Gretchen Knaut

Gretchen Knaut, from Golden, Colorado, is pursuing a JD at Stanford Law School. She graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University as a double major in global affairs and Russian and East European studies. Gretchen aspires to strengthen and protect democratic institutions in the U.S. and globally, leveraging her legal education to amplify voices and votes on behalf of vulnerable communities worldwide. She co-founded and served on the board of the State Democracy Defenders PAC, an organization dedicated to supporting U.S. state parties and their voter protection functionalities; simultaneously, she was the research director for a pro-bono firm focused on democracy protection and voting rights. She has worked at McLarty Associates, an international strategy company, and interned for the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., and Tbilisi, Georgia. She authored an award-winning essay on post-Soviet LGBTQ-I activism based on interviews she conducted in Moldova and Georgia.