Our new CEO Noah Bookbinder is eager to meet and hear from alumni, staff, board members, and other friends of FASPE. For now, start getting to know him with this introductory Q&A facilitated by FASPE alumna and board member Stav Ziv (Journalism '14). Welcome, Noah!

What drew you to FASPE that made you excited to join this organization and community — and to help shape its next chapter? 

I was really blown away by the concept of FASPE–using, and actually asking people to identify with, the poor ethical choices made by professionals in Nazi Germany to encourage better decision-making by professionals here and now. It’s simple, but incredibly powerful. As I thought about it, it also quickly became clear to me that it is perfectly suited for this particular moment when law firms and businesses and tech people and so many other professionals face choices that feel closer to those faced by professionals in Europe in the 1930s than we’ve seen in this country in a long time, maybe ever.

My father is a scholar of 20th Century German history and the Holocaust, so I grew up learning and thinking about that horrific moment in history. Separately, much of my career has been dedicated to promoting ethics in American society. So, coming to a place that combines those two pieces that have framed my life and career was enormously compelling. Having it also be an organization that can do profound good in the perilous moment in which we find ourselves made it an opportunity I could not pass up.

What are you most proud of having accomplished in your decade at CREW?

I will point to two things. First, we were consistently able to find unique, innovative, incredibly powerful ways to work to promote ethical government and preserve democratic institutions. Perhaps the culmination of that was CREW’s work to vindicate section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the provision that says that anyone who participated in insurrection is disqualified from state or federal office. It was a largely forgotten but historically important provision that the framers of the 14th Amendment considered crucial, that turned out to apply in important ways to America in the 2020s. CREW brought a case that went to trial in New Mexico, which resulted in the first official in more than 150 years–a local official who had played an active (though not personally violent) role in the January 6 Insurrection–being disqualified from office under Section 3. Our subsequent case in Colorado on behalf of Republican and unaffiliated voters resulted in a Colorado Supreme Court decision finding that Donald Trump was disqualified from the presidency as a result of his participation in that insurrection. While the Supreme Court ultimately reversed that decision on procedural and jurisdictional grounds, it did not dispute the substantive findings the Colorado courts made. There will likely only ever be one courtroom trial adjudicating Trump’s involvement in January 6, the trial in the case CREW brought in Denver. While we ultimately did not carry the day in enforcing the 14th Amendment, it’s hard to understate the historical importance of that effort–and the concerns that led us to pursue that effort have been borne out more and more every day by subsequent events.

The second accomplishment I want to highlight is having built, together with CREW’s tremendous leadership team, a true institution in the democracy/ethics/good government field. When I got to CREW, it was a small group emerging from a difficult transition, and its future direction was far from clear. From that, we developed, gradually and painstakingly, a large, lasting, and respected organization looked to as an important player by peer organizations, the press, the public, and leaders in Congress and elsewhere. Clear focus on organizational culture led to an organization with minimal turnover, tremendous loyalty and expertise, and a joy and enthusiasm for the work and the people who do it. Regular attention to nonpartisan credibility–by bringing complaints against leaders across the political spectrum, partnering with people and groups of all ideological stripes, and ensuring a consistent dedication to the facts and the law, wherever they lead–meant that CREW now enjoys a strong reputation and its actions and statements are taken seriously across the board. A focus on institution-building ensures that an organization can continue to do good work and have an impact after any project ends or any employee leaves, and I feel good about having contributed to building a place where that is unquestionably the case.

Why did this feel like the right moment to take the leap from CREW to FASPE? How do you see the mission and work at FASPE as similar to and different from those at CREW? 

I love the organization we built at CREW, the people that work there, and the work that we did. It was not easy to leave–but it felt like the right thing for me to do at this moment, and FASPE felt like the right next step. Both organizations seek to repair the torn ethical fabric of our society, which I think is something we need to do if we are to find a way out of the societal crisis we face right now. At CREW, much of the work is what you might consider triage or manning the barricades to put it more colorfully. Something terrible would happen related to ethics or democracy, and we would think of the best ways to respond, whether through litigation, public advocacy, research and reporting, legislation, etc. That work is incredibly important; someone needs to be pushing back at the abuses we’re seeing right now and working to mitigate the damage on a daily basis. Ultimately, though, triage alone will not get us out of the mess we’re in. We truly need to restore our society’s ethical foundations, which is a long-term project. I’m proud of the work CREW is doing to think about long-term reform priorities, but it was always a struggle to find bandwidth for that kind of thinking with all the crises that need responding to in the moment. 

After a decade in the trenches, I was interested in diving into that long-term project of building a more ethical culture, and FASPE is doing exactly that. It shares with CREW a focus on ethics, so there’s important overlap, but FASPE seeks to transform the professions and through them key parts of our society over a generation or more, which is very appealing to me right now. Also, as the United States sees the limits of the checks and balances written into our constitutional system, I’m increasingly convinced that some of the most important avenues for pushing back on authoritarian abuses in this country will be from outside of government. The professions are going to be key, and FASPE can play an important role in guiding the professions in that direction.

You’ve only just stepped into the role and are beginning to immerse yourself in all things FASPE. How are you approaching your onboarding? Are there any crucial things you want to make sure to do or learn in your first several months?

The first thing I’m trying to do is listen and learn. FASPE is new to me, and I don’t presume to know what the most important needs are, where it can have the greatest impact, or what is most important to keep doing as is and what might be areas for growth. This doesn’t always come easily to me; I have lots of ideas and at this point a decent amount of experience in related fields, so my tendency is sometimes to jump in and start doing stuff. But I’m trying to push myself to take a breath and take time to hear from alumni, staff, the board, and others who know FASPE, and we can figure out together where to go from here. 

With that caveat, there are a few areas that I think probably are important for me to jump right into. One of those is development, which takes time to yield results and which is crucial to make sure that FASPE has the resources it needs to keep doing its incredibly important work and to grow so that it can widen its impact in this moment. My second immediate priority is to think through with all of those key stakeholders how FASPE can best engage with the current moment. As this country enters a harrowing time with many professions facing new kinds of ethical choices that FASPE may be uniquely suited to prepare them for, it will be important to think about how FASPE can expand its impact, what new types of training might be needed, and how the organization and its alumni can develop and use a powerful voice in the professions. Finally, I want to focus from the start on continuing to ensure that FASPE is a strong organization and a great place to work so we can make sure that it is a place that does this crucial work effectively, efficiently, and joyfully well into the future.