Our Board of Directors

Charlie Cray

Charlie has been a member of Greenpeace USA ’s research department since 2010. Between 1989 and 1999, he also worked with Greenpeace as a member of the Greenpeace Toxics Campaign, organizing campaigns to shut down toxic waste incinerators and phase out PVC plastics. Between 1999 and 2004, Charlie helped edit Multinational Monitor magazine and directed the Campaign for Corporate Reform at Citizen Works. He is the co-author of The People’s Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Berrett-Koehler, 2003), as well as numerous environmental and corporate accountability articles, reports, and blogs. Between 2004 and 2010, Charlie directed the Center for Corporate Policy, researching and publishing numerous articles and reports about a variety of topics related to corporate power and accountability, including corporate tax dodging, executive compensation, contractor accountability and corporate crime. During that time he co-founded and helped maintain the watchdog web site, HalliburtonWatch.org, using it to press for government contractor accountability and reform. Charlie is a graduate of Amherst College.

Lisa Graves

Lisa is executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government and other posts.

She has also worked as a leading strategist on civil liberties advocacy in the area of national security and as an adjunct law professor at one of the top law schools in the country. Her former leadership positions include:

Graves has testified as an expert witness on national security/homeland security and transparency issues before both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. She has also appeared as an expert on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, BBC, C-SPAN, and other news programs and on numerous radio shows, including National Public Radio, Democracy Now!, Air America, and Pacifica Radio. Her analysis has been quoted in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today, The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, Congressional Quarterly, Roll Call, National Journal, Legal Times, Newsday, and Wired, among others, as well as online in The Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, and other blogs. She has also helped with legal briefs and her analysis of national security issues has been published by the Texas Law Review and other publications. She was also the managing editor for the Clinton Administration’s National Integrated Firearms Violence Reduction Strategy.

Ben Lilliston

Ben Lilliston is the Interim Co-Executive Director and Director of Rural Strategies and Climate Change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Ben has been working and writing about international trade issues and how they intersect with U.S. agricultural policy since 2000, including multiple World Trade Organization ministerials, the passage of CAFTA, several Farm Bills and now current trade debates. He most recently authored the report, The Climate Cost of Free Trade. Other recent reports include: Big Meat Swallows the TPP and Unknown Benefits, Hidden Costs: Neonicotinoid Seed Coatings, Crop Yields and Pollinators. He was a contributor to the U.N. Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Trade and Environmental Review 2013, the bookMandate for Change (Lexington), and co-author of the bookGenetically Engineered Foods: A Guide for Consumers (Avalon). He has worked as a researcher, writer and editor at a number of organizations including the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the Corporate Crime Reporter, Multinational Monitor, Cancer Prevention Coalition and Sustain. Ben has a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from University of Miami (Ohio).