ABOUT XANDRA KAYDEN

Xandra Kayden did undergraduate and graduate work at Columbia University in American history, holds a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard, and did post-doctoral work at Stanford on organizational behavior.  She has participated in and studied American political institutions for many years at all levels of government, and was the founding director of the Women's Action Program in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare -- the first government program to respond to the women's movement of the 1960s and '70s, and ran the women’s part of the McGovern campaign in 1972.  She has been an active member of a number of civic organizations, including the League of Women Voters, serving as president in Los Angeles, and as a member of both the state and national boards of the League for many years.  She co-chaired the Muslim/Jewish Dialogue in L.A., and was the director of several commissions, including the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Commission for the LAUSD, and One California, a statewide commission on diversity for Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante.

Her books include Campaign Organization, The Party Goes On, and Surviving Power.  She has contributed to journals and magazines and written chapters in a number of other books on women’s issues and politics as a member of the Campaign Finance Study Group at Harvard.  She was a regular contributor to The Los Angeles Times on urban issues for over a decade, and does consulting on campaign finance, ethics, urban and ethnic issues.