The Biden White House Alum Chiraag Bains Joins Democracy Fund as Senior Fellow

The Biden White House alum Chiraag Bains has joined the Democracy Fund as a senior fellow. Currently a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, he served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. 

At the Democracy Fund, Bains will be “working on how we can protect elections and voting rights from AI-based disinformation,” he said in a LinkedIn post. He will still affiliated with Brookings, he wrote in the post, noting that there is “lots of synergy between these engagements.”

Democracy Fund is an independent and nonpartisan, private foundation which “works toward an open and just democracy that is resilient in the face of change and worthy of the American people’s trust,” according to its website. 

At the White House, he led the implementation of the president’s executive order on racial equity and support for underserved communities. He also co-led a strategy on artificial intelligence and equity, which produced over 20 agency actions to protect workers and consumers from algorithmic bias, alongside the release of the Biden administration’s “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. 

Bains drove the policy processes for the president’s landmark executive order on police reform and public safety; the historic pardon of marijuana-possession offenses and rescheduling initiative; the national strategy to combat bias in home appraisals; increased contracting with small, disadvantaged businesses; and the United We Stand summit against hate-fueled violence. He also oversaw efforts to expand voter registration opportunities, LGBTQI+ rights, disability rights, and funding for Native American communities.

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Before joining the White House, he was director of Legal Strategies at Demos, a national public policy organization where he led voting rights litigation and advocacy across the country.  

Before that, Bains was a senior fellow at Harvard Law School and at the Open Society Foundations. He also served in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, first as a prosecutor of civil rights crimes and then as senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General. He was a member of the team that investigated and sued Ferguson, Missouri, for constitutional violations.  He clerked for the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Nancy Gertner in the District of Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale College, the University of Cambridge, and Harvard Law School.