal energy from the Ohio Valley to East Coast cities; blocking permits for new coal-fired power plants; and cutting off federal funding of new coal plants. Abigail came to Earthjustice in 2000. Working first out of our Northern Rockies Office in Bozeman, Montana, she worked to protect public lands and the many imperiled species that depend on them, including wolves, grizzly bears, and native trout. Abigail received her B.A. from Yale University and her law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated Order of the Coif.