People

Dr. Meredith Sadin is Director of the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement and Assistant Research Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy. She is a trained political scientist (Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2014) and her work focuses on political access, community engagement, and inequality.

Dr. Sadin has extensive experience collaborating with practitioners, policymakers, and government agencies on projects designed to evaluate, implement, scale, and improve public policies and programs as well as access to the democratic process. She aims to utilize Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approaches in her research – conducting rigorous and systematic research with the collaboration of those directly impacted by the issue being studied. She currently serves as the Director of the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement (CCDE) as well as a Faculty Research Affiliate at the Possibility Lab.

Her work has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the CARESTAR Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Sadin has published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Psychology, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Punishment & Society, Journal of Urban Design, and cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New Republic. 

Claudia Garza-García, MPP '27 is the Program Coordinator at the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement and a second-year MPP student. Growing up between two countries, she has spent her career translating between different worlds: nonprofits and government, neighbors and developers, research and policy, passion and fundraising.

She has directed CORDEM, a women's education nonprofit serving first-generation students in Mexico; coordinated the urban renewal project that brought Monterrey its first complete street by bridging neighborhood councils and developers; managed peer-to-peer fundraising at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society while actively supporting health equity spaces for Latinx communities; and connected academic research with government policy needs as a liaison between Tec de Monterrey and the public sector.  

She studied Political Science at Tec de Monterrey with exchanges at Sciences Po, Yale, and Cambridge. At UC Berkeley, she coordinates the Getting into Graduate School (GiGS) program, supporting diverse undergraduates as they navigate major life decisions, and serves as a Constructive Dialogue Scholar and member of the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Graduate Learning Community.  

She stays grounded through yoga, meditation, and wine tasting. Her CliftonStrengths are Connectedness, Strategic, Ideation, Positivity, and Achiever, which means she thrives on connecting people with ideas and possibilities, then turning those ideas into action!

Rafi Demerath is the Policy & Impact Advisor at the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement and an independent policy and research consultant. While pursuing her graduate degree she worked with a range of clients on issues from expanding voter access in the Deep South to advancing criminal justice in California, Louisiana, and Montana. Prior to graduate school, she worked for the Diversity & Leadership in International Affairs project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), elevating diversity, equity, and inclusion as a national security imperative. Previously she worked with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, where she served as a Program Assistant within the Peacebuilding team lobbying to change U.S. foreign policy from an overly militarized and security-driven approach to one that prevents violent conflict and builds sustainable peace. 

She holds a Master of Public Policy from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and a Bachelor of Arts in political science and sociology from Amherst College. Although her interests span issue areas and jurisdictions, she always is seeking ways to build a healthier, more inclusive democracy.