Board of Directors
David Garrigus, President, is the acclaimed producer of documentary and educational programs including Kitty Hawk: The Wright Brother's Journey of Invention. This definitive two-hour documentary premiered on PBS and internationally during the 100th anniversary of flight—featuring Neil Armstrong and John Glenn as the voices of Orville and Wilbur. Kitty Hawk has reached nearly 10 million viewers with partners including Microsoft, Delta Airlines, Parker, NASA, and the US Congress Centennial of Flight Commission. Was Best Documentary at the International Family Film Festival. Creating exceptional programs for over 15 years, David Garrigus Productions has won Telly Awards, Cindy Awards, and New York Festival’s Gold Medal. Now in production, The American Constitution, a historical documentary film that tells the story of the US Constitution's creation—a gripping tale revealed through the words of the Founders performed by acclaimed actors. Leading scholars and historians provide compelling commentary. David Garrigus Productions is a publisher of critically-acclaimed education and health videos distributed to schools, clinics, and hospitals across North America.
Barry "Buz" Buzogany, Esq., Vice-President and Secretary, is a professional board director and former C-suite executive (CEO/COO/CLO) for both public and private pharmaceutical, life sciences, medtech and contract research organizations. Currently serving as a director on select advisory and statutory boards in order to share a wealth of leadership experiences, extensive domain knowledge and lessons learned as an accomplished operations and legal executive and entrepreneur.
Bill Knowles has over twenty years experience consulting and delivering workshops on Leadership, Strategy Formulation, Team Building and Leading Change. Experienced in the business and support services functional areas of corporations includes IBM, Xerox, MasterCard and Syngenta. January 2015, established ideawrks as a consulting firm focused on design-based innovation (DBI). DBI involves combining design thinking and innovation vocabulary, tools and processes for businesses to solve the right problems, design and deliver high impact solutions for the customer’s job to be done, establish a DBI supportive company culture and bypass the typical innovation killers. For the past ten exciting years, has been delivering DBI content which includes the disruptive innovation concepts of Clayton Christensen and his company, Innosight.
Steering committee
Jonathan Landau has been producing, directing, and writing independent films for a quarter century. He has won various awards over the years including the Platinum Remi from Worldfest Houston (2014), the Director’s Award from the North Carolina Film Awards (2015), and was named Encore Magazine’s Filmmaker of the Year (2017). As a producer, Jonathan is best known for the feature films Ding-a-ling-less, The Last Summer, Beyond the Living, The Terrible Two, 8 Slices, and Remember Yesterday. In addition to feature films, Jonathan has also recently produced four short films (Pushing Buttons, The Vamprentice, Cezanne, Positive Impact), two webseries (The Struggle is Real, Matthew) and three pilot episodes (Dead Ringers, Intimate Apparel, Adults.) Mr. Landau’s returned to writing and directing for his feature films titled The Devil's Stomping Ground in 2022.
David Dean Menzies is a writer, fiction author and business influencer.
Constitutional scholarship
Gordon Wood Awarded the 2010 National Humanities Medal. His 1992 book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, won the Pulitzer Prize and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize. He is the author of The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, which won the Bancroft Prize and the John H. Dunning Prize. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin won the Julia Ward Howe Prize from the Boston Authors Club in 2005. He is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University, Professor Wood’s scholarship has profoundly influenced colleagues in his field and attracted a wide readership. His Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. His recent book is Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States. Through his work, Wood provides readers with a sweeping panorama of early America. His uncanny ability to capture the sense of turbulence and vast transformation have made him one of the most influential historians of his generation.
Mary S. Bilder is an American legal and constitutional history professor at Boston College Law School. Her work has focused on the history of the Constitution, James Madison and the Founders, the history of judicial review, and colonial and founding era constitutionalism. Her book, Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention, was awarded the 2016 Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy, the James C. Bradford Prize for Biography from the Society for Historians of the Early Republic, and was named a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. She is the author of The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire (Harvard University Press, 2004), awarded the Littleton-Griswold Award from the American Historical Association.
Michael J. Klarman is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School. His definitive and authoritative book, The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution is the first comprehensive account of the entire struggle for the United States Constitution. He has won numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship, which are primarily in the areas of Constitutional Law and Constitutional History. Klarman’s other works include, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, which received the 2005 Bancroft Prize in History; Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement; Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History; and From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage. (Oxford University Press)
Franita Tolson is Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Her forthcoming book is In Congress We Trust?: Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era, (Cambridge University Press, 2021) As a nationally recognized expert in election law, Vice Dean Tolson has written for or appeared as a commentator for various mass media outlets including CNN, The New York Times, Reuters and Bloomberg Law.
Sanford Levinson Expert on constitutional law and holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law at The University of Texas Law School. Author of over 350 articles and numerous books: Constitutional Faith (1988, winner of the Scribes Award); Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (1998); Wrestling With Diversity (2003); Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It); (2006); and, most recently, Framed: America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (2012); and, most recently with wife Cynthia Levinson, Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws that Affect Us Today (2019).
David O. Stewart The author of Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America and The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution., and his most recent work on the Founding Era, George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father. Stewart practiced law for more than twenty-five years and has challenged government actions as unconstitutional in the US Supreme Court. The Summer of 1787 was on the Washington Post bestseller list for several weeks, won the Washington Writing Award for Best Book of 2007, and made several "best books" lists for 2007. Stewart's most Stewart also wrote the Davis-Kidd Bestseller Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy and American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America.
Carol Berkin Expert on women's history in colonial America, She has written widely on the subject including Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence, First Generations—Women in Colonial America, Women's Voices/Women's Lives: Documents in Early American History, and Women, War and Revolution. Through her research, Professor Berkin has brought vivid portraits of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women as active participants in the creation of their societies. She won the Colonial Dames of America Book Prize in 2004 for A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution. Dr. Berkin also wrote Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist and Civil War Wives: The Life and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant. She is Presidential Professor of History, Emerita, of Baruch College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. She serves on the Advisory Board of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Board of the National Council for History Education.
Stuart Leibiger Expert on George Washington and James Madison. He is the author of Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic, which chronicles the little-known personal and professional relationship Washington and Madison shared. Dr. Leibiger is also an expert on the framing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. He is Professor and Chair of History at LaSalle University.
Christopher Collier Has written extensively about the Founding Era including books for adults such as Roger Sherman's Connecticut: Yankee Politics and the American Revolution, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Decision in Philadelphia (with James Lincoln Collier), and All Politics Is Local about Connecticut's role in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Dr. Collier has also authored bestselling books for children such as My Brother Sam Is Dead, which was awarded a Newbery Honor, Jump Ship to Freedom and six other historical novels written with his brother James. He was the official Connecticut State Historian (1984–2004) and is now Professor of History Emeritus of the University of Connecticut.
Michael Meyerson Professor of law and Piper & Marbury Faculty Fellow at the University of Baltimore, specializing in constitutional law and American legal history. Professor Meyerson wrote Liberty’s Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote The Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World. His 2012 book is Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in America. He is also the author of Political Numeracy: Mathematical Perspectives on Our Chaotic Constitution.
Jeff Broadwater Professor Emeritus of History at Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina. He is the author of Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution (2019), James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation (2012). His book George Mason: Forgotten Founder (2006) won the Richard Slatten Award for Excellence in Virginia Biography from the Virginia Historical Society and was rated by the Washington Post as one of the best biographies of 2006. Dr. Broadwater has also written numerous articles, essays, and reviews in the field of American history. Before teaching at Barton, he practiced corporate and public utility law and argued, and won Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation vs. the Arkansas Public Service Commission (1983) before the United States Supreme Court.