Melissa Schwartz

Chief Public Affairs and Policy Officer

Melissa Schwartz is the Chief Public Affairs and Policy Officer at Democracy Forward.

Melissa has spent 25 years at the intersection of communications and public policy, with experience in the federal government, the private sector, and at nonprofit organizations. She spent more than a decade in the federal government, at the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Justice, and in the office of U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski. She served from the first to the last day of the Biden-Harris administration in roles including Senior Counselor to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Chief of Staff to Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis, and as the agency’s Communications Director.

Melissa has specialized expertise in crisis and litigation communications. At the Justice Department during the Obama administration, her portfolio included helping to rebuild the working relationship with the U.S. Attorney community following political firings by the Bush administration. She was then tapped to manage communications and congressional inquiries as Deputy Chief of Staff for the bureau at the Interior Department responsible for the regulation and oversight of offshore drilling in U.S. waters immediately following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She also served as Chief Operating Officer at The Bromwich Group for almost nine years and managed the firm’s crisis communications practice, where clients included former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

Melissa is an Adjunct Faculty member at Johns Hopkins University’s Master of Arts in Communication program and a Senior Affiliate Instructor for the University of Washington’s Communication Leadership graduate program. She earned her M.A. in Political Communications from Johns Hopkins University and B.A. in American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.