Joanna Lydgate

Joanna Lydgate is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the States United Democracy Center. Prior to launching States United, she served as the Chief Deputy Attorney General of Massachusetts, where she spent several years leading the state’s most prominent litigation against some of the worst corporate actors in U.S. history, working with a bipartisan team of colleagues from across the country. Joanna also oversaw criminal enforcement for the Attorney General’s Office, which serves as the chief law enforcement office in Massachusetts, coordinating daily with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners. Joanna has also served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, a law clerk to Judge Norman H. Stahl on the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked in non-profit legal services in New York City. Named one of the 2021 Top Women of Law by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, Joanna is a graduate of Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.