Nicole Gordon is an attorney and public policy expert. She was the founding executive director of New York City’s pioneer Campaign Finance Board, which administers public financing for political campaigns and is considered a national and international model. As vice president of the JEHT Foundation, Gordon oversaw funding of a wide range of criminal justice projects, including evaluating promising reforms in prisoner re-entry policy across the country. She recently chaired the Accountability Task Force of the New York State Office of Public Safety, and has assisted the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the New York City Department of Investigation on special projects.
Gordon received the Outstanding Service Award from the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws, the Columbia Law School Lawrence A. Wien Prize for Social Responsibility and a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellowship at Harvard Law School. She produced “An Empire of Reason,” an Emmy-award winning documentary about the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
She is a graduate of Barnard College and Columbia Law School. She was a law clerk to the Hon. Harold Medina of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals and an associate at the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, where she worked on First Amendment cases. She was subsequently counsel to the chairman of the New York State Commission on Government Integrity (“The Feerick Commission”). Gordon teaches a course in Law and Public Policy at the NYU/Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.