Our Team
Our team brings a together a diverse set of talents and business experience. We have developed one of the largest values and behavioral databases in America, shut down sex trafficking operations, gotten justice for victims of terrorist attacks, run national political campaigns, developed a top-rated iPad game, led successful international NGO coalition efforts for bilateral and UN treaties, and produced award-winning television programs.
We all come to Public Democracy from careers that align what is right with what works in politics, entertainment, and business — careers that have sought to balance that to which we aspire with the reality of what is in pursuit of real-world solutions that support the common good.
ERIC SAPP
President
As an entrepreneur, faith leader, and political advisor, Eric Sapp has spent his career supporting communities all over the world in their efforts to promote the common good.
Eric co-founded Common Good Strategies, later the Eleison Group, which led outreach to faith and rural communities for top Democratic candidates in 2006 and 2008. He has since pioneered the use of new technologies in successful campaigns on issues ranging from international peacekeeping and human rights to grassroots efforts supporting veterans and protecting victims of terrorism. Through these efforts, his team developed one of the largest voter response databases and most sophisticated digital advertising platforms in the country, which in 2018 became a Public Benefit Corporation called Public Democracy. By focusing on identifying where and why holes in behavioral data exist and how to fill them, Public Democracy is pioneering a new form of data insight and creation.
Eric currently serves as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council focused on Data For Good, Data Trusts, Inclusive Growth, and Computational Propaganda. He is on the Board of Directors of Public Democracy America (501c3). Eric graduated from Davidson College and earned a Master of Divinity and a Master of Public Policy from Duke University. He lives in northern Virginia with his wife and their son and daughter.
ROB LALKA
Chairman of the board
Rob Lalka serves on the board of Public Democracy, where he leads partnership development and advises on technology strategies to empower communities in pursuit of the common good.
Rob Lalka is Professor of Practice in Management, the Albert R. Lepage Professor in Business at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business, and the Executive Director of the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He has twice received the A.B. Freeman School’s Excellence in Intellectual Contributions Award and is the author of The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power, from Columbia University Press.
Rob moved to New Orleans from Washington, DC, where he was a director at Village Capital and a senior advisor at the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Prior, he served in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Partnerships and was on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, for which he was recognized with the State Department’s Superior Honor Award and its Meritorious Honor Award.
In addition to being board chairman of Public Democracy, Inc., and on the board of Public Democracy America, Rob currently serves on the boards of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, where he chairs the cybersecurity committee, and Venture For America in New Orleans. He graduated from Yale University, cum laude with distinction in both history and English, holds his master’s degree in public policy from Duke University, and earned executive education certificates from Harvard Business School.
Emilee Lord
Director of Communications
Erica Savage Wilson
Director of Outreach